Last week I attended a historic poetry slam at the Nuyorican Poets Café on East Third Street which determined the first ever Youth Poet Laureate of New York. Our first Youth Poet Laureate is Zora Howard, a senior at LaGuardia High School. As laureate, she will travel around the city performing poetry and encouraging civil engagement in her fellow youth.

The crowd was warm and enthusiastic. There were 12 finalists and about 50 audience members, mostly young people. The audience was very passionate about the performances, snapping and “mmm”ing and encouraging the poets if they stumbled or forgot a line. Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott was also there, giving the event an air of political importance. Each contestant performed one three-minute poem on a subject of their choice, and then a one-minute piece related to voting or civic engagement. (more…)

Should the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) be given final approval over whether charter schools can be sited in buildings with existing schools? I thought that was the intention of the state legislators who passed the law to renew mayoral control in August, but apparently the Department of Education has a different interpretation.

The new mayoral control law tries to increase public input in the system. One change mandates that the DOE post proposed Chancellor’s Regulations for a 45-day public comment period and that the PEP vote on regulations at a public meeting.

On Sept. 26, the DOE issued several proposed regulations; among them is A-190, Significant Changes in School Utilization. Changes in school utilization include decisions to phase out schools, change their location, or move other schools into the building. A-190 seeks to restrict changes considered “significant” and subject to a PEP vote at a public meeting.

A-190 defines the term “affected school” as “the individual instructional organization identified for direct action in the proposal.” It explicitly excludes other schools and programs co-located in that school building. (more…)

A week after the State Senate re-newed the law granting Mayor Bloomberg control of the city’s public schools, the mayor announced today his appointees to the Panel for Educational Policy, the oversight board that replaced the old Board of Education. The PEP is made up of eight mayoral appointees and one appointee from each borough president’s office. The panel is charged with approving educational policies proposed by the chancellor and voting on the Department of Education budget (and some contracts); but it has had no real decision-making power.

Mayoral appointees serve at the pleasure of the mayor and there are no term limits. Four of the eight appointees are “repeats” - Philip Berry,  David Chang, Tino Hernandez, and Richard Menschel. Only two of the four new members are public school parents: Joe Chan, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Linda Lausell Bryant, executive director of Inwood House, a nonprofit that supports families and teen parents. (more…)

In an announcement today at PS 171 in East Harlem, the mayor proposed ending “social promotion” for all students. His new promotion policy would require all students in grades 3-8 to score at least a “Level 2″ on state reading and math exams to move onto the next grade. (Exams are scored on a 1-4 scale where 4 is the highest.)

Five years ago, Mayor Bloomberg “rammed through” a controversial 3rd-grade promotion policy by summarily dismissing members of the Panel on Educational Policy (PEP) who opposed his plan. After the policy went into effect in 2004, it was later adopted for 5th, 7th, and 8th-graders, as well. Now, Bloomberg wants to extend the policy to include the 4th and 6th grades, so that it applies to all grades in which students take state-mandated standardized exams. (more…)

It’s official. The anticipated State Senate vote re-authorizing  mayoral control of the New York City schools took place this afternoon; senators voted 47-8  in favor of the legislation, according to  news sources. A few vocal opponents argued against its passage  up to the end, according to the Daily News . The News reported that Senator Shirley Hunter, a “an outspoken critic of mayoral control,” had harsh words for some of her fellow senators whom she said struck a deal with Mayor Bloomberg.

GothamSchools.org, which has been following the mayoral control muddle closely, has a good round-up of news coverage.  It also notes  that the Senate approved the four amendments to the State Assembly bill that will “create a parent training center, an arts council, yearly school safety meetings, and expanded oversight of principals by superintendents.” The amendments fall far short of the checks and balances on the mayor’s power that many parent advocates, including Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters,  have lobbied for.

In an editorial in today’s Daily News, Eva Moskowitz weighs in on the controversial  decision by the Department of Education to  clamp down on parent associations paying for non-union teaching aides in their children’s classrooms. Her take? Schools benefit from parent fund-raising that helps lower class size, especially in middle class schools which get less funding than those with a high percentage of low income students.  She posits, “The UFT doesn’t like it because these aspiring teachers aren’t union members.”

Commenters on Insideschools have been debating the merits of the practice, which according to the New York Times, only affects about 18 highly desirable city schools. Some argue that this is “another example of  Bloomberg steamrolling important parent input,”  that  will “drive more  middle class [families] out of the city. ” Others argue that, “It’s a public system and there should be a level playing field.” A few commenters suggest ways in which schools across the city can “pool fundraising.” Others note the role of the powerful teachers union, which filed a grievance last fall about the hiring practice. (more…)

Since 2002, under the leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city has closed more than two dozen large, unruly high schools and replaced them with small high schools, each enrolling fewer than 600 students. Many hoped the more intimate environment of the smaller schools would allow more students to thrive. A 68-page report released today during a conference at The New School, gives the small schools reform effort mixed reviews.

Small schools offer a more personalized setting, where staff knows students’ names and attendance and graduation rates are higher than at large schools, the report documents. It cautions, however, that teachers and principals at small high schools leave their jobs at a higher rate, and that attendance and graduation rates drop the longer schools stay open. The report, the culmination of an 18 month investigation by the Center for New York City Affairs, also finds that the opening of small schools and the closing of large schools,  has “had a harmful impact on thousands of students,” who still attend large high schools. Those schools have had to absorb increasing numbers of high-needs students.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who spoke at the meeting, disputed some of the report’s findings. He pointed out that, over the past few years, the “graduation rate went up in all schools,” not just the new small schools. He defended the practice of closing failing high schools. “[Placing] low-performing students together in large high schools, is impersonal and it’s not going to work.”

Some large high schools have found success by emulating the small schools model within their buildings. Stephen Duch, principal of Hillcrest High School, in Queens, said his neighborhood school improved by dividing students into seven smaller learning communities.

Duch sat on the panel of education experts who spoke about some of the complex issues underlying large urban school districts and the convoluted high school admission and choice process in New York City. Clara Hemphill, one of the report’s authors and former Insideschools.org director, moderated the panel. According to Hemphill, “parents who are well-educated and speak English are better off to navigate the system.”

Pedro Noguera, a New York University professor and public school parent said that while middle class parents “will do everything they can to get their kids into a good school,” the “poor kids are being left out of the better schools.”

He also raised the civil rights issue of segregation in public schools. “Racial integration does not get talked about at all,” Noguera said.  ”Looking at black and Latino males, not has much changed. They’re overrepresented in the failing schools,” many of which are large schools in poor neighborhoods, he said.

Eric Nadelstern, Chief Schools Officer at the Department of Education said, “Simply the act of closing those large failing schools made schools less segregated. Our schools have never been more integrated than before.”

The report recommends that the DOE do more to help large high schools be successful; create more midsize high schools, which post similar rates of graduation and attendance as small schools; offer more support to special education students and English Language Learners, and not “assume that all 13-year-olds have good judgment” when selecting a high school.

Editor’s Note: Insideschools’ blogger Helen Zelon was one of the report’s authors.

NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policy makers Need to Know is a compilation of essays about the recent years of mayoral control. Bloomberg-Klein educational policies are examined under a microscope by 17 well-known researchers and activists who have often criticized the mayor’s and chancellor’s initiatives. Commentators and researchers include: Diane Ravitch, well-known academic; Deborah Meier, pioneer progressive educator; Leonie Haimson, founder of Class Size Matters and publisher of this report; and Patrick Sullivan, former Manhattan member of the Panel for Educational Policy.Their essays challenge the results of testing and other data that the Department of Education cites as proof of its success; disputes the claims that DOE policies promote equity among various ethnic groups, English language learners, and children with special needs; calls into question the approach to curriculum and methodology as either too progressive or too prescriptive; and calls for greater parent, teacher, and community voice. Not surprisingly, all of the essays are critical, but not all of the writers share the same view. As the introduction proclaims, “These essays are our effort to ignite a genuine debate and dialogue about the future of the New York City public schools.” The debate about the best way to improve schools is likely to continue no matter who is in charge. These essays add facts, figures, and a range of opinions to inform that discussion.

Forty years after David Rogers published the landmark study, 110 Livingston Street, considered a major catalyst for decentralizing the school system, he revisits this debate in his latest book, Mayoral Control of the New York City Schools. As the state legislature debates whether to continue the law which gave New York City’s mayor control of its public schools, Roger’s books provides a deep analysis of the pros and cons of mayoral control through a historical lens. Although part of a scholarly series, Rogers’ prose is generally accessible to ordinary folk.

Rogers’ book analyzes the steps the Department of Education took to arrive at its current administrative structure. Rogers concludes that without mayoral control important changes could not have been accomplished. These include a new citywide curriculum and methodology with emphasis on teacher training, standardized access to citywide programs, including admission to gifted and talented programs; bolstering school leadership, leading to principals’ autonomy in budget and other decisions made at the school level.

Rogers details how these and other changes were pursued through corporate management techniques, with an emphasis on data and top down managerial  decisions. He also points out that the alienation of teachers, principals, parents and other stakeholders engendered by the aggressive business model approach, may undermine long term sustainability of the mayor’s reforms. He suggests that mayoral control should be retained but its effectiveness depends on finding a way to “… establish a relationship of trust between city hall and the educators (teachers and principals) and between it and parent and community groups.”

Whether or not you agree with its conclusions, Mayoral Control of the New York City Schools is a valuable history of the Bloomberg-Klein era and an equally valuable basis for further discussion of the issues.

A big budget hurdle for charter schools was just lowered.

“Despite a prohibition on using state funds to build charter schools, the city has quietly expanded available funding for charter school construction to as much as $3.8 billion,” writes the New York Post. The extra money is part of a provision in the capital construction plan.

To date, charter schools have not received public funds for facility expenses. Many charter schools in New York City have been able to survive because Mayor Bloomberg has allowed them to use Department of Education buildings rent-free. Charter school advocates have long lobbied for the ban on state funds to be lifted, since depending on who controls the school system next, charter schools could have to start paying steep city rent prices.

In 2002, Mayor Mike Bloomberg won the right to control New York City public schools for seven years. The state law is due to expire on June 30, and unless the New York State Legislature acts, the mayor will lose much of his ability to direct the school system, including the all-important power to appoint the chancellor and to control votes on the Panel for Educational Policy. As the deadline looms, legislators are vetting different proposals while opponents of mayoral control continue to rally for changes to the existing system.

Prior to mayoral control, public schools were run by a seven-member Board of Education (BOE) typically composed of prominent New Yorkers, some of whom were professional educators and education activists. Each borough president appointed one BOE member, and the mayor appointed the remaining two. Under the current system, a Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) has 13 members, eight appointed by the mayor, and one by each borough president. The PEP members serve at the will of the mayor or the borough presidents who appointed them. The mayor also chooses the chancellor, and all superintendents of the 32 community school districts. There are also 32 local school boards, called Community District Education Councils (CECs) and citywide special education and high school education councils, which are elected by a school’s PTA officials.

The issue has mobilized education stakeholders to testify and rally in support of their point of view. While most educators and school advocates don’t want to return to 2002, many want to tighten the reins on the mayor’s power and restore parents’ role in policy making. What and how much should be controlled by the mayor depends on which mayoral control coalition you speak to, but there is consensus on the need for more parent voice and more transparency about achievement data and Department of Education finances. Below is a round-up of some of the most active advocates on the issue, with a sampling of their recommendations. You can read their full reports and agendas at their websites. (more…)

Last week, we asked you what you would cut from your school’s budget if you had to make the difficult decision to let something, or someone, go. The most respondents, 39 percent, said that they would cut non-teaching staff, such as office workers and school aides. Twenty-two percent said that they would cut afterschool tutoring, remediation, and test prep. Letting go of arts and other specialty teachers was the least popular option, with only seven percent of respondents choosing it. Click here to see the full results.

Under Mayor Bloomberg, every school is graded annually, but this week, we want you to grade the mayor. Since the mayoral control law sunsets on June 30, school governance is being vigorously debated. Many argue that Bloomberg has staked his legacy on education - how do you think he has performed?

The city’s budget woes will force a ban on new teacher hiring, reports the Times (today and last week), the News, and others. The teacher’s union has high praise for the new strategy, which aims to place ‘excessed’ teachers, often languishing in DOE rubber rooms, back into classrooms citywide. Multi-million dollar savings are anticipated, based on projections by the New Teacher Project, which met with significant UFT derision only last year. (The worrisome projected attrition in the profession, highlighted in an April report, seems to have been forgotten.)

Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have long beseeched the ‘best and brightest’ at American colleges and universities to consider teaching as a profession. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama have often said the same, and consistently support efforts to elevate the status of teaching as a competitive, desirable career choice — as it is in many world cultures whose students outshine their U.S. counterparts.

What’s it to be? Can the city be pro-teacher and anti-hiring? Can city leaders credibly encourage talented young professionals and committed career-changers to consider teaching — and then say, ’sorry, not this year’? It appears the answer is, “Yes, they can — and yes, they have,” although the net result, for the city’s students, teachers, and schools, remains uncertain. Not to mention, a very large gamble.

Clarification:   Teachers who will be hired for the coming school year are mainly those who were assigned to the reserve pool of teachers whose schools have been closed, reconfigured, or otherwise restructured so that their jobs are no longer open.  Educators assigned to the “rubber rooms” face disciplinary evaluations before they may return to the classroom.  

Update: The scores for New York City schools and charter schools have been posted.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein celebrated the city’s gains on English Language Arts test scores in Washington, D.C. yesterday even as the State’s new Regents head, Merryl Tisch, characterized the same gains as “moderate” — a perfect object lesson in how the same set of numbers can be used to support different points of view.

The biggest news, according to the Department of Education’s Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott at yesterday’s press briefing, was an 11-point gain from 2007 to 2008 — the largest single-year gain since annual state testing of third through eighth-graders began in 2006. Rises in middle school scores were attributed by the DOE to its middle-school initiatives — in place for less than six months when the actual tests were taken. Officials also credited the abundance of data-driven analysis made available to schools, and the hard work of teachers, principals and the city’s parents.

Neither official could dismiss the role of test prep — which Bell-Ellwanger characterized as “test sophistication,” a term Walcott praised and adopted — in the rising test scores. “If they’re familiar with the [state learning] standards, they do better on the test,” said Bell-Ellwanger. “It’s about skills-building.” Walcott added. “Just because students know how to take the test — there’s nothing wrong with that. We all take tests in life. Now, more and more students, especially students of color, are becoming more sophisticated. We’re preparing them for the rest of their lives.” (Former DOE testing czar Robert Tobias, now an NYU professor, told the Daily News, “It’s kind of like how you get to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice.”)

Statewide trends showed a similar rise in overall scores, as did scores in other big cities. Scores in Buffalo outpaced scores in New York, and scale scores — the actual number that places a child at the bottom, middle, or top of the four proficiency levels — showed more modest progress. As ever, girls outpaced boys on the standardized exams and younger students scored higher than middle-schoolers (even with the rise in middle school scores). The storied gap between the races, which had loomed at over 30 percent in years past, has lessened over time, to a 26 percent gap between black and white eighth-graders and 27 percent between Hispanic and white eighth-graders.

It’s hard to know how to receive news that proficiency scores for students with special needs and those who are English Language Learners have “tripled” since 2002. On first hearing, that’s great news — but looking at the stats, only about a third of children in each subgroup earned scores that were proficient or better (level 3 or 4), news that’s much less encouraging than it might first appear.

This afternoon the Chancellor is back in town, after joining the Mayor and strange bedfellows Newt Gingrich and Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday for a meeting with President Barack Obama, to announce ELA scores for New York City’s charter schools. Stay tuned.

The Post, the Times cityroom blog, and GothamSchools all highlight Comptroller (and mayoral hopeful) William Thompson’s testimony on outsized Department of Education budget overruns, which he outlined at a crowded, consistently adversarial City Council hearing yesterday afternoon. At issue, in addition to overspending, is the DOE’s position as an agency that’s neither bound by the local laws that govern other city agencies nor beholden to state governance: The current mayoral control law effectively sets the DOE outside both structures.

Also under close Council scrutiny were no-bid contracts, like a $170 million contract awarded because the contractor was already engaged, hired by private money — “the intertia was there,” according to DOE’s Chief Procurement Officer David Ross — and book-purchasing contracts that deny local minority- and women-owned businesses and reward multi-million-dollar Midwestern publishing giants Ingram and BookSource. (See this NY1 clip for more.)

No vote was taken at this initial hearing, but many Council members expressed a desire to bring the DOE to heel, under the contract and procurement rules that govern all other city agencies, as part of a possible revision of Mayoral Control.

Teachers union leader Randi Weingarten threw the union’s collective glove at the mayor’s feet yesterday, in a challenge to Mayoral Control that proposes reshaping the Panel for Educational Policy – the majority-mayor-appointed committee that replaced the admittedly partisan former Board of Education. Controlling the PEP, including ousting recalcitrant members, has been critical to education reform, say DOE leaders; spokesman David Cantor wrote to journalists: “The union’s proposal for a central, political Board…is an almost exact replica of the worst part of the old system.”

Lost in the sauce — and in the media scrum — was the principal union’s mixed-bag endorsement of mayoral control, with specific caveats, most notably restoring the requirement that an actual, professional educator head the city’s Department of Education – and specifically opposing the waiver that allowed Joel Klein to ascend to the Chancellorship.

Today at noon, Mayor Bloomberg will give his annual budget address – the last before the November election. The mayor’s budget is expected to include 23,000 job cuts, nearly a billion in new taxes, and other “doomsday” strategies to stanch a $4 billion budget gap. (Slim consolation in the Times’ report that things aren’t quite as bad as they could be.)

Earlier this week, Chancellor Klein testified in Albany that up to 15,000 education jobs are at risk; in a statement yesterday that echoed Klein’s threat (and, possibly, predicted similar challenges for organizations like New York City Teaching Fellows), Teach for America’s New York office announced drastic cutbacks in recruitment and funding. GothamSchools has details here; their prediction that there won’t be too many eager 22-year-olds teaching in the city’s schools come September seems entirely plausible. (Of note, more of the new teachers who do get hired will likely be placed in charter schools, which characteristically feature longer workdays and a longer school year — and, rarely, union protection. The truism of sending the least-proven teachers into the toughest settings is, unfortunately, looking all too true again.)

Tune in here to watch the Mayor speak.

In his State of the City address yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg listed his initiatives designed to lift the city out of the economic trough and back into the black. Education played a supporting role: One of the Mayor’s proposals will direct $900 million over five years to “greening” city schools and other buildings. He also promised 50 new schools, with 15,000 new seats, and underscored a commitment to Career and Technical Education, particularly in high-tech fields like engineering, information technology, and sustainability.

Another proposal, P311, creates a public-school information resource, available by calling 311. While some say the parent info line is a nod to real gaps in Mayoral Control – the near-exclusion of parent voices in DOE decision-making — it also reveals, at last, the awareness that DOE has not been accessible to parents with pressing questions. Here’s what the Mayor said: “Parents still can struggle to get basic information and find answers…the right ones — without getting the runaround.”

In that moment, the City glossily acknowledged DOE’s communications shortfalls, and admitted that far too often, the right answers to real questions are hard to find, and entail far too much effort.

Time will tell if a bank of telephone operators will, in fact, have access to the kind of detailed schools information we collect here on InsideSchools – or that the DOE offers, in its inimitable density, on its website. (Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum was quick to critique the 311 response to problems encountered by parents of special education students.) But the aim of providing direct consumer service to parents about the city schools can’t be faulted. Readers will forgive a certain cautionary skepticism about its realization.

Also in the service vein, citing President-elect Barack Obama’s National Day of Service (and the 80th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.), Mayor Bloomberg charged Deputy Mayor Patti Harris with developing a “blueprint” for engaging more New Yorkers in public service. At least one local effort is aiming to make the world a slightly better, and warmer, place: Warm Up to Change, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

For events in your neighborhood (and beyond), look here for a zip-code searchable database and lots of information on getting involved.What are you doing for the National Day of Service? We’ll post notifications of local projects on January 19th — if you let us know the details.

This afternoon at 1 p.m., Mayor Mike Bloomberg will give his eighth State of the City address — the last of his second term, and arguably, the most critical, as the city faces fiscal crisis and the Mayor faces a third-term bid.

The Mayor will speak from Brooklyn College. Watch live here, or listen to a livestream at your desk (don’t forget your headphones!).

Education is apparently fifth on President Obama’s list of priorities, which Nicholas Kristof thinks is too low. Chancellor Klein knows people in high places;, will he be the next Secretary of Education? Half of the city high schools that opened in September don’t have enough students, and school psychologists spend so much time doing paperwork that they don’t have enough time to actually talk with kids. And in the wake of a problem-riddled, centralized pre-k process, the DOE has announced that they won’t centralize kindergarten admissions as planned.

Earlier in the week, Governor Patterson sliced and diced the school budgets, angering education advocates, especially since 20 percent of U.S. school districts have already laid-off staff since September. Families have begun to defect from expensive private schools (but not those showcased in a new ‘anthropological’ documentary), and school bus routes will be back on the chopping block come September. Despite all these cuts, the DOE still plans performance bonuses, even though a new report that shows how expensive all of New York’s accountability measures are.

High school progress reports were released this week. The author of a study on the progress reports defended them in the Post, and the Daily News claimed that the high grades this year were a strong defense of mayoral control. The study, however, shows that receiving a low grade doesn’t initiate a significant improvement in a school.

Mayor Bloomberg renamed a school in Harlem in memory of Terence D. Tolbert, the DOE lobbyist and Obama staffer who passed away on Nov. 2. The new capital plan doesn’t do enough, say parents in Riverdale, and parents in Chelsea are worried about overcrowding in a building the DOE proposes turning into a school. Schools sharing one building in the Bronx still don’t have a library, and on Long Island, a Jericho school makes an effort to get Asian parents to participate. The original Blue Man Group has opened a school designed to foster creativity, called Blue School, complete with black lights, plastic tubing, and a “wonder room” with a light-up floor. Hopefully the shrinking economy won’t doom other creative educational experiments.

The results are in! And it turns out that a Catholic school in Queens ‘elected’ the winning candidate… again. High school students in the South Bronx had been holding their breath earlier this week to see who would win the presidential election. And on Wednesday, boys at Eagle Academy in Brooklyn were thrilled to learn about the man headed for the Oval Office: it “makes us think that we could accomplish anything when you put your mind to it,” one 11-year-old student explained. Younger students in Harlem were equally impressed; one second-grader said, “I’m so happy I don’t know what to do,” — a sentiment shared by many decades older. Down the street, students at a Harlem middle school shared their enthusiasm.

Several pundits wonder if Barack Obama will tap Chancellor Klein for Education Secretary. New York State’s education commissioner will resign in June after 14 years in the position, and Mayor Bloomberg is expected to fight to retain mayoral control now that he’s won round one in the fight to retain the mayorship. Sad news from Nevada last weekend: Terence Tolbert, a beloved top DOE official, died of a heart attack on Sunday, where he had been managing the state’s Obama campaign.

The Post realized that a high-paying position in the DOE, the director of middle schools, has been vacant for months, and at a time when middle school reform has been given a lot of lip-service. Parents might get more (symbolic?) control if a plan to grant them “advisory votes” in Community Education Council elections gains traction, and the City Council has scheduled hearings into the controversial new gifted and talented admissions process, which has left fewer minorities with coveted spots in the program. The New York Times analyzed the specialized high school admissions process today and found that just like the kindergarten G&T admissions, there is a concerning racial imbalance.

Budget cuts were announced this week, along with a pared-down building agenda – principals are coping with these year’s cuts and already preparing for next year’s tougher budgets. Parents, DOE officials, and advocates battle over re-zoning proposals in District Three, and schools vie for a space in Riverdale that may not even be available next year, as promised. At another school in the Bronx, many children are taught in temporary trailers that have become anything but temporary. Elsewhere in the same borough, a neighborhood is relieved to be getting a much-needed new middle school. Students and teachers in most overcrowded high school buildings, however, will have make do – only two new high school buildings are slated to be built across the city during the next five years.

Beyond reading, writing and arithmetic, health classes are viewed as a vital addition to the pre-school course schedule at one school in the Bronx, and students at one city high school can take skateboarding for credit… now that is an innovative physical education option for the urban teen.

Mayor Bloomberg presented a revised budget today; click here to see the slides he used to talk through the dire financial thicket.

‘Dire’ is a weak word for where we’re headed, if city estimates are correct. Tax revenues for fiscal years 2009 and 2010 are projected to be $2.6 billion and $3.1 billion less than they are now, in FY 2008.

Cuts to DOE include $181 million this year and $ 385 million the next — which translates to 284 positions cut in central administration, and 54 “in the field.” In addition, CUNY schools will lose $6 million in FY 09, and 9 million in FY ‘10 - funds sorely needed to stanch the flow of students out of post-secondary programs, among other efforts.

Bear in mind, there’s still a fair amount of speculation involved: “Whether 2010 estimates are accurate, nobody knows,” said the Mayor, because the many forces that shape the city’s financial landscape defy precise prediction. The broad-stroke outline raises real fears about cuts to essential services like schools, housing, and health care. Quite the constellation of events to launch a third term bid…

…and stay tuned, DOE will post a new Schools Construction Budget soon, outlining how schools can grow in this time of extreme financial contraction. For those who can’t wait, see Philissa Cramer’s preview here.

For euphoric New Yorkers still dazed and reeling in the post-election coverage, news of the city’s financial woes — and the Mayor’s new capital plan, expected to be released today – comes as a bracing wake-up call: Grim financial times lie ahead, with cuts across all city departments, including schools.

Preliminary reports that 425 Department of Education jobs will be cut do not, of course, detail which positions are on the chopping-block. Allusions to cutbacks in school administration don’t say whether some of DOE’s biggest earners — named in a spiked story that later posted online – are vulnerable.

Watch the blog for education particulars when the Mayor’s new proposals are made public.

By Jennifer Freeman

A recent Daily News editorial dismissed the need for more open discussion of city schools’ capital needs. The editorial blast was aimed at a recent report, A Better Capital Plan (full disclosure: I am a contributing author). The report documented that more school seats were built during the last six years of the Giuliani administration than during Mayor Bloomberg’s entire tenure to date.

The report’s signal offense was to recommend that the DOE honestly and accurately identify in its soon-to-be-released capital plan how much money would be needed to provide small classes for all public school students in New York, rather than minimizing new school construction needs.

The Daily News editorial writers claimed that the report’s authors were out of touch with reality, that they must live in a fairyland the News derisively called “Gliffenglob.” But mentioning a need is not the same as claiming that unlimited money exists to address it. Maybe the editorial writers are in their own fairyland, where the atmosphere’s thick with murky and massaged numbers, and breathing pure reality would be fatal.

Schoolchildren of the city would be better served if the DOE openly identifies true new school construction needs, even if the costs of those projects is large. The fact of a troubled economy offers no shelter; they did not face the size of the need even in economic boom times, when impact fees paid by the developers of new residential buildings might have helped. In the more honest and transparent–more accountable–system advocated by the Better Capital Plan report, at least the public would know what we are up against.

State Education Department Commissioner Richard Mills announced his plans to retire late last week. Mills sits at the head of a sweeping state-wide educational network, from the SUNYs and private/independent colleges and universities to the public schools (a giant portfolio in and of themselves), vocational rehab, museum/library/archive programs and oversight over four dozen professions.

How Mills’ exit from Albany will affect city youth is the subject of considerable speculation; the NY State Ed Dept.’s long-fraught relationship with the NYC DOE is sure to be tempered by the outcome of next year’s Mayoral election, and whether Chancellor Klein will remain at the head of the city’s schools.

As the stock market dips and swings, families at city private schools are considering switching to public schools, threatening to flood already-overcrowded schools. Officials in Riverdale, coping with an unexpected influx, have switched students out of their bursting-at-the-seams zoned schools a month into the semester. In Greenwich Village, another prime neighborhood with overcrowded schools, parents are pushing the city to buy a building from the state to accommodate more students.

The economic downturn has trickled into the budget for the Community Education Councils, and Brooklyn parents worry what else budget cuts will affect in the schools. But it seems that the DOE’s central offices just keep growing; despite a hiring freeze, job openings are posted for numerous positions, including Knowledge Management Domain Leader for Leadership & Organizational Management, which comes with a generous $170,000 salary.

Now that the Mayor is pushing for a third term, the debate over mayoral control has become more about Bloomberg and Klein. And at a rally in Queens, one group of parents said no to mayoral control and no to Mayor Bloomberg. At the national level, advocates fret that other issues may have officially relegated education to the back burner in this November’s election.

Bad news for girls in the papers this week: girls in cities play sports less and later than boys, and their math talent is less likely to be identified and encouraged than American boys’ or foreign girls’. And New York girls trying to buck the trend by attending the all-female Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science have obstacles outside the gender battle: a brand new school building in Brooklyn (shared with three other schools) where construction is dangerously incomplete.

Games are more than child’s play, or so it seems from a swath of stories. A computer game that requires solving algebraic equations is in play in 100 city middle schools and a newly-formed institute will study the impact of educational computer games (and develop new ones). A brand- new training center opened in Co-Op city to serve the 3,500 students in the Beat the Streets wrestling program, special needs students in Staten Island practice yoga with their principal, and a petite high school girl in Queens is suiting-up to play in a football game this weekend. Game on.

Bloomberg admitted that when he argues for renewal of mayoral control, he also hopes to continue as Mayor, despite the twice-voted term limits law currently on the books. But Bloomberg’s second major reason for wanting to stay in City Hall – the economic woes of late – has already wreaked havoc on schools’ budgets. Whether the state is doing enough to help continues a hot topic, and Wall Street donations to public education will certainly start drying up soon – meaning less, less, less. Would it be cheaper to allow high school students to take some classes online (and “at 3 a.m. in their pajamas if they desire”)? And a new program is bringing laptops created for students in developing countries to city classrooms at the wonderfully affordable sticker price of $200 each.

The Public Advocate explained her position on mayoral control – again – in the Daily News, and the Times analyzed the data used to compile the controversial school progress reports, demonstrating how manipulating the methodology yields different results for individual schools. City students’ standardized test scores are being used to generate yet another type of report card: teachers’ grades. The DOE doesn’t want teachers to wear political buttons to school; some teachers are now asking whether Klein’s prohibition is un-Constitutional. And the eternal debate over how to best teach English language learners was rehashed and re-argued in the Times this week.

Craving news that everyone can celebrate? Local kids are bucking the stereotype of nicotine-craving urban teens: dramatically fewer New York State teenagers are smoking than teens in the country as a whole. A $9-a-pack pricetag can be plenty persuasive…

Mayor Bloomberg wants a third term and seems to think the way to avert a pesky term-limits law is a kind of end run via the City Council. Plenty of folks agree with the Mayor’s thinking, from the sages at the New York Times to Ronald Lauder, the deep-pocketed original term-limits proponent, who pleads “one time only” to “rescinding the voice of the voters” on today’s Opinion page. But Albany’s support of mayoral control is critical if Bloomberg swings a third term; the power to revoke or remake that law resides in Albany, and whether the threat is idle or substantial remains uncertain.

Meanwhile, UFT members sporting Obama paraphernalia are being directed by the DOE to remove same from the classroom. Here’s hoping that at least some of the teachers subject to the DOE’s no-politics dictum will still assign the vice-presidential debate tonight and the Presidential debates on October 7 and 15 as homework. If not, motivated parents can take a few debate-viewing pointers from the League of Women Voters — and invite their kids into the political process.

If you’ve spent all week wondering whether paying some teachers not to teach improves the over-all quality of instruction, or if you have been too engrossed in the Times Magazine’s annual College Issue to get to the papers, here’s a recap of NYC school news.

First, some some shake-ups in the DOE: Chief equality officer Roland Fryer has resigned to lead the newly minted Educational Innovation Laboratory. Fryer, who is also a Harvard professor, will continue to study the controversial cash-for-performance program that he brought to New York, which is being expanded to include some eighth graders. The city has hired a new person in charge of schools ethics who held the same job for an infamously ethically-challenged former-politician. Christine Quinn, who is most likely running for mayor in ‘09, staunchly defended mayoral control of the schools. She may be facing some steep competition in that mayoral race; both Bloomberg and Klein might throw their hats in, with schools at the center of either potential candidate’s platform.

With all the excessed teacher news, the Sun also wrote about a disturbing trend that the percentage of new teachers who are black is shrinking, rather dramatically. A host of teachers with illegally-large class-sizes have filed grievances with the DOE. And there doesn’t seem to be any space for classes of any size downtown next fall, but when new schools finally do open, parents are relieved that they will have K-8 options. Students and teachers across the city may get two more religious holidays off next year: Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha. And a new field-trip option opened in Harlem: a state of the art DNA lab.

City Limits took an in-depth look at universal pre-k issues in the city, and a five-year-old was mistakenly loaded onto a school bus and then kicked out at the end of the line. The big push to get soda out of schools may not have had much of an effect on soda consumption, but an advertising lesson in three California High Schools aims to emphasize the value of drinking milk to students across the country.

The economy’s dominating the national news, and on the civic landscape, the proposed across-the-board 2.5% budget cuts requested by Mayor Bloomberg could translate to $185 million in cuts to the city’s schools — a third more than the $120 million in proposed cuts that was so bitterly opposed earlier this year.

It’s worth pointing out that two big-ticket programs previously funded by private donations — the Leadership Academy, which grooms new principals, and the cash-incentive awards for Progress Reports, each at an annual cost of close to $20 million — are supposed to shift to public support in the coming year. That’s a cool $40 million in public funds — a big number by any standard, and especially so when set against the sting of $185 million in possible cuts.

Proposals for leaner budgets are due to the Mayor in early October; time will tell how DOE planners will make some of the most difficult economic choices of the Bloomberg-Klein administration.

Wall Street may be flailing but this week, many city teachers and principals are flush, thanks to bonuses based on the school progress reports. There also still seems to be enough cash left for Village residents to open a new private high school and parents to apply in record-breaking numbers for spaces in Financial District private kindergarten. For some, spending money still looks like a good investimen; as there are more high school seniors in the United States than ever before, lots of families hiring expensive private college counselors to try to get an edge on the competition.

A teacher at the Bronx School of Law and Finance is using the volatile markets to teach economics lessons. Maybe she can explain how class size in more than half of city schools went up despite state aid to lower class size — and the revelation that more teachers are receiving paychecks without being given a teaching assignment.

Despite Bloomberg’s “no social promotion” mandate, fewer students were held back this year. Summer school lessons, however, do not seem to be enough to help most students who failed during the regular school year make up the work and move to the next grade.

Charter schools, many of which received top grades this week, may face serious threats in the future, according one advocate. But for now, New York’s charters hope to get a little more help from the state and a little less regulation.

Some of the school bus problems may be getting sorted out, but the affected students, many of whom have special needs, now have to settle into their school year routines… three weeks late. Several students with ADHD who attended an NYU summer program are adjusting well to school, however, which their parents credit to their structured summer.

Bloomberg responded to the Times editorial last week that suggested mayoral control of the schools might have a few more checks and balances. Naturally, the mayor disagreed. Several top Boston educators who have moved to New York might add to his case.

Education experts square off on Obama’s plan for the nations schools, and The Sun uncovered Klein’s education policy reading list.

While most of the education news this week circled around the Progress Report grades, when the Times discovered that the Chancellor also grades his own staff on how well they host a press conference, press secretary, David Cantor, was inspired to email the Gray Lady their own grade: “Value of the story: F.”

At a crowded midday gathering at PS 5 – where principal Lena Gates was celebrating her birthday as well as her school’s “A” grade — Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein and Chief Accountability Officer James Liebman presented an overview of the 2008 progress reports for elementary and middle schools.

This year, nearly 80% of schools scored A or B overall. Across the city, 58% of schools bettered their 2007 grade or maintained an ‘07 A; in 21% of schools, grades declined, although many fewer schools earned grades of D or F (7% total, compared with 13% in 2007). Of the F schools in 2007 that weren’t shuttered by the city, some earned A’s this year, like PS 5. None still open scored F again, although there was one D.

Unlike last year’s reports, each school received three category grades — for school environment, student performance, and progress (with extra attention and credit for struggling students). Each grade correlated with a score, which summed to the school’s overall grade.

A few notable points: Progress, as measured by standardized ELA and math scores, continues to outweigh the other report variables by a significant factor. Together, the school environment and student performance count for only 40% of the school’s score. It’s not clear why scores that correspond to the letter grades are set lower this year than they were last year.

Schools with greater proportions of struggling kids — with academic and/or economic challenges — could earn extra credit for their progress, and academic growth made by kids in the lowest third of each school factored into calculating school scores.

In a seemingly counterintuitive mode, schools with F in one area, like student performance, could earn an A for overall progress, provided that the school hit specific targets (defined on the 2007 report) and that students progressed toward grade level (without requiring actual achievement of same). And one school identified by the NYSED as persistently dangerous still earned an A from the city.

Two of the three top-scoring schools are established charters in historically underserved communities. (The city says comparing schools against peer schools, with comparable demographics and student characteristics, resolves questions about comparing progress for striving schools against schools with track records of high performance.) The Mayor said that teachers and schools that showed outstanding progress would be rewarded, although he didn’t say precisely how, when, or if rewards would accrue to individual teachers, schools, or school leadership.

Find progress reports for your child’s school via the DOE’s home page.

To herald the new school year, the news last week was filled with first day of school stories. Articles spotlit new schools, new charter schools, and charter school networks new to New York; others described overcrowded schools, school enrollment issues and school scheduling issues; yet more explored poorly performing schools, projected shortages of schools in the future, and traffic problems around schools.

Even in this maelstrom, a significant amount of conversation swirled around mayoral control of the Department of Education and whether it would be renewed, especially in light of the recommendations made by the Public Advocate’s commission of experts. Despite the commission’s support (with caveats) for mayoral control, Bloomberg slammed their suggestions, saying he “can’t take it very seriously.” But just one day before his harsh outburst, the Mayor held a press conference decrying school bullies and introducing new anti-bullying regulations.

Although term limits most likely mean a Bloomberg exit from City Hall, some movers and shakers want to put Chancellor Klein up for the job. Parents, meanwhile, are taking school reform into their own hands - in both in legal and illegal ways.

First day of school, uptown and down-, and Chancellor Joel Klein has ambitious plans to drop in on five city schools, one in each borough, to ring in the new school year.

After starting at PS 62 in the Bronx, Klein next heads to the new, multi-million-dollar Gregorio Luperon High School for Science and Mathematics campus on 165th Street in Washington Heights. Then, it’s off to Queens, to visit with students and teachers at Corona’s long-embattled, now rising middle school, IS 61. Next stop, 1pm, Brooklyn — at the all-boys Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant , where classrooms are named for prestigious colleges. Finally, Klein’s trek wraps up in Staten Island, at the much-lauded, ADA-accessible PS 58, Space Shuttle Columbia School.

Quite the whirlwind tour! And quite the opening to the administration’s final full academic year in office — mayoral control conversations continue to swirl, but Klein says he’s willing to consider staying on as Chancellor, even post-Bloomberg. (Whether the mayor might stay in office is unclear, as Comptroller William Thompson’s concerns about term limits highlight.)

From the grand tour to the grass roots: How was the first day at your child’s school? Let us know if you’ve run into bus fiascoes, enrollment tangles, or other logistical problems. And let us know, too, if something went particularly well: Did your child’s teacher make a great first impression? Did a lively schoolyard scene make the first day a little more appealing? Any particularly great principals who have reached out to families? Good news more than welcome, as we start fresh, hoping for the best, for our city and our children.

Talk of testing dominated the news this week. Whether it was the mayor’s new plan to test kindergarten, first, and second grade students or the results of the SAT exam, the testing debates continued to take up ink. New York students’ comparatively poor performance on the SAT prompted both the Post and the Sun to question the validity of rising state test results. NPR had a different angle on the story - they featured a public school that churned out students with perfect SAT scores. Some New York teachers, meanwhile, are about to benefit from the higher state test scores when they receive their first bonuses, and certain teachers are going to be paid more than others.

While many kindergarteners in New York will start taking tests, the Times reports that the decade-old promise of universal pre-k is far from being realized. Education may be falling off the docket in general, warns the head of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Our chancellor, however, is keeping education in the local news, and this week, he talked to some budding young reporters.

Once-anonymous education blogger Eduwonkette unveiled herself dramatically, via a profile in New York Magazine. But a whole different kind of concealment is happening in a small Texas town, where teachers came to school this year with concealed guns. And the whistle-blowing Post exposed illegal activity and ethics violations all over the school system .

Low performing middle schools will get another burst of attention and funds after last year’s influx of cash seemed to boost test scores in the most of the targeted schools. Cash has also been spent on 18 new school buildings opening next week, although the Mayor says he’s lowered construction costs. And 10 city elementary schools are going to try out the Core Knowledge literacy curriculum - a content-based program that represents a departure from Bloomberg’s Balanced Literacy program.

It’s Friday, which, according to way too many city students, is apparently the day of the week to play hooky! Most of the little truants probably don’t have parents who are as on-top of their education as these parents claim to be. Involved parents or not, every student could benefit from a better physical education program, read more the Riverdale Press.

Enjoy the long weekend and don’t forget to pack backpacks and sharpen pencils, it’s almost school time.

As parents and students begin gearing up for the new school year, the news this week was dominated by the standard – yet colossal and complicated – contemporary education debates, including charter schools, standardized testing, and incentives.

Mayor Bloomberg kicked off the week by announcing that 18 new charter schools would open in the city this fall. The Times opened a Q and A between readers and James D. Merriman IV, the chief executive of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence. The Sun editorialized in favor of charter schools and private school vouchers. The Daily News wrote about Bay Ridge, Brooklyn parents who oppose a charter school moving into public school buildings.

A Newsday reporter who set out to prove that the Regents exams were easy by taking the U.S. History test unprepared scored a 97 and made his point. Meanwhile, students’ scores on the Advanced Placement tests were released, and the apparently mixed results of pay-for-scores programs vaulted the issue of monetary incentives back into the papers. Employees of the Princeton Review, a high-profile national testing company, made a serious computer error that resulted in 34,000 Florida public school students’ private information available to anyone online.

Several disheartening stories involved special education students: allegations of abuse in one city school, asbestos in another, and concerns over special education bus service for the fall. A disabled teacher sued, claiming his epilepsy cost him his job, and a national story about corporal punishment (legal in schools in 21 states but not New York) found that special education students – as well as minority and low income students – disproportionately felt the paddle.

And a couple of journalists used the end of the summer to ask key questions about the future. What will happen to No Child Left Behind, now that Bush is on his way out and a new president is on his way in? Will mayoral control be renewed by the state legislature, especially since Klein and Bloomberg have largely ignored politicians’ education opinions? And where does Obama really stand on education, as supporters of several different ­– and sometimes competing – initiatives claim to be in alignment with the candidate? Education mysteries abound.

Citing competition as the key to success, Mayor Bloomberg says that pressure from charter schools force traditional public schools to improve. But advocates like Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters beg to differ: the small classes that are the charter norm are all too elusive in mainstream public education, despite long-fought battles. And one has to ask a question that’s tough to ask aloud: Are middle-class parents fighting as hard for access to charters as families in neighborhoods long poorly served by city schools?

Maybe that’s one of the questions that will be answered on the New York Times Charter School Q&A thread. And for families of high-school students and rising eighth-graders, who will be facing the high-school selection process this year, the DOE is hosting a Q&A with Evaristo Jimenez, head of high school enrollment.

As one commenter implored yesterday, speak up! If parents don’t ask the hard questions to advance their child’s education, who will?

It’s safe bet that most readers saw yesterday’s New York Times magazine cover story, detailing the vast educational experiment underway in New Orleans. In a similar vein, today at noon, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will announce the opening of 18 new charter schools, which are subject to stringent oversight (read, lots of student testing to measure achievement) but not obliged to meet city-mandated curriculum guidelines — or or bound by union rules, as most charter school faculties aren’t UFT members.

Some schools, like the KIPP charters and Excellence Charter School of Bedford Stuyvesant, have great reputations, while others flounder and struggle. We’d love to hear from readers whose kids attend charter schools; are you happy with what and how your kids are learning? What’s happening in your child’s classroom?

And in the spirit of behind-the-headlines illumination, see this tiny AP item. Teachers in a Texas district get the official ok to pack heat in the classroom — ostensibly, to discourage school violence. Anyone else get awfully nervous at this kind of news?

John McCain (or his ghostwriter) spun an impressively bold segue from public-school reform to private-school vouchers in this editorial in the Daily News. Touting the Mayor and the Chancellor, along with Rev. Al Sharpton, as visionary ed reformers, McCain cites their efforts as evidence of school failure — anyone else miss the logic here? — and promises private- and religious-school vouchers as his vision of public school reform.

Read Sharpton’s praise for McCain here, if you’re curious.

Even with the spin, the editorial asks a big, legitimate question: Sharpton, Klein et al are at the forefront of the Education Equality Project, which defines education as an essential civil right for all Americans. Barack Obama, whose daughters attend private school, hasn’t yet weighed in. As the AFT-endorsed candidate, we’d welcome his views.

Just over two weeks ago, we asked – and not for the first time — about high-school graduation rates and school report cards. (The Times asked, too, but didn’t get a clear answer.) The New York State Department of Education said in May that they would release the data by the end of June; nothing doing. In July, they said the data would post by the end of July. It’s the 30th. Anyone here think we’re going into August without knowing how schools did, and whether more kids are graduating than in years previous?

School report cards help parents (and professionals, like principals and teachers) learn more about schools by reporting detailed (”granular”) data on enrollment, testing, teacher qualifications and more. The grad rate is the education acid test — how many kids finish high school is a pretty effective yardstick, and the one against which Bloomberg and Klein measure their success.

The city and state disagreed for years on how to define and count high-school grads. This year, they’ve reached agreement on who qualifies as a graduate (excluding GED completers, for example). High schools rise and fall on grad rates and other accountability data; don’t parents — the taxpayers who support the schools — deserve timely reporting on how the city’s students are doing? The state and the city’s DOE owe the accountability they cite as a foundation of responsible, progressive school reform to the people who pay their salaries.

Last night’s Town Hall in Brooklyn was the first of many, according to City Council member Bill deBlasio, that will address issues raised by mayoral control of the city’s schools — a state law that’s slated to sunset in 2009.

Most speakers described the erosion of public influence on public education due to mayoral control: Community Education Councils as weak substitutes for elected school boards; policy decisions (and PR disasters) enacted by remote DOE leadership; and the mayorally-appointed (and thus beholden) Panel for Educational Policy in lieu of the former Board of Education, whose antagonism to the Mayor — any mayor — was legion.

Parents brought specific and legitimate complaints about the high-school admissions process and the exclusion of special-education parents and students from many policy-level conversations. Martine Guerrier, head of the Office of Family Engagement, was present; more than a few charged her office with “Orwellian” practices and a dismissive, “we’ll get back to you” philosophy. Notably, veteran school leaders said that parents are reluctant to step into leadership roles because of fears that their questions will lead to repercussions for their children.

In a practical reflection of the Mayor’s corporate ethos, small-business providers of resources for English Language Learners said their bids were no longer welcome at the DOE, which restricted some bids to businesses worth $5 million or more. The irony is particularly stinging given that Local Law 129 provides preferential bidding practices for small businesses, especially those headed by minorities and women — and that the DOE is apparently exempt from that ruling.

The UFT, ICOPE, ACORN/the Alliance for Quality Education, the Council for Economic Justice, Time Out From Testing and other advocates promise to keep the mayoral-control dialogue going.

Quiet week in NYC? Head down to D.C.: Tomorrow morning, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will address a House panel on progress in urban education, along with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Klein protegee D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and public school leaders from Chicago and Atlanta.

We bet we’ll hear about test score gains and closing the achievement gap — but we doubt the conversation will include troubling nuances, like the fact that race-based gaps between brighter kids widen over time, even as they narrow for kids with lower skills. And we bet we won’t hear the nitty-gritty on why level 4 test scores have dropped for middle schoolers this year: Will anyone ask about the price bright students pay in a system so focused on raising low-level student skills?

We’ll likely hear about charter schools and merit pay, about leadership pipelines and increasing accountability. We’ll hear about rising grad rates — but bet the numbers they cite will be based on old data, as the newly calibrated scores are yet to be made public.

Will we learn anything new? We doubt it, but we’d love to be wrong. As it stands now, though, our bet is on celebration over substance, and photo-ops over hard questions.

Anyone else feel in the eye of a swirling PR-storm? The Fund for Public Schools (the private-money gathering arm of the DOE) has sponsored a swath of glossy ads showcasing progress in the public schools that would make the Mad Ave mavens plenty proud. See the ads here – but if you watched a half-hour or more of TV last night, we’re sure you’ve seen the new, test-score-touting ad already.

Knickerbocker SKD is the agency behind the campaign, which has been underway since 2007; according to the Fund for Public Schools, the production and media buy for this wave cost about $1 million. Beginners, they’re not: Also on their client list are Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau and real-estate megadeveloper Forest City Ratner.

The Fund, first headed by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, raises private millions for education reform. But as Kathryn S. Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, put it in 2005, the Mayor’s own philanthropy is a powerful model. “He had a lot of chits to call in.” And call he did.

Mayor Bloomberg announced the results of the 2008 Learning Environment Survey this morning; not surprisingly, there’s good news and bad news.

This second year of the survey generated a significantly larger response, especially at schools that scored poorly last year (targets of DOE response-generating efforts). Overall, parents report high levels of satisfaction with their childrens’ education and teachers; teachers who responded say they’re more satisfied, too, but some areas, like professional development, still fall short.

Of great interest to us is the student survey, which shows a kid-typical mix of answers. (Middle and high-schoolers were invited to participate; between 11% and 15% actually did.)

Learning environment, for kids, means the life of the hallway and the schoolyard–what’s said too loud in the cafeteria and who bumps who in gym. Bullying, fighting, and adults who yell continue to be problems, kids say. About half feel they can’t turn to adults at school for help; more than half say that students don’t “help and care about each other” or “treat each other with respect.”

Four in ten students report that their schools don’t have enough variety, in classes and activities, to keep them engaged. And it’s still really hard to be smart and cool: Almost half of the students the DOE heard from say that kids who earn high grades at their school don’t get other students’ respect.

Bottom line: The grown-ups seem happier than they did last year. The kids — well, they’re still struggling. They want more challenge, and they need more support.

The DOE plans to post citywide survey results and reports for individual schools this afternoon; we’ll update this post with a link when they do. (Learning Environment Surveys and attendance account for 15% of each school’s annual progress report.)

Ten Harlem middle schools will get new math and science programs this fall, thanks to a $17.9 million, five-year grant from the General Electric Foundation, announced just this afternoon by a sun-drenched Mayor Bloomberg, flanked by CEO of GE Jeffrey Immelt, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and Harlem’s own Charlie Rangel, House Ways and Means Committee Chair and undisputed king of 125th Street.

The largest corporate grant ever awarded to city schools, the DOE money is the lion’s share of a $29-million package that directs GE funds to Teachers College, Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Childrens’ Zone, the Council for Opportunities in Education and College for Every Student, in that corporation’s ongoing effort to develop math, science and engineering talent. Klein said that participating public schools have yet to be identified, although a Teacher’s College press-release named PS 200 and PS/IS 180 as part of the program.

We don’t yet know how the money will be spent or the programs administered, but Klein did mention that a portion of the grant might be used to “reconfigure” middle schools (translation: break them up and make them smaller). The mayor and the chancellor have reminded us often over the past week that middle schools remain their biggest challenge for reform, and they heralded this latest cash flow as a boost to their invigorated efforts. We’re curious, however, why other parts of the city, with similarly acute needs for strong math and science education, aren’t part of the powerhouse’s largesse.

School may be out, but there’s plenty buzzing in the city press — about education, budget cuts, and attendance vigilance gone awry. Plus, the Mayor’s slated to make an education statement at 1 pm today; more news will follow as the day unfolds.

In today’s Times, Jennifer Medina celebrates a terrific grad rate (and estimates the human cost) at the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, one of the city’s new, small high schools, where the principal, having marked the school’s first graduation, is leaving for another job. In the Sun, Elizabeth Green returns to MS 201, to air concerns about a new principal’s effect on test-score rises. The budget compromise comes under closer scrutiny at Gotham Gazette — yes, millions for education were restored, but deep cuts in NYCHA programs, Beacon community centers, and infant-mortality prevention efforts cast a long and gloomy shadow.

And yesterday, the News profiled a student aggressively pursued for truancy: Enrolled at a Brooklyn parochial school, she never showed up at her public high school, raising the ACS flag high. As always, the details devil the case: Inaccurate contact information, the DOE says, made finding the girl nearly impossible. That they’re looking hard for absent students is in itself a sign of progress, however misguided this effort.

New York City and State’s big gains in test scores lead the news at the Times and Daily News, and are featured at the Post and the Sun, which focuses on charter-school progress. But amid the celebratory, double-digit party (and leaving aside, for the moment, critical questions about score inflation and comparisons with national tests), disturbing trends persist, and — not surprisingly — get far less play than testing’s great leap forward.

Have a look at the test score “deck” from the DOE’s Department of Assessment and Accountability, which breaks out scores by grade and race.

The achievement gap that yawns between white and Asian students and their black and Hispanic peers has narrowed, but continues far too wide: Overall, 80% of white students earned level 3/4 (grade-level and higher) on the ELA, compared with 54% of black students and 53% of Hispanic kids. That’s a 26% or 27% gap. Even if it closes at the rate of 2 or 3 points a year (the recent, upward trend), that’s 9 or 12 years, or many kids’ entire public-school career, before the races achieve parity — if white and Asian kids’ scores don’t rise, which they likely will (again, tracking Bloomberg-era trends).

The abyss that separates 8th grade’s middling progress from 4th grade’s high scores is even more threatening: About two-thirds of white eighth-graders, 65%, earned levels 3/4 on the ELA; just over one-third of black and Hispanic students (36% and 33%, respectively) posted similar scores. Taken together, 43% of the city’s eighth graders scored level 3/4 — which means that nearly six in ten will proceed to high-school officially reading below grade level.

Cue the party horns here (or not).

Update: According to DOE, the scores were embargoed on State directive, meant for school use in planning placements (as if year-round testing didn’t yield sufficient data) and available to parents on request, but not publicly released until their presentation to the Regents yesterday.

It was a love-fest today at PS 178 for New York City’s educational leadership. Ongoing battles over budget cuts were tabled (momentarily) as the Mayor, Chancellor Joel Klein, UFT president Randi Weingarten and CSA rep Ernie Logan lauded city children’s performance on the state ELA and Math tests, which were announced today, and are posted on line here. The credit for the steadily rising test scores (with still-glaring gaps between grade 4 and grade 8 achievement), was generously shared as speakers thanked each other, the children, the parents, the teachers and, of course, themselves.

Each speaker in turn emphasized how much work educational reformers in New York City have yet to accomplish.“It’s a wonderful day for New York,” the Mayor said, before adding this caveat: “If history looks back and says, ‘this is a high point,’ shame on us.”

Mayor Bloomberg has got to be feeling the pressure to restore education funds to the city’s budget. On Wednesday, parents gathered at City Hall to urge City Council members to vote down the proposed budget. This morning, State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver presented the mayor with an assembly resolution asking him to restore school funding. Anti-cut rallies are scheduled for Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx in the next week. (See the Insideschools calendar for details about dates and locations.) And the Keep the Promises Coalition has just launched a new TV spot urging New Yorkers to call 1-800-961-6198 to tell the mayor to fund the schools.
Some kind of changes may be brewing. Patrick Sullivan reported last night on the NYC Public School Parents blog that the DOE has delayed the Panel for Education Policy’s vote on the executive budget, originally scheduled for Monday, saying that it is working on reducing the impact of cuts to schools. Of course, it could be that the DOE needs time to fix serious inconsistencies in the proposed budget — Eduwonkette’s noted one and it’s not hard to find others.

What has cost the DOE as much as ARIS in the last couple of years? Teachers who aren’t working, according to a report being released today by the New Teacher Project, a non-profit organization that helps school districts find and train new teachers.

The report, titled “Mutual Benefits: New York City’s Shift to Mutual Consent in Teacher Hiring,” takes a look at the effects of the 2005 UFT-DOE contract, which ended the practice by which older teachers could “bump” younger teachers from their schools and instituted a system where teachers who are “excessed,” or released from their positions at schools, continue to earn tenure and be paid while they apply for new positions — or not. The report concludes that the practice of “mutual consent” has resulted in teachers being happier with their positions but that the growing pool of excessed teachers is becoming a financial burden on the system. Half of the 600 teachers who were excessed in 2006 and early 2007 who did not find a new position did not apply for any jobs through the DOE’s online hiring system, according to the report, to the tune of $81 million by the end of this school year.

Many of the report’s findings are likely verifiable, but it’s important to note that the New Teacher Project has an organizational interest in making sure there are positions for new teachers and funds free to pay them — it runs the city’s Teaching Fellows program. Evaluated in this context, the report’s central recommendation — that excessed teachers be removed from the payroll after a “reasonable period” and allowed “for a certain number of years” to be able to return to a teaching position at the same salary and seniority level — reads like opportunism, not thoughtful education policy. And it makes Mayor Bloomberg’s use of the report as a reason to reopen contract negotiations with the UFT positively inexcusable; he is planning to seek permission to remove from city payroll teachers who have gone without a job for 12 months.

The Times notes that Chancellor Klein has characterized most teachers in the reserve pool as undesirable or unwilling to look for work. We don’t know exactly how many of the non-working excessed teachers fit that bill. But we do know that with budget cuts making it financially stressful for schools to maintain experienced teaching staffs, principals must make hard choices to be able to afford to hire senior teachers. And with a cadre of first-year teachers always at the ready (thanks in part to the New Teacher Project), the incentives to make those choices are slim. That’s why the UFT earlier this month filed an age discrimination lawsuit against the DOE. In times like this, senior teachers need more protections, not a new rule that removes them from the system so long as schools can get along without them.

And if you’re worried about unqualified teachers keeping their jobs, don’t be — the Teacher Performance Unit is on the job.