New York State’s standardized math and English exams for 3rd, 4th and 5th grades are over, except for the scoring and the remaining four years of Pearson’s $32 million contract to provide tests....

It's going to be a Wild West waiting game for anxious prospective pre-kindergarten parents this year. Even though acceptance letters don't go out until June 11, one Brooklyn school has already...

A whopping 1,603 incoming kindergartners scored in the 99th percentile on this year's gifted and talented assessments. Out of 14,239 test-takers, 11 percent scored in the top one percent. You'd...

My family's turn to provide afternoon snacks for my daughter’s 1st-grade class comes up next week, and I'm anxiously awaiting the backlash. When you make dietary choices for 23 New York City kids,...

District 20 leaders are bracing for a flood of parents at Wednesday's Community Education Council meeting who want the city to exempt IS 187 Christa McAuliffe from next year's special education...

Gifted and talented results letters weresent to families last week, and since then our inbox has been full of G&T queries from parents of prospective kindergartners who must apply by April 20....

The good news for this year's gifted and talented kindergarten test-takers? More kids scored high enough to qualify for a citywide G&T program. The bad news? Eligible students have about a 1 in...

Parents have started receiving the results of the 2012 tests for entrance to elementary school gifted and talented programs.  Score reports were sent by email and regular mail on April 10,...

Parents of children who turn four in 2012 have a few more days to apply for public school pre-kindergarten programs for next September. The Education Department extended the application deadline...

April is National Poetry Month. It's also the month many New York elementary schools hold benefit auctions to raise money. Inspired by both events, I composed a poem (much in the tradition of...

State-mandated standardized tests for students in grades 3-8 begin on the Tuesday right after spring break. There are three days of reading (ELA) tests: April 17, 18 and 19 and three days of math...

Some parents at a top middle school are fighting to stop special education students from “taking seats” from students whose test scores may be higher. The parents at Brooklyn’s IS 187/Christa...

Kindergarten registration begins today and the early word is that some Manhattan and Brooklyn schools have waitlists for kindergarten, although they are somewhat shorter than last year. The...

Kindergarten registration begins March 26 after families learn this week where their children got accepted. Schools sent out notification letters via email and regular mail by March 23. While the...

"THAT'S IT!" It was the final straw, or rather, the final Skittle. I stood frozen in front of the principal's white board—it's the first thing you see when you arrive at my son's elementary...

Nearly a dozen new middle schools will open in the Bronx and Brooklyn next fall. New school applications are available now from elementary school guidance counselors in districts 7, 9, 10, 11, 12,...

In an effort to prevent the sexual abuse of children, my daughter’s elementary school now requires parents to wear little white nametags when we visit classrooms. I’m pleased to report that...

Some Manhattan parents are scrambling to stop a plan to move 150 Harlem Success Academy 5th-graders into a building on the Upper West Side. Critics fear the plan could make the Success Academy...

A change in special education enrollment will likely have some already overcrowded schools coping with a large influx of kindergarten students in the fall. In past years, most special education...

I thought I was courting disaster when I took my four-year-old to Brooklyn's two-hour long pre-k information session Monday night after a full day at pre-school. But with the assistance of an extra...

Anyone who regularly reads Department of Education documents knows better than to expect fine literature. Many DOE memos and letters are so full of the bureaucratic nonsense known as “eduspeak”...

Vasilios Biniarls is a math teacher at a Queens middle school program for gifted students, The Academy at PS 122. He wrote to Insideschools after his name was published in the press as a "Below...

Parents applying to kindergarten for fall 2012 still have questions as the pre-registration period draws to a close on March 2. Here are a few more questions that parents asked at our kindergarten...

"Special needs children need not apply." There was no sign hanging on the main office at PS 289 in Bedford-Stuyvesant last week, but there may as well have been. Essence Louis says she was told...

Dear Judy, My son has been physically attacked several times in elementary school – I call it bullying—but the classroom teacher is no help when it happens and the rest of the staff has not been...