Via Little Green Footballs comes the story of a San Diego public school that created all-boy and all-girl classes and set aside class time for Muslim prayer to please Somali Muslim students.

Carver added the single-gender classes and a daily 15-minute in-class break for voluntary prayers last September after it absorbed a failed Arabic language charter school that served primarily Somali Muslims.

After a substitute teacher complained, Carver Elementary decided to schedule a late lunch period at a time convenient for midday prayers. All classes will be co-ed.

Elementary teachers and would-be administrators seeking a master’s degree have below average GRE scores, notes Teacher Quality Bulletin.

Out of the 50 intended graduate majors ETS collected data on, seven of the lowest scoring 10 majors on the list are education fields. Only one field — social work — scored lower.

The most popular choice of graduate degrees for teachers with aspirations for school or district leadership is a degree in education administration. The average GRE score was 948, comparing poorly with the national average score of 1058 for all fields of study.

Teachers pursuing degrees in early childhood (915) came in second to last on the list, slightly losing to special education (933), student counseling (927) and elementary (968).

By contrast, teachers specializing in secondary education averaged 1063, slightly better than the national average.

Charter students in New York City outperform similar students in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 concludes a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

A student can expect to improve by about 12 percent of a “performance level” in math and about 3.5 percent of a “performance level” in reading for every year in a charter school in New York City. These gains are in addition to whatever improvements the student would have been expected to make in a traditional public school.

To provide an apple-to-apple comparison, the study compared students “lotteried in” to charter schools with those who applied but were “lotteried out.” Not enough students were turned away from charter high schools to do a comparison.

More than 90 percent of charter applicants qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch, making them poorer than the typical public school student in the city but comparable to students in the neighborhoods where schools are located. Nearly 64 percent of charter applicants are black, compared to 32 percent for district-run schools.

Charters’ special education enrollment appeared comparable to district-run schools, but differences in record keeping made it difficult to know if the numbers really match.

Cambridge schools have achieved slightly more economic integration since the decision five years ago to balance schools by family income rather than race and ethnicity, reports the Boston Globe. Before the plan, the percentage of low-income students ranged from 20 percent to 75 percent; now the range is 28 percent to 62 percent.

However, nearly 60 percent of Cambridge’s 12 elementary schools are racially imbalanced, compared with less than 40 percent before.

Cambridge student body is 36 percent black, 35.7 percent white, 14.7 percent Hispanic and 11 percent Asian. Integration — economic or racial — doesn’t seem to be a priority for parents.

Parents choose schools where they feel the most comfortable, and their choices often split along racial lines. Some high-poverty, mostly minority schools have low-income families on their waiting lists but have trouble filling spots reserved for middle-class students. And some higher income schools popular among middle class families have empty seats for low-income students.

“Even the best social engineering ideas get circumvented by people,” said Scott Blaufuss, a stay-at-home father in Cambridge. “People tend to vote with their feet. If they don’t like it, they leave.”

Student achievement has risen in most schools. But middle-class white families have left some schools that received more low-income students.

Via Edspresso.

A new charter school in Sacramento will teach students in three languages, reports the Sacramento Bee.

Students will be taught in English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese by teachers who are native speakers. They will practice by participating in video conferences with students in Beijing, Shanghai and Mexico City.

The program will teach about 120 students from kindergarten through third grade in the North Sacramento School District, where many students come from poor immigrant families. About 83 percent of the district’s students qualify for subsidized lunches, and 39 percent are not fluent in English.

This sounds way too ambitious. With only half the day spent learning in English, there’s a risk students won’t achieve fluency in any language.

Sixty-two percent percent of school districts are spending more time teaching reading, writing and math in elementary school; 44 percent are spending less time on social studies, science, art and music, concludes a Center on Education Policy report. Schools are even cutting lunchtime. Only recess and phys ed are relatively untouched.

Districts who spent more time on reading and/or math increased instruction by 42 percent; instruction in untested subjects was cut by 31 percent. Nine percent of districts have lengthened the school day by an average of 18 minutes.

Districts with low-scoring schools are the most likely to shift their focus to reading and math.

The Washington Post cites reporter Linda Perlstein’s new book, Tested, on a Maryland school that successfully raised its abysmal test scores by focusing on reading, writing and math and neglecting social studies and science. (I also thought of the book, which I’ve just read.)

In one episode, she wrote that a child looked eagerly at petri dishes, thermometers and other science equipment in the back of her classroom and said, “I’d like to make inventions and experiments.” But her teacher was focused on the reading and math sections of the Maryland School Assessment. “After the MSA,” the teacher said, “we can do social studies and science.”

Overall, scores have gone up in history and science as well as in reading and math, suggesting that students do learn more in all subjects when they can read and calculate competently. However, it should be possible to teach more than the the three ‘rs with a longer day for the neediest students.

CEP suggests staggering testing requirements so students are tested one year in reading and math, the next year in social studies and science. The report also recommends researching how to incorporate reading and math skills into social studies, science, and other subjects. However, the center did not recommend lengthening the school day.

Adding hours, as some high-achieving inner city charter schools have done, is expensive, said Jack Jennings, the center’s president, “and we first have to assure ourselves that the current time is being used well.”

Often announcements, assemblies and other non-academic activities are allowed to eat into class time, says Education Sector’s Elena Silva.

Where you find a low-income, high-minority school with good test scores, like the one in Tested, you’ll find a school that defends its teaching time from interruptions and diversions.

I’ve got a short column on The Underdog Imperative at City Journal.

. . . when students compete outside their own schools, or above their skill levels, they learn how they measure up in the world. They learn the value of mistakes and how to bounce back from failure.

Also in City Journal, Sol Stern writes that mayor control of New York City schools is more spin than substance and teacher Marc Epstein details how the state’s U.S. history exam is nearly impossible to fail.