Small-school students do better in NYC

Students at New York City’s small high schools earn higher test scores and are more likely to graduate in four years, according to a MDRC study.  The analysis compared students who won a lottery for admission to a small high school with others who applied but lost the lottery.

The latest findings show that 67.9 percent of the students who entered small high schools in 2005 and 2006 graduated four years later, compared with 59.3 percent of the students who were not admitted and instead went to larger schools.

. . . This increase was almost entirely accounted for by a rise in Regents diplomas, which are considered more rigorous than a local diploma; 41.5 percent of the students at small schools received one, compared with 34.9 percent of students at other schools.

Small-school students earned higher scores on the English Regents exam, but there was no difference on the math Regents.

Here’s a link to the policy brief pdf).

Bloomberg’s $20,000 teacher bonus

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposes a $20,000 salary increase for teachers rated highly effective two years in a row, reports the New York Post.

If they ever get to vote, city teachers would approve merit pay even if their union opposes it, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

“Will the teachers union stand in the way of their most effective members being rewarded for all of their work?” Bloomberg asked during his speech before the US Conference of Mayors in Washington.

Washington, D.C. teachers rated “highly effective” are eligible for annual bonuses of $2,400 to $25,000 a year.

Merit pay doesn’t work, responded Mike Mulgrew, president of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers.

Arthur Goldstein, who teaches English to immigrant students at Francis Lewis High School, says no to Bloomberg’s bonus in the New York Daily News.

The bonuses will reward teachers who teach to the test and never challenge their principals, Goldstein argues.

Whatever happens, teachers like me — who advocate for kids, who have no qualms about making the odd phone call to an education reporter, who care about honest education more than test prep — are never going to get merit pay.

. . . We are role models. We inspire kids. We teach them to speak out, stand up, to express themselves. That will be particularly tough if we’re all placing knives in one another’s backs chasing bonuses.

We are not wait staff, and I know of not one teacher who got into this to work for tips. More importantly, I refuse to believe that teachers who don’t get merit pay are without merit. If, in fact, we do not have merit, we should never have been hired in the first place.

Margaret Coppolo, a middle school teacher in Manhattan, thinks the $20,000 offer is “worth seriously considering,” if the city can work out a fair way to evaluate teachers’ effectiveness.

We need to keep our best teachers in our most struggling schools and compensate them for their dedication.

The merit pay “efforts that have failed either didn’t offer a compelling enough incentive or linked bonuses to school-wide results and not individual performance,” writes Coppolo.

In Washington, on the other hand, where significant raises are tied to an individual teacher’s effectiveness, early results show improvement in teacher retention and achievement.

In my newspaper days, I was a member of the union, the Newspaper Guild. We received higher pay for up to six year of experience. After that, experience didn’t matter. We got small bonuses for working a swing or night shift and for certain jobs, such as copy editing or editorial writing. Beyond that, an individual could try to negotiate merit pay, known as overscale, with his or her boss. I never thought of merit pay as a tip. It was a recognition of the value I added to the newspaper.

Milwaukee, Fresno fail reading for low-income kids

If you plan to be reincarnated as a low-income student and you’d like to be literate, pick Tampa, New York City or Miami, writes Matthew Ladner, who’s been looking at the urban NAEP results. Avoid Milwaukee and Fresno, where very few low-income students reach proficiency in reading.

 

Washington, D.C. “has improved but is still horrible,” he adds, writing on Jay Greene’s blog. ”Everyone in Wisconsin ought to be horrified by the abomination that is the Milwaukee Public Schools.”

 

New York tops school choice index

Brookings’ interactive Education Choice and Competition Index rates the nation’s 25 largest school districts. The index will be expanded to the largest 100 districts in the future.

New York City earns the highest choice score with Chicago in second place, notes Grover (Russ) Whitehurst. Both received a B grade. The low scorer was Orange County, Florida, which received a grade of D.

New York performed particularly well in its assignment mechanism, its provision of relevant performance data, and its policies and practices for restructuring or closing unpopular schools.  Chicago, in contrast to New York, has more alternative schools, a greater proportion of school funding that is student-based, and superior web-based information and displays to support school choice. If the best characteristics of Chicago were transferred to New York and vice versa, both would receive letter grades of A.

Orange County students must attend their local school — unless they opt for the Florida Virtual School, which is open to all students in the state.

Some of the nation’s biggest choice districts, such as Milwaukee and New Orleans, aren’t included because of size, but will be in the expanded index.

The index doesn’t distinguish between vouchers, charters and magnet schools, complains RiShawn Biddle.

 Because magnets have largely been geared towards desegregation instead of offering families high-quality school options, those forms of choice have done little to improve student achievement. Given that magnet offerings often end up skewing in favor of wealthier households (who can use their political clout within districts in their favor) at the expense of poor and minority families (who cannot), magnets aren’t exactly a high-quality form of choice.

Adding a Parent Power category such as ability of families to overhaul an existing school in their community would also make sense; this could be done simply by looking at which states and cities have Parent Trigger laws already in place.

But the Brookings does reveal the “sobering” reality, Biddle writes. “Far too many families and their children have far too few choices of any kind, much less those of high quality.”

Squeezed out

Nationwide, 37 percent of community college students say they’ve failed to get into a class because it was full this fall; 20 percent can’t get the classes they need to complete a degree or certificate.

A community college dropout in New York City costs $17,700 in wasted financial aid and support for the the college system, according to a new report. Only 28 percent of students complete a degree — associate or bachelor’s — in six years.

Protesters ‘occupy’ standards meeting

A chanting crowd stopped discussion of common standards at a meeting of New York City’s Panel for Educational Policy on Tuesday night, reports Curriculum Matters.

This YouTube video shows Chancellor Dennis Walcott trying to start the meeting, which was intended to explain how adoption of Common Core Standards will affect curriculum in city schools. The “Occupy the DOE” protesters said the decision was made without input from teachers and parents.

Demonstrators also chant that the city wants to raise standards without the supports that students need to reach them.

As they file out the front door of the building, the demonstrators chant, “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!”

After the meeting was canceled, Walcott and the other panelists met with parents in upstairs classrooms.

K-8 charters show reading, math gains

Charter elementary schools outperform traditional public schools in reading and math and charter middle schools do better in math, according to The Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement, an analysis of 40 high-quality studies by economists Julian Betts and Emily Tan of the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).  Overall, the gains are “modest but positive.”

Middle-school reading scores and high school math and reading were about the same.

Charter school effects vary dramatically, the meta-analysis found. Urban charter schools perform better than suburban or rural charters, especially at the middle and high school levels. In particular, Boston charter schools performed significantly better than traditional public schools; New York City charters also showed strong gains.

KIPP  middle-school students showed “significant and large improvements in both math and reading.”  A student who started at the 50th percentile could expect to move to the 59th percentile in math and the 54th percentile in reading in a single year.

Korea’s worry: too many college grads

The U.S. trails much of the developed world in young adults with college degrees. South Korea is number one, but 40 percent of new college graduates can’t find jobs. The government is trying to push vocational education.

Also on Community College Spotlight: More unprepared students are enrolling at New York City’s community colleges:  74 percent of city high school graduates require at least one remedial class and 22.6 percent require remediation in reading and writing and math.

Children’s Aid Society plans charter school

New York City’s Children’s Aid Society will open a charter school offering health care and social services to low-income Bronx children, reports Gotham Schools.

Drema Brown, a former elementary principal in the Bronx, will lead the effort. She plans an outreach effort to persuade welfare parents to apply to the new school.

The 158-year-old charity works with city schools to provide social services and after-school programs. Children’s Aid also runs a clinic in the Bronx.

 

Why sex ed doesn’t work

Mandatory sex ed is returning to New York City public schools.

For the first time in nearly two decades, students in New York City’s public middle and high schools will be required to take sex-education classes beginning this school year, using a curriculum that includes lessons on how to use a condom and the appropriate age for sexual activity.

Trying to prevent teen pregnancy is part of the mayor’s campaign to improve the life prospects of young black and Latino males — and their girlfriends, in this case.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is skeptical.

. . . teenagers have sex and get pregnant not because they don’t understand how not to get pregnant (which, let’s face it, is not rocket science) but because they want babies. Teenagers (and many adults) think babies will provide unconditional love. And the longterm responsibilities involved are not fully grasped.

Sex education — abstinence only or condoms-on-bananas — has a poor record of success. Years ago, a Rand report described the most effective contraceptive for black girls: realistic college plans.