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New York State gets federal approval to eliminate double-testing

The New York State Education Department received federal approval to eliminate an unpopular layer of extra math tests for thousands of middle school students, officials announced today.

Federal laws require students in third through eighth grades to take math and English testing, the results of which are used to evaluate school and teacher performance. Up to 60,000 seventh and eighth grade students taking advanced coursework have also had to take high school-level math exams.

The "double-testing" has received heightened scrutiny from parents and teachers who say class time is increasingly focused on preparing for end-of-year tests. State officials, who have been under pressure to revise many of its new education policies around teacher and learning standards, applied for a waiver from the federal testing laws in November.

“The Regents, the Chancellor and I are committed to reducing the amount of time students spend on tests and eliminating any tests that don’t inform instruction or improve student learning," Commissioner John King said in a statement.

A copy of the press release about the announcement is below.

NEW YORK GRANTED FEDERAL WAIVER TO

ELIMINATE DOUBLE-TESTING IN MATH

State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. announced today that the United States Department of Education (USDE) has approved New York State’s request for a waiver from the provisions of federal law that currently require students who take Regents exams in mathematics when they are in seventh or eighth grade to also take the state mathematics assessment. The waiver will effectively end the “double-testing” of these students, beginning with the spring 2014 assessments.

“USDE’s approval of New York’s waiver request means the end of double-testing for nearly 60,000 New York students,” said King. “The Regents, the Chancellor and I are committed to reducing the amount of time students spend on tests and eliminating any tests that don’t inform instruction or improve student learning. Testing is an important part of the instructional cycle and good, sound assessments are necessary to monitor student academic progress. But we have repeatedly said that the amount of testing should be the minimum necessary to inform effective decision-making. Our successful waiver request is an example of New York’s commitment to smarter, leaner testing.”

At their October 2013 meeting, the Board of Regents directed the State Education Department (SED) to submit a request to USDE to waive provisions of the federal law that require states to measure the achievement of standards in mathematics using the same assessments for all students. The approved waiver will relieve teachers and schools from having to prepare students in seventh and eighth grade who are receiving instruction in Algebra I for multiple end of year assessments. Currently, seventh and eighth grade students who are receiving instruction in Algebra I and who take the Regents Examination in Algebra I (Common Core) are also required to take the NYS Common Core Mathematics Test for the grade in which they are enrolled. School districts will now be allowed to administer only the Regents Examination in Algebra I (Common Core) to these students, eliminating the need for double-testing in grades 7 and 8. This provision also applies to students in grades 7 and 8 who receive instruction in Geometry and who take the Regents Examination in Geometry.

Other than two high school history Regents exams, all required state tests – including all grades 3-8 assessments; secondary-level exams in English, math and science; alternate assessments for students with disabilities; and annual assessments for English language learners (ELLs) – are required by federal law. The State has not created any additional tests as part of Common Core implementation, and the Department is currently developing “Teaching is the Core” Grants to encourage the reduction or elimination of locally selected pre-tests and locally bargained and selected achievement measures. With respect to the existing State tests, SED reduced the number of questions and testing time on the federally required assessments for grades 3-8, and our State budget request will include funding to eliminate multiple-choice stand-alone field tests. SED is also asking the U.S. Department of Education for flexibility to use for accountability purposes Native Language Arts tests for Spanish speaking ELLs who are newly or recently arrived to the United States and permission to allow testing at instructional level rather than chronological age for students with significant cognitive disabilities not eligible for the New York State Alternate Assessment (NYSAA).

#john king #esea #standardized testing

De Blasio's inaugural address features pre-K plan heavily

Here's what Mayor Bill de Blasio said about schools today in his inaugural address, which continued his campaign theme of "A Tale of Two Cities":

We will ask the very wealthy to pay a little more in taxes so that we can offer full-day universal pre-K and after-school programs for every middle school student. And when we say “a little more,” we can rightly emphasize the “little.”

Those earning between $500,000 and one million dollars a year, for instance, would see their taxes increase by an average of $973 a year. That’s less than three bucks a day – about the cost of a small soy latte at your local Starbucks.

Think about it. A 5-year tax on the wealthiest among us – with every dollar dedicated to pre-K and after-school. Asking those at the top to help our kids get on the right path and stay there. That’s our mission. And on that, we will not wait. We will do it now.

Of course, I know that our progressive vision isn’t universally shared. Some on the far right continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics. They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else. They sell their approach as the path of “rugged individualism."

But Fiorello La Guardia — the man I consider to be the greatest Mayor this city has ever known — put it best. He said: “I, too, admire the 'rugged individual,’ but no ‘rugged individual' can survive in the midst of collective starvation.”

So please remember: we do not ask more of the wealthy to punish success. We do it to create more success stories. And we do it to honor a basic truth: that a strong economy is dependent on a thriving school system. We do it to give every kid a chance to get their education off on the right foot, from the earliest age, which study after study has shown leads to greater economic success, healthier lives, and a better chance of breaking the cycle of poverty.

We do it to give peace of mind to working parents, who suffer the anxiety of not knowing whether their child is safe and supervised during those critical hours after the school day ends, but before the workday is done. And we do it because we know that we must invest in our city, in the future inventors and CEOs and teachers and scientists, so that our generation – like every generation before us – can leave this city even stronger than we found it.

De Blasio names lawyer who will negotiate next UFT contract

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio continued his pre-inauguration appointment spree today with five more picks, including the man who will negotiate the next round of municipal labor contracts.

Robert Linn, whom de Blasio's transition team describes as "a life-long negotiator of labor contracts and arbitrator of labor disputes," will head the Office of Labor Relations. Among his chief tasks will be negotiating labor contracts for municipal unions that have gone without them for a while, in some cases for years, and are angling for retroactive pay raises that de Blasio has said he does not intend to offer without cost savings to even out the city's balance sheet.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew responded to the appointment today by emphasizing the tough road ahead.

"We have a lot of work to do on the city's labor contacts, and we look forward to professional negotiations based on integrity and respect," Mulgrew said.

#labor relations #michael mulgrew #bob linn

New York State to fund college tours for low-income students

Visiting colleges is getting a little bit easier for New York high school students from low-income families.

The New York State Higher Education Services Corporation is earmarking $500,000 for organizations that take low-income students on college tours, according to an announcement from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office today.

“The costs involved in a college campus visit can be a barrier to attending college for low-income students,” the corporation's acting president, Elsa Magee, said in a statement. “We’re excited to work with partners who will help spur enthusiasm and motivation for college in traditionally underserved students by allowing them to experience college first-hand without having to worry about the associated costs.”

Research suggests that early exposure — in the form of awareness and, yes, visits — can be key to making college a goal for students who might otherwise not pursue higher education, and many city schools have their own programs for getting low-income students onto college campuses already.

#college readiness #andrew cuomo

Sloan Foundation honors seven city math and science teachers

For the fifth straight year, the Fund for the City of New York and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gave city teachers awards for excellence in teaching science and mathematics.

The honorees were nominated by students, parents, colleagues, and administrators and then selected by a committee made up of representatives from local science museums and universities, based on their students’ achievement, their involvement in extracurricular activities, and their efforts to promote math and science inside and outside the classroom. Schools with winning teachers each received $2,500 to support their math and science programs, and the teachers took home $5,000.

Here are this year’s recipients, along with a highlight about each that we pulled from longer biographies compiled by the Sloan Awards. (Here are last year's winners, and 2011's.)

Teacher: Eloise Thompson Subject: College Algebra/Pre-Calculus, AP Statistics School: DeWitt Clinton High School, Bedford Park, Bronx

#merit pay #stem #sloan foundation

Obama honors P.S. 110 teacher for science instruction

Helen Rogosin, a kindergarten teacher at Manhattan's P.S. 110, is among this year's Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching winners, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Rogosin and 101 other teachers will each receive $10,000 from the National Science Foundation and get a chance to visit the White House. She was honored for excellence in teaching science, while another teacher from Dobb's Ferry won for math instruction.

Two years ago, Rogosin won a grant to develop a paleontology curriculum she wrote called "We dig reading about dinosaurs."

This year, the White House honored kindergarten through sixth grade teachers; next year, secondary grades teachers will be eligible for the honor. Nominations are open now.

#p.S. 110

The official campaign for universal pre-kindergarten that Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio launched on Thursday got its first lobbying video today, seen above.

The video highlights support from national figures including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and former treasury secretary Larry Summers for de Blasio's pre-kindergarten push.

De Blasio campaigned on a proposal to raise taxes on New Yorkers earning over $500,000 a year to fund expansions of pre-kindergarten and after-school services, but such a change is seen as unlikely to win easy support in Albany.

#pre-kindergarten #upknyc #bill de blasio

On his last day of school, Walcott visits five of them

Chancellor Dennis Walcott has a packed school-visit schedule for his last day of classes as chancellor. But he won't be leaving his home borough on Friday.

According to a schedule distributed by the Department of Education, Walcott will start the day by walking his grandsons to school at P.S. 36 in Queens and will end it with a visit to his own alma mater, I.S. 192. In between, he'll stop by Bard High School Early College Queens (with Mayor Bloomberg) and Queens Metropolitan High School, two schools that opened under Bloomberg, as well as Francis Lewis High School, from which he graduated in 1969.

Walcott also visited Francis Lewis in his first week as chancellor in 2011. In general, his school-visit pace was far faster than that of his two immediate predecessors, Cathie Black and Joel Klein. He told GothamSchools this week that visiting schools was a highlight of his administration.

#dennis walcott #school visits

Bill de Blasio is ratcheting up his lobbying campaign to get the support he needs in Albany to fund his ambitious pre-kindergarten expansion plan. The mayor-elect unveiled a slick marketing campaign for his universal pre-K plan on Thursday and lined up another group of big-name supporters, including economist Jeffrey Sachs and New Visions for Public Schools chairman Roger Altman, as well as a long list of supportive nonprofit organizations. De Blasio said he'll be using those supporters to reach out to members of the state legislature, who would need to approve a new tax on wealthy city residents under de Blasio's plan. De Blasio provided few additional specifics of how his plan would work logistically, including how many teachers it would require and what they would be paid, saying his working group was coming up with those details. He did say that battles in recent years over co-locations in schools show that space is available in school buildings, and that he would prioritize giving that space to pre-K and after-school programs.

A charter school that escaped closure is up for renewal

The Department of Education has just announced a renewal hearing for Northside Charter High School in Williamsburg early in the new year.

The school wasn't always supposed to live this long. In early 2012, the state announced that it would close Believe Northside Charter School and another school because of management and financial improprieties by their network. But the state dropped that plan after the school separated from the network, whose founder and CEO, Eddie Calderon-Melendez, was later indicted for tax fraud and grand larceny. The school officially dropped "Believe" from its name in April.

Now, the school is seeking permission to continue to operate through 2019. The city invites "anyone interested in learning" about the school's bid for a charter renewal to a hearing Jan. 8.

#northside charter high school

NYC again not among Race to the Top-District winners

Back in October, New York City applied for a second year to the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top-District competition. Last year, the city came up short in its bid to get extra funding to personalize instruction and expand its Innovation Zone sector of schools.

Today, the Obama administration announced the five winners — and New York City was again not on the list. Houston, which will get nearly $30 million, is the only big-city district to receive funding through the competition, the latest in a series of contests meant to spur innovation in schools.

Last year, New York City officials said they were pleased that city had been rated a finalist in the federal competition. (The city lost points for not spelling out how it spends funds.) The city was not one of the 31 finalists this year.

The other four winning applications came from Clarksdale, Miss.; Springdale, Ark.; and consortiums of rural districts in South Carolina and Kentucky.

#race to the top-district

Parent groups send de Blasio a list of school policy proposals

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has long faulted the Bloomberg administration for shutting public-school parents -- like himself -- out of major policy decisions.

Now, a coalition of parents has sent de Blasio a letter suggesting ways he can give them a greater say in school-related decisions.

The letter, signed by nearly 20 of the 32 Community Education Councils and a few citywide councils, also lists specific policy recommendations.

Some of the recommendations -- such as restructuring the networks and involving communities in co-location decisions -- reflect policies that de Blasio has floated.

But others -- such as reforming the Panel for Educational Policy, halting the use of high-stakes tests, opting the district out of the state's agreement with data-storage firm inBloom, and letting parents play a "key role" in choosing the next chancellor -- go further than what de Blasio has promised.

A de Blasio spokeswoman issued the following statement to the website SchoolBook: "Mayor-elect de Blasio shares many of the same priorities as the councils, including the need to lower the stakes on standardized tests and to consult with parents and the education community to create a more honest and inclusive process when it comes to decisions on co-locations and closures," she said. "The mayor-elect and his team will review the full list of recommendations. He looks forward to working with C.E.C.s to improve our city's schools."

The CECs' letter is below:

CEC Letter to DeBlasio Signatories 12.16.13 by CSM

#CEC #bill de blasio

Pearson's nonprofit arm agrees to pay $7.7 million to settle investigation

The education-publishing giant Pearson Inc.’s nonprofit arm will pay $7.7 million mainly to fund a teacher recruitment program in order to settle an investigation into whether it misused charitable money, officials announced Friday.

The state attorney general said the Pearson Charitable Foundation developed lucrative course materials for the for-profit Pearson Inc. and also paid for U.S. school officials to travel to overseas conferences that were attended by Pearson sales staff.

“The law on this is clear: Non-profit foundations cannot misuse charitable assets to benefit their affiliated for-profit corporations,” Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.

In agreeing to the settlement, the foundation did not admit to any wrongdoing. On its website, it said that it and Pearson have always acted legally and “with the best intentions,” but that its relationship with the company at times “could have been clearer and more transparent.”

In addition to providing $7.5 million for 100kin10 – a program that aims to recruit and retain 100,000 STEM teachers by 2021 – the foundation also agreed to add three independent directors to its board who will audit any foundation transactions that could benefit Pearson. It will also pay the $200,000 cost of the attorney general's investigation.

The settlement agreement is below.

Pearson Charitable Foundation Settlement

#pearson

School board members don't want state to share student data, poll shows

Most state school board members do not want the state Education Department to release students' personal information to a private data-storage company that it has contracted with, according to a new poll.

Three-fourths of school board members oppose the state's plan to share the data, including students names, addresses, and discipline records, with inBloom, a nonprofit that received $100 million in Gates Foundation funding, according to a survey this month by the New York State School Boards Association.

The database is meant to ease the burden of data management on school districts and to enable education-software developers that are given the information to create personalized learning tools for students.

But parents and critics have raised security concerns about the plan.

Last month, a parent group filed a lawsuit to stop the state from sharing the data with inBloom. The state Assembly has passed a bill that would allow parents to opt-out their children from such data-sharing arrangements, but the Senate has yet to pass its version.

The same NYSSBA poll, based on more than 600 responses, showed that 78 percent of members backed such an opt-out provision.

About half the respondents, however, said that school districts would benefits from having access to more data.

State Education Department Commissioner John King told reporters before a forum Tuesday night that there is a "lot of misinformation about data issues" and that any student data the state collects is highly encrypted and secure. He added that the state would work with the legislature and governor "on ways we can strengthen data privacy and security."

#inbloom #data privacy #student data

City Council to require the DOE to report what schools giving mandated arts instruction

On Tuesday, the City Council passed legislation requiring the city to release information about how its schools are—or aren't—providing arts education for students.

Despite some arts education being mandated by the state, it has fallen away at many schools across the city. Cuts to school budgets, and an emphasis on state tested subjects, have contributed to the decline, principals and teachers have told us in the past.

According to the arts education advocacy Center for Arts Education, half of New York City elementary schools and 22 percent of middle schools aren't providing enough arts education under state law. The new city legislation would inform parents which schools fall into that group in an annual report, which would include data about what schools and districts offer music, dance, theater and visual arts courses and have licensed arts instructors.

“Intro 925-A will not only help inform education policy-makers, but will also provide parents, students and the public with the tools to make informed decisions and advocate for resources to be provided for their schools," CAE Executive Director Eric Pryor said in a statement.

Arts education became an issue on the mayoral campaign trail this year when candidates debated how to improve the city's track record in July.

At the time, candidate Bill de Blasio wouldn't commit to additional funding.

“I am a progressive, but I can count,” he said. “I’d like to be honest with people about the fact that we have a very serious problem the next few years.”

You can read the text of the bill here.

Parents, staff looking to continue Beginning with Children Charter School after board votes to close

School staff members are trying to keep Beginning with Children Charter School going, three weeks after its board of trustees voted to dissolve its charter over a contract dispute.

According to a statement signed "Beginning with Children Charter School Community," parents and staff will be asking the board to reverse that decision at a meeting on Dec. 12. The statement notes that the group "has secured legal representation."

Here's the full statement:

Parents, staff, students and community will ask Board of Trustees of Beginning with Children Charter School (BwCCS) to recant vote to surrender charter at monthly board meeting on Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 5:00 pm in the BwCCS multi-purpose room located on 11 Bartlett Street in Brooklyn.

This meeting will determine the future of our school and the future of our children.

BwCCS is a K-8 school housed in two separate buildings in Brooklyn and serves about 420 students. Over 95 percent of our students are Black or Hispanic and over 15 percent receive special education services.

In 2001 BwCCS was converted from a traditional district school to a charter school by its board members and management organization- Beginning with Children Foundation. Since last year, the board and the BwCCS Foundation have been threatening to close our school if the staff didn’t renegotiate its UFT contract. On November 2013, the board members voted to surrender the charter and close our school this coming June 2014 even though we have two years left on our charter. Parents, Teachers, Staff and members of our community believe this act did not follow proper board governance and we are fighting to retain our charter.

Please come and support us in our fight to take our school back and keep it open! We have been serving this community for twenty-two years. We provide a nurturing education to thousands of students. Our students have made us so proud and our alumni program can attest to their success. The parent, teachers, faculty, students and community are fighting to keep our school open. We have secured legal representation but your presence will help us move this mountain. Please come and help us.

Respectfully,

Beginning with Children Charter School Community

Mulgrew said he's pleased with rumored chancellor candidates

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew gave Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio's selection process for schools chancellor an early endorsement, saying he approves of most of the names rumored to be the short list.

"From the names that you all have been putting out there, they're all educators," Mulgrew told reporters at the union's headquarters in lower Manhattan, which hosted an education event associated with the union-driven National Day of Action.

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