As discussed here and here, the State released the results of the 2009-2010 Grade 3 through 8 Math and ELA test results last week. The focus has been on the new, higher bar for passing the tests and the resulting large drop in the percentage of students judged proficient. Charter schools, like traditional public schools across the city, saw their much-touted proficiency gains plummet. Barbara Martinez at the Wall Street Journal did a good job of summarizing charter schools’ results in New York City. In order to give a more complete picture, I analyzed the 2009-2010 results for charters to see which schools performed best and how the schools performed compared to their traditional public school counterparts. I also posted data on individual schools below and in this spreadsheet. PROFICIENCY I defined proficiency in the customary way: as the proportion of students at a charter school that scored a Level 3 or higher on the ELA or Math tests. In order to look at overall school performance, I averaged the proficiency rate across grade levels...

Using Gifted and Talented test data posted by InsideSchools, I created a map that shows the concentrations of aspiring G&T Kindergartners in New York City. The numbers next to each dot represent the district in which the student lives. Scroll over the dots to get the percentage breakdown of the number of students that qualified for district G&T programs, citywide G&T programs, and who scored in the 99th percentile on the test. The gray layers under the map correspond to the median household income of those zip codes. No surprise here that the largest number of G&T test takers resided in the most wealthy districts – but districts 15 and 30 seemed to also do well. As always, I would love your feedback on how to improve this map. Dashboard 2 Powered by Tableau...

In a recent article in the journal EducationNext, Mike Antonucci  reviewed the finances of the two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). He found teachers unions in states like Oregon, Colorado, and Montana spent several hundreds of dollars per teacher for political campaign spending on candidates and ballot initiatives. New York, according to Antonucci, spent only $5 per teacher. But this is only part of the picture. Another source of political spending can be found in financial documents that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) filed with the federal government.  According to this "LM-2" filing, the UFT spent around $31 per teacher, or a little over $2.4million overall, out of a $202 million budget, on political activities during the 2008-2009 school year.* The UFT membership, however, consists of more than just teachers. If you included total UFT membership—164,462—spending on political activities would be around $16 per member.  (To be clear, Antonucci only considered active teachers in his calculations.) In addition to this spending, which includes things...

On Tuesday, the Daily News published a report on the rising rate of student suspensions in New York City’s schools. Since charter schools in New York often have discipline policies that differ from their traditional public school counterparts, I was curious to compare suspension rates in charters to those in traditional public schools. Looking at the Basic Education Data System (BEDS) filings for both charter schools and traditional public schools during the 2008-2009 school year, I found that both types of schools suspended, on average, around 8% of their student body. (BEDS data asks schools only to report on the number of students that were suspended, not the number of overall suspensions, which is the number that the Daily News article cited.) Since school demographics can be correlated with suspension rates, I looked at charter school suspension rates as they compared to their traditional public school counterparts. I found that the results varied by neighborhood. In Harlem and the South Bronx, charter schools suspended a lower percentage of their student body. In Central Brooklyn, charter...

Last week I posted a map of the schools that have been phased out by the DOE since 2003. (Note: not all of these schools were initially proposed for closure under Mayor Bloomberg.) After your feedback, I added some new information: the charter schools that have been opened since 2003 (in blue), new schools that have been opened since 2003 (in green), and economic data about the neighborhoods in which these schools are located. As always, I'd love your feedback as I move forward with this project! Dashboard 1 Powered by Tableau...

The National Study on Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness: Report on Interim Findings A recent national study on Charter Management Organizations, or CMOs, by non-partisan Mathematica Policy Research, sheds some light on the role that these organizations play in the national educational landscape. According to my own measures, CMOs ran 37 of the 77 charter schools in New York City during the 2008-2009 school year – and they have plans to open dozens more in the next decade. While CMOs attract large amounts of philanthropic support, anti-charter critics charge that they are opaque and run their schools more like for-profit institutions. This interim report offers fodder for both supporters and detractors. I found five points to be particularly interesting: CMOs need philanthropy to exist: All 44 CMOs in the study relied on philanthropic dollars to support operations. The average CMO relied on philanthropy for 13% of total operating revenues. CMOs funded by NewSchools Venture Fund report that 64 percent of their central office revenues come from philanthropy. The report concludes: “At least for now, these...

A report released today by Mathematica, a non-partisan policy research center, examined the impact of 22 KIPP Charter Schools on student achievement. The report found that KIPP students performed better than their traditional public school peers and that their performance halved the black-white achievement gap. Another interesting finding is that KIPP schools retained students—that is, made them repeat a grade—more frequently than their traditional public school counterparts. They write:  “KIPP’s commitment to high expectations of students does not encourage social promotion. KIPP expects students to meet their standards for being academically prepared for the next grade before they will be promoted. Consequently, KIPP middle schools retain students at significantly higher rates than other public schools in the same districts.” Indeed, while the researchers found the evidence inconclusive with regards to relative attrition rates and relative achievement levels of incoming students, they found strong evidence that KIPP holds back 5th and 6th grade students at a rate far higher than traditional public schools. This result augments my earlier report, which found that the majority of cohort...

As summer approaches, I’ve decide to tackle some big projects – one of which is to look at the effects that school closures have had on the remaining schools in the surrounding area. To get started, I’ve created a map that plots all 111 schools that Chancellor Joel Klein has closed since 2002, including the 19 schools whose fate is still up in the air. Take a look and let me know how you think it can be improved. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on how to best approach this issue! Dashboard 1 Powered by Tableau...

In its focus on school leadership, the New School’s recent report, Managing by the Numbers, provides a partial answer to a question I’ve long harbored: what happens to incompetent principals? Teachers  accused of incompetence or misconduct have been sent to notorious “rubber rooms,” where they await a hearing, known colloquially by its paragraph number in the Education Law, 3020a. While waiting, teachers are paid their full salary until the dispute is resolved. (For more on teacher termination, these articles are particularly detailed.) Yet for principals, the process is less commonly discussed. Are there principal rubber rooms? Who is in charge of documenting principal incompetence? And just how hard is it to terminate a principal? Managing the Numbers offers some answers. Each principal signs a contract with the DOE in which they agree to be held accountable for academic results. Principals are then evaluated based on a principal performance review, which weighs student progress (in the form of the much-maligned Progress Reports), the student population served, the principal’s compliance with budgeting and school services, and the...

I highly recommend reading the new report released by the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs on "Empowerment and Accountability in New York City's Schools".  It is detailed, balanced, and extremely educational.  Reviewers have focused on the report's conclusion that the DOE's grading system is "deeply flawed", perhaps the report's most important conclusion.  Within the report's 68 pages, though, are some powerful reminders of our system's recent history: "When I [author Clara Hemphill] visited 30 schools in District 7 in the South Bronx as a reporter for the Insideschools.org website early in Mayor Bloomberg's first term, the schools, with a few noteworthy exceptions, were in a sorry state.  I met principals who routinely called for an ambulance to take an out-of-control child to the nearest psychiatric emergency room because they didn't know what else to do.  The middle schools were chaotic, with children wandering aimlessly in the hallways as teachers lectured to half-empty classrooms.  Some of the elementary schools were sweet, warm places with kindhearted teachers doing their best — but the children didn't...