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The departure of half the core teaching staff at an elite Upper West Side elementary school has roiled parents who worry test prep is destroying the school's creative spirit. In July, close to half of the parents at the Special Music School signed a letter decrying the "apparent shift in school culture" and the new principal's leadership.  "This is not the same place it was three years ago," said a 3rd-grade parent, who like most interviewed, asked to remain anonymous for fear of negative repercussions for their children. "There's a lot of talk about data and test prep, and I didn't used to hear that." The school, which until recently was a program at PS 199, provides an almost private-school like experience for musically gifted students who must audition in kindergarten and again in 5th grade for middle school.

My hard-working, middle-class parents, like millions of American families, depended on their neighborhood public schools to provide quality education for their children, and rightfully so. Certainly, all parents in the U.S. should be able to choose the educational option that works best for them and their children. Most important, in this nation, every family in every community should have access to good schools. The only difference among schools should be perhaps each having a different focus. No parent anywhere in these United States should have to move or risk arrest in order to secure quality education for her/his child(ren).   How is it then, that millions of American children live in neighborhoods with schools chronically neglected by the same political/educational system that now wants to condemn them as "failing"?  In such settings, it is hypocritical and cruel to use the illusion of "choice" and "free-market competition" to justify closing or taking even more resources from those same schools; sending parents scurrying for scarce or non-existent schooling options. 

There are three types of schools in New York City: Bloomberg schools, Gates schools, and orphans. The Bloomberg schools are the specialized small academies and charters that the Bloomberg administration set up to attract and hold the middle class. Student populations are often predominately White and Asian, although higher performing Black and Hispanic students from more stable home environments are generally welcomed. Gates schools are the foundation-supported schools that get extra resources from their benefactors. The Bloomberg and Gates schools get all the cookies.

Faced with a $30 million shortfall in its $295 million budget for the 2011-12 school year, the Adams 12 school district in north Denver laid off custodians, furloughed teachers, trimmed programs, reduced benefits-and then took its budget scalpel to student activities. The district dropped middle-school sports, cut back on travel for its high-school teams, and pared $500,000 from the $2 million budget that supports afterschool activities like the Math Olympiad and spelling bee at Centennial Elementary, the technology and drama clubs at Rocky Top Middle School, and the anime (Japanese animation) and Knowledge Bowl clubs at Mountain Range High.

The racial achievement gap in education is an important social problem to which decades of research have yielded no scalable solutions. Recent evidence from "No Excuses" charter schools - which demonstrates that some combination of school inputs can educate the poorest minority children - offers a guiding light. In the 2010-2011 school year, we implemented five strategies gleaned from best practices in "No Excuses" charter schools - increased instructional time, a more rigorous approach to building human capital, more student-level differentiation, frequent use of data to inform instruction, and a culture of high expectations - in nine of the lowest performing middle and high schools in Houston, Texas. We show that the average impact of these changes on student achievement is 0.276 standard deviations in math and 0.059 standard deviations in reading, which is strikingly similar to reported impacts of attending the Harlem Children's Zone and Knowledge is Power Program schools - two strict "No Excuses" adherents. The paper concludes with a speculative discussion of the scalability of the experiment.

We compare the spending of charters to that of district schools of similar size, serving the same grade levels and similar student populations. Overall, charter spending variation is large as is the spending of traditional public schools. Comparative spending between the two sectors is mixed, with many high profile charter network schools outspending similar district schools in New York City and Texas, but other charter network schools spending less than similar district schools, particularly in Ohio. We find that in New York City, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools charter schools spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending amounts to an increase of some 30%. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city. And in Texas, some charter chains such as KIPP spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations, around 30 to 50% more in some cities (and at the middle school level) based on state reported current expenditures, and 50 to 100% more based on IRS filings. Even in New York where we have the highest degree of confidence in the match between our IRS data and Annual Financial Report Data, we remain unconvinced that we are accounting fully for all charter school expenditures.

There is much handwringing about low educational attainment in the United States these days. We hear constantly about U.S. rankings on assessments like the international PISA tests: The United States was 14th in reading, 21st in science, 25th in math in 2009, for example. We hear about how young children in high-poverty areas are entering kindergarten unprepared and far behind many of their classmates. Middle school students from low-income families are scoring, on average, far below the proficient levels that would enable them to graduate high school, go to college, and get good jobs. Fewer than half of high school students manage to graduate from some urban schools. And too many poor and minority students who do go on to college require substantial remediation and drop out before gaining a degree. There is another story we rarely hear: Our children who attend schools in low-poverty contexts are doing quite well. In fact, U.S. students in schools in which less than 10 percent of children live in poverty score first in the world in reading, out-performing even the famously excellent Finns.

La Salle Language Academy is a magnet school in the middle of one of Chicago's richest neighborhoods. The Mayor lives there. It was one of the first magnet schools established as a result of the order to desegregate Chicago schools three decades ago. La Salle is now slated for demagnetizing by the same Mayor who is shutting down schools primarily on the south and west side. It will take a desegregated school and turn it mostly white.

The signature Bloomberg administration reform of shutting down failing schools and replacing them with new schools has - itself - failed thousands of city students, a Daily News analysis finds. The new schools opened under the mayor were supposed to have better teachers, better principals, and, ultimately, better test scores than the dysfunctional failure mills they were replacing. But when The News examined 2012 state reading test scores for 154 public elementary and middle schools that have opened since Mayor Bloomberg took office, nearly 60% had passing rates that were lower than older schools with similar poverty rates.

There is an interesting NY Times article about the diminishing numbers of black students at Stuyvesant and other Specialized Science High Schools (SSHS) in NYC.   It includes the following statement:  Over the years, there have been a host of efforts to increase the number of black and Latino students at Stuyvesant and the other large specialized high schools in the city, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School, like making interviews and grade-point averages part of the admissions process. It is linked to an article that mentions an earlier DOE program to prep promising middle school minority students for the exam (which now has been recast as a program for economically disadvantaged students and has been heavily cut back in any case.)  But it has no info that I can see about any efforts on the part of city to change the actual admissions process which is based solely on one high-stakes exam. 

Each year millions of middle-school students nationwide spend angst-filled months waiting to hear if they scored high enough on an entrance exam to attend a selective public high school. In New York City alone more than 27,000 students apply for precious spots in the three best-known schools: Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical and Bronx High School of Science. What Mr. Dobbie and Mr. Fryer wanted to know was just how much of a difference attending one of these high schools makes in the long run for students with similar equal admissions test scores.

"In the past few weeks, two major reports on teacher turnover and retention have been released. One was rolled out with extensive media coverage, and has been the subject of much discussion among policymakers and education commentators. The other was written by me, along with Teachers College doctoral student Clare Buckley. The first report, "The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America's Urban Schools," was prepared by TNTP, an organization formerly known as The New Teacher Project that prepares and provides support for teachers in urban districts, and that advocates for changes in teacher policy. The second, "Thoughts of Leaving: An Exploration of Why New York City Middle School Teachers Consider Leaving Their Classrooms," was released by the Research Alliance for New York City Schools (RANYCS), a nonprofit research group based at New York University. (RANYCS published a report by Will Marinell in February 2011 that examined detailed patterns of teacher turnover in New York City middle schools apparent through the district's human-resources office.)"

"There now exists a fair amount of evidence that Charter schools in many locations, especially high performing charter schools in New Jersey and New York tend to serve much smaller shares of low income, special education and limited English proficient students (see various links that follow). And in some cases, high performing charter schools, especially charter middle schools, experience dramatic attrition between 6th and 8th grade, often the same grades over which student achievement climbs, suggesting that a "pushing out" form of attrition is partly accounting for charter achievement levels."

DOE is not in compliance with the SED's Physical Education Regulations for elementary-level students and middle-level students in elementary schools. DOE does not have an overall written physical education plan nor does it monitor schools' compliance with the regulations. Therefore, DOE has no assurance that the students in elementary schools are receiving the minimum required physical education. In fact, our review of a sample of 31 elementary schools found limited evidence that any of the sampled schools were in compliance with the SED physical education requirements for all of its students.

Soon after he gained control of the city's public schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed to shut down enormous high schools and replace them with smaller schools. Now, his administration is pledging to do the same with middle schools, aiming to open at least 50 more in the next two years.

This report carefully reviews high-quality empirical evidence from the last several years on the test score effects of three approaches to modifying the organization of schools: (1) starting schools later in the morning, (2) favoring K-8 grade configuration instead of junior high or middle school configurations, and (3) increasing teacher specialization by grade and subject. It estimates the earnings benefits of each intervention and, for interventions (1) and (2), compares monetary benefits to costs. The report concludes that benefits outweigh costs, although the rough cost estimates suggest that better data are required to draw definite conclusions. The report's main conclusion is that organizational reforms deserve a more prominent place in education debates, and that individual school districts should carefully consider them alongside more popular reform options. The review points to a few shortcomings but concludes that the report's analyses are solid and helpful and that the results are presented carefully and cautiously.

According to the survey, three quarters of elementary schools, 61 percent of middle schools and 59 percent of high schools had increased class sizes. Slightly less than half of schools across the board reported having fewer teachers than in the previous year, with one quarter of those schools maintaining or increasing their student population.

A total of 1325 elementary, middle and high schools and 123 districts statewide have been identified for improvement under the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.  Of the identified schools, 1173 will receive Title I funds in 2011-12 and are required to offer extra help to eligible low-income students; 416 of these Title I schools must also offer public school choice (as appropriate) to all enrolled students. 

The school district in Wake County, N.C., is well known to educators across the country. The school district has been in a two-year fight over how it assigns students. It's a fight that has led to protests and arrests - and cries of school re-segregation. In the middle of this heated debate, a new school is opening this week.

"Local charter schools serving middle and high school students are losing about half their teachers every year, according to a study of the Los Angeles Unified School District released Tuesday. The rate of turnover is nearly three times that of other public schools, although they also are seeing high rates of departures."