Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

HSA2 seeks to amend its student admissions policy by eliminating an absolute at-risk admissions priority for students zoned to attend New York City public schools

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. 

A South Bronx charter school has been put on probation for what city education officials called "serious violations" of state law mandating random admissions, including possibly testing or interviewing applicants before their enrollment.

Charles Murray, the author of the much-discussed book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 , (and, years ago, the widely discredited volume, The Bell Curve ) has an op-ed in today's New York Times outlining some solutions to the growing class divide that he depicts in Coming Apart .  Among his ideas is to "replace ethnic affirmative action with socioeconomic affirmative action."  Murray writes: "This is a no-brainer. It is absurd, in 2012, to give the son of a black lawyer an advantage in college admissions but not do the same for the son of a white plumber." I've been a long time advocate of class-based affirmative action, going back to my 1996 book, The Remedy: Class, Race and Affirmative Action , so on the one hand I'm pleased by his article, but in other ways I am dismayed.

There is considerable variance in the productivity of teachers, yet educators have been unable to identify observable characteristics related to teacher effectiveness. This paper uses data from admissions records from Teach for America to explore whether information collected at the time of hire can predict student outcomes. We find that a teacher's prior achievement, leadership experience, and perseverance are associated with student gains in math. Leadership experience and commitment to the TFA mission are associated with gains in English. The TFA admissions measures are also associated with improved classroom behavior. These results suggest that teacher success can be predicted at the time of hire.

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We explore student-level and school-level explanations for these differences using a large sample of Massachusetts charter schools. Our results show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond ambient non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non-urban achievement in math. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity in the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban schools with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. We link the magnitude of charter impacts to distinctive pedagogical features of urban charters such as the length of the school day and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by over-subscribed urban schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to education.

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We explore student-level and school-level explanations for these differences using a large sample of Massachusetts charter schools. Our results show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond ambient non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non-urban achievement in math. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity in the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban schools with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. We link the magnitude of charter impacts to distinctive pedagogical features of urban charters such as the length of the school day and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by over-subscribed urban schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to education.

A federal appeals court on Friday invalidated a Michigan ballot initiative that barred racial preferences in admissions at state colleges and universities.

What makes the Finnish school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take a matriculation examination for college admission. Their own teachers design their tests, so teachers know how their students are doing and what they need. There is a national curriculum-broad guidelines to assure that all students have a full education-but it is not prescriptive. Teachers have extensive responsibility for designing curriculum and pedagogy in their school. They have a large degree of autonomy, because they are professionals. admission to teacher education programs at the end of high school is highly competitive; only one in 10-or even fewer-qualify for teacher preparation programs. All Finnish teachers spend five years in a rigorous program of study, research, and practice, and all of them finish with a masters' degree. Teachers are prepared for all eventualities, including students with disabilities, students with language difficulties, and students with other kinds of learning issues.

Charter schools in the city, motivated by a desire to demonstrate high student-proficiency numbers according to state tests, use both selective admissions processes and implement codes of conduct that allow them to dismiss students not making the academic cut, says Lance Hill, a former professor of cultural studies who now heads the Southern Institute for Education and Research.

Here's a back-to-school math problem: There are 62 kindergarten seats at the Trinity School this fall, and 756 children wanted them. What percentage made the cut?

A public school offers a free education to every child in the community - that's what makes it public. A private school charges tuition and accepts students through a competitive selection process. Larchmont was bridging public and private by exploiting a loophole. Under federal guidelines, charter schools can give admissions priority to "founding parents." That's why these parents were being asked to "found" a school that had opened in 2004.

So what does it mean when admissions officers are willing to come right out and say that they're screening applicants based on money, and not just merit?

"We show that the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university. This is despite the fact that selective institutions would often cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the resource poor two-year and non-selective four-year institutions to which they actually apply. Moreover, high-achieving, low-income students who do apply to selective institutions are admitted and graduate at high rates. We demonstrate that these low-income students' application behavior differs greatly from that of their high-income counterparts who have similar achievement. The latter group generally follows the advice to apply to a few "par" colleges, a few "reach" colleges, and a couple of "safety" schools. We separate the low-income, high-achieving students into those whose application behavior is similar to that of their high-income counterparts ("achievement-typical" behavior) and those whose apply to no selective institutions ("income-typical" behavior). We show that income-typical students do not come from families or neighborhoods that are more disadvantaged than those of achievement-typical students. However, in contrast to the achievement-typical students, the income-typical students come from districts too small to support selective public high schools, are not in a critical mass of fellow high achievers, and are unlikely to encounter a teacher or schoolmate from an older cohort who attended a selective college. We demonstrate that widely-used policies-college admissions staff recruiting, college campus visits, college access programs-are likely to be ineffective with income-typical students, and we suggest policies that will be effective must depend less on geographic concentration of high achievers."

The results of the Gifted and Talented exams are in, and according to the NY Times, more than half of the children tested in wealthier districts like District 2 and District 3 were found to be "gifted", while only six children made the grade in District 7 in the South Bronx.  Why the disparity? Are these tests merely a way of sorting children by race and class, as Debbie Meier pointed out in 2007, when Klein first proposed to base all admissions to gifted programs on the basis of high stakes exams, or do the results really reflect children's inherent abilities?  And does the proliferation of G and T programs across the city help or hinder the goal of equity and systemic reform?

Nearly 5,000 children qualified for gifted and talented kindergarten seats in New York City public schools in the fall, 22 percent more than last year and more than double the number four years ago, setting off a fierce competition for the most sought-after programs in the system. On their face, the results, released on Friday by the Education Department, paint a portrait of a city in which some neighborhoods appear to be entirely above average. In Districts 2 and 3, which encompass most of Manhattan below 110th Street, more students scored at or above the 90th percentile on the entrance exam, the cutoff point, than scored below it. But experts pointed to several possible reasons for the large increase. For one, more middle-class and wealthy parents are staying in the city and choosing to send their children to public schools, rather than moving to the suburbs or pursuing increasingly expensive private schools. And the switch to a test-based admissions system four years ago has given rise to test-preparation services, from booklets costing a few dollars to courses costing hundreds or more, raising concerns that the test's results were being skewed.

A reading passage included this week in one of New York's standardized English tests has become the talk of the eighth grade, with students walking around saying, "Pineapples don't have sleeves," as if it were the code for admission to a secret society.

The following is the text of the UFT's statement to the SUNY Board of Trustees on the revisions to the admissions preferences and processes of the schools in the Success Charter School network. Regrettably, the board approved the changes.

Now our small community is faced with the unthinkable - we may be forced to close a highly performing public school to hand that school lock, stock and barrel over to a Charter School.  Shocking, isn't it?  How could this happen?  Charter school law was intended to help children who are under-served and falling through the cracks of traditional education systems.  Unfortunately, across the country there are more and more charter schools popping up which are taking advantage of loopholes to create pseudo-private schools with questionable admissions practices, high "suggested donation" requirements from parents and low representation of truly underprivileged children.

This paper presents findings from the first national randomized study of the impacts of charter schools on student achievement, which included 36 charter middle schools across 15 states. The paper compares students who applied and were admitted to these schools through randomized admissions lotteries with students who applied and were not admitted. It finds that, on average, charter middle schools in the study were neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement. However, impacts varied significantly across schools and students, with positive impacts for more disadvantaged schools and students and negative impacts for the more advantaged.