• Blog posts over the past week (NCLB waivers, An interview with the Commissioner, 2-year School Aid funding)
• Newsday on teacher evaluations
• More on test security
• Governor Cuomo vetoes school district bills
• GOP candidates on education
• “Other” property tax issues

Blog posts over the past week (NCLB waivers, An interview with the Commissioner, 2-year School Aid funding)
Since last week’s Home Room blog post, we posted pieces on

• President Obama’s No Child Left Behind Act waiver initiative,
• our interview with State Education Commissioner John King, and
• the implications of two-year School Aid funding.

Newsday on teacher evaluations
Long Island’s Newsday has a well-done piece on implementation of the new teacher/principal evaluation requirements.

Unfortunately, a paid subscription is required to read the article, but includes quotes from the Co-Chair of the Council’s Assessment Subcommittee, jack Bierwirth of Herricks:

“At no time in my career have I seen so many high-stakes things in the air at exactly the same time,” said John Bierwirth, the superintendent of Herricks schools with more than 40 years as a educator, mostly on the Island.

“The parallel I would draw is I see a lot of kids signing up for more courses than they should. And I tell them, ‘You can probably take most of these courses simultaneously, but you probably can’t take all of them simultaneously and do well,’ ” said Bierwirth, who is a member of a state-appointed advisory task force on teacher evaluations.

and from the Co-Chair of the Council’s Curriculum and Instruction Committee, Lorna Lewis of East Williston:

“What we have not planned for is the enormous financial burden that the new legislation has imposed on each of our districts,” wrote Lewis, who chairs a curriculum committee for the New York State Council of School Superintendents. “I am sure there were good intentions for enacting this legislation, but it is now a runaway train and we cannot afford it.”

More on test security
In last week’s Home Room post, I wrote extensively about the State Education Department’s actions and proposals to improve security and combat cheating on state assessments.

One point of the post was to stress that some of the items are proposals for further consideration by the Board of Regents, they have not yet been approved.

The proposals include centralizing scanning and scoring and barring teachers from proctoring tests for their own students or in their own certification area.  It’s not clear how the latter proposal is supposed to work in an elementary school.

On Tuesday last week, the New York Times published an editorial supportive of SED’s efforts, but cautioning,

Cash-strapped districts, hobbled by a new state property tax cap that makes it extremely difficult for them to raise new revenue, are already cutting academic programs and cannot bear new expenses. If the Education Department moves ahead with these necessary reforms, the governor and the Legislature must find the money to pay for it.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle ran a similar editorial on Saturday, again citing the tax cap as a consideration and observing, “Regents should know that another unfunded mandate is the last thing districts need.”

On Saturday, the Times reported that SED acknowledged that it has been conducting “erasure analysis” to detect cheating on state tests, after saying for several years that it did not do so and lacked the funding to start.

State Education Commissioner John King sent a letter to superintendents dated Sunday, September 25 explaining that erasure analysis had been conducted on only eight of 229 regents Exams administered since 2008.

Commissioner King wrote,

Obviously, this was not an in-depth, large scale pilot of erasure analysis, nor did it rise to the level of a major finding or report.

But he added,

even this small body of evidence reinforces the larger message of the Department’s comprehensive test integrity review launched in August 2011 shortly after I became Commissioner: we need to take strong steps to ensure the integrity of New York State tests.

Governor Cuomo vetoes school district bills
Last week, Governor Cuomo vetoed eight bills which would have allowed individual school districts to avert losses of state aid due to procedural errors in their handling of aid claims.

In some cases the aid losses are large and the penalties seem out of proportion to the district’s mistakes.

For example, Central Islip now stands to lose $42 million in Building Aid because of the failure to file final cost reports on time.

In his veto of the Central Islip legislation and three other bills, the Governor notes that a mandate relief provision in the property tax cap legislation sets up a procedure to “to ease the school building aid penalties for late filing of final cost reports.”

But the veto message acknowledges that the mechanism is available only prospectively, and concludes, “The state budget would provide a broader context and be the most appropriate venue to address these issues.”

GOP candidates on education
Writing in Time, Andrew Rotherham grades Republican presidential candidates for their stands on education issues.  He gives the highest grade to former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman (B-) and lowest grade (F), to Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

“Other” property tax issues
The Buffalo News ran two articles on property tax issues other than how the tax cap might affect school districts.

One explains how a new cap limiting growth in STAR property tax exemption benefits is giving homeowners unpleasant surprises when they open their school tax bills.

The other reports on how towns are dealing with their tax cap.  Most municipalities have January 1 starts to their fiscal years, so the State Comptroller’s Office and State Tax Department have focused on how to apply the law to those entities first.

The article offers this interpretation of how the cap applies differently to towns and schools,

But in the end, it is very easy for most towns to get around the 2 percent tax cap and collect more taxes.

All they need is 60 percent of the Town Board to approve the higher taxes. Then the board must hold a public hearing on overriding the cap before voting on the budget. School districts will have a much more difficult time. To override the cap, their budgets must be approved by 60 percent of the residents voting on them.

But Drescher [an accountant] said town boards must consider political realities in overriding the cap.

“I don’t know as you want to do it every year,” he said. “How do you justify it?”

The Middletown Times Herald Record provides expanded treatment of the complexities of school district equalization rates and the new STAR limitations.

• Cheating
• State revenues short of projections
• Obama Jobs Bill — Implications for New York schools
• Governor to sign bill requiring new school procedures on head injuries
• Blue Ribbon Schools in New York State
• Teacher evaluation in New York City

Cheating

The big education policy news last week concerned cheating on standardized tests and the state’s response – or its strategy to prevent a large scale scandal here.

The State Board of Regents adopted a plan to improve security on New York’s testing regimen, from grades 3 through 8 and including high school Regents Exams.

The initial steps require each specific test to be conducted on the same day across the state and expanding to all state tests the requirements that teachers and administrators certify that they will follow security protocols.

As the remaining steps, the Regents directed State Education Department staff to develop proposals for discussion at their October meeting.

One proposal for October consideration would implement centralized scanning and scoring of all multiple choice questions.

Another would require districts to prohibit teachers from scoring and proctoring exams for their own students.  Teachers would also be barred from proctoring exams in their certification area.

Another would create an online scoring “platform” – open-ended responses would be scanned then posted to a protected site for anonymous scoring by experienced scorers.

Finally, SED notes that New York is a member of the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), a collection of states which received federal funding to develop new assessment systems aligned to the new Common Core State Standards.

The Department observes, “One of the hallmarks of the PARCC design is that it is a computer-based test; PARCC is working to ensure that as much of the assessment as possible can be machine-scored.”

The Council has not yet adopted positions on the elements of the Regents’ plan.

Some districts, but not all, have raised practical concerns about their capacity to administer all tests on a single date, especially if all grade levels are required to be tested on a single date.

Some also say that would have difficulty complying with not allowing teachers to score their own students’ tests or proctor exams in their certification area.

Moving to centralized scoring would create significant costs for the state, which recently had to find private funding to resurrect January Regents Exams.

Districts make expenditures for local scoring now.  Centralized scoring might cost less in the aggregate, as SED contends.  But where would the money come from to enable the shift?

Some other key questions are:

• Is the solution proportionate to the problem?
• Are there less costly alternatives?
• What are the vulnerabilities of the state’s current approach?  We have not had a scandal of the magnitude that has hit Atlanta and other cities – yet.
• How do New York’s practices compare with those of other states, and with “best practices,” to the extent they have been identified?
• Given that computer-adapted testing as envisioned by the PARCC project would foreclose at least some opportunities for cheating, would expenditures to move to centralized scanning and scoring now support that eventual transition?

State revenues short of projections

Last week, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released his regular monthly “cash report” for August.

While tax collections are well ahead from a year ago, they are now short of the levels assumed by the enacted state budget, by $75.7 million.

The Comptroller said,

Revenue collections, as anticipated, have grown from last year.  Still, the Blue Chip consensus economic forecasts for growth continue to be revised downward, raising concerns for the remainder of the fiscal year. We should be prepared for the possibility that revenue growth may falter, requiring downward adjustments to the Financial Plan.

The Comptroller’s news release also noted,

The growth in tax collections was primarily associated with robust estimated tax settlements based on 2010 earnings that are unlikely to be repeated in the coming months.

The shortfall for the current state fiscal year remains slight, measured against total state general fund spending of $55 billion.

But it may present worrisome implications for the next state budget cycle.

Obama Jobs Bill — Implications for New York schools

The “American Jobs Act” proposed by President Obama two weeks ago would provide $30 million nationwide to prevent teacher layoffs and another $25 billion to modernize school buildings, including both repairs and upgrades to promote technology, energy efficiency, and health and safety.

The Administration estimates that New York will receive over $1.7 billion to support up to 18,000 educator and “first responder” (police, fire and emergency personnel) jobs.

New York would receive $2 billion for the school modernization initiative.  Almost 40 percent of the nationwide funding would be targeted to the 100 largest high-need school districts; these would include at least some of the Big 5 Cities.

The remaining 60 percent would be allocated among states based on Title I shares and, “States would direct half the funding to local school districts on a formula basis, and the other half through an application process in the most high-need districts, with a priority for rural districts.”

Governor to sign bill requiring new school procedures on head injuries

Governor Cuomo has announced that he will sign legislation establishing new requirements for how schools are to handle student-athletes who have suffered head injuries.

Gannett News explains,

The legislation will prevent students from returning to play until they have been without symptoms for at least one day and have been cleared by a physician. It also requires education and training for coaches, teachers and other school personnel on the symptoms and treatment of mild traumatic brain injuries.

and

The legislation will require the state Education and Health departments to develop guidelines for recognizing and monitoring concussions, and protocols for removing students from play and clearing them to return. Those departments and local school districts will have to post information about concussions on their websites and on any consent forms for parents.

Blue Ribbon Schools

The U.S. Education Department has recognized 19 New York schools as Blue Ribbon Schools.

The Department’s news release explains,

The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program, honors public and private schools based on one of two criteria:

1) Schools whose students are high performing. These are schools ranked among each state’s highest performing schools as measured by their performance on state assessments… or

2) Schools with at least 40 percent of their students from disadvantaged backgrounds that improve student performance to high levels as measured by the school’s performance on state assessments…

The chosen schools stretch across New York State, from Long Island to the Buffalo suburbs.

Teacher evaluation in New York City

The New York City Department of Education has announced that it will no longer conduct its own effort to rate its teachers based on student test scores, concluding that the new state evaluation law will make its local process redundant.

The New York Times referred to this as “a surprise twist to one of the most contentious issues facing the city’s teaching force.”

The Times, explains,

Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city’s chief academic officer, said the new law made the city’s rankings, known as Teacher Data Reports, no longer necessary.

“Already, we’re working with the state to ensure their reports will be fair to teachers, and take account of factors like poverty and race,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said. “This is just one of multiple measures we will use to evaluate teachers, and there’s no need to duplicate the state’s efforts.”

City teacher union president Michael Mulgrew welcomed the news.  Relations between the union and the City have generally calmed since the move of Dennis Walcott into the Chancellor’s post, as GothamSchools.org reports.

The Times article notes that SED has awarded American Institutes for Research (AIR) a $2.7 million contract to develop methodologies and measures for the student growth component of the State’s new teacher/principal evaluation system.

So it was surprising to read these comments from an AIR official in the Times article,

“That sort of model will give you a description of how students in a teacher’s class perform,” said Jon Cohen, the institute’s chief statistician and executive vice president, of the model set for 2012. “It’s a stretch from there to attributing that growth to the teacher.”

This seems contrary to what AIR said in its news release announcing the contract.

On another note, last week the Board of Regents formally voted to appeal the ruling of a state judge invalidating portions of the teacher/principal evaluation regulations.

Some schools have been directly affected and forced to postpone the beginning of classes.  From past weather disasters, we know schools also serve their communities in different ways in such times, providing space for emergency shelter.

In smaller but significant ways it has been a difficult stretch for the New York State Education Department as well.

First, last week a State Supreme Court Judge sided with New York State United Teachers in invalidating several aspects of its challenge to the Department’s regulations implementing the new teacher and principal evaluation regulations.

Here are editorial reactions to the court’s ruling from the New York Times, Buffalo News, New York Daily News and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.  the first two support SED’s posture; the third does as well but also faults the law itself.  The Rochester paper calls for a resolution through negotiation, rather than litigation.

The Department promises to appeal.

Second, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli rejected the Department’s $27 million contract with Wireless Generation to build an “Education Data Portal” that would enable schools and teachers to track and use student performance data.

The Comptroller rejected the contract, citing controversies engulfing Wireless Generation’s parent company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.  News Corp. has been accused of illegal phone “hacking” in Britain.

Another controversial aspect of the contract was that it was awarded through sole-source procurement.

Like the teacher/principal evaluation regulations, the data system is part of the state’s Race to the Top reform agenda funded by Washington.

GothamSchools.org explains,

The rejection marks yet another setback in the state’s school reform plans. Last week, a judge ruled that the state should not be allowed to use student test scores to count for 40 percent of teachers’ evaluations, bringing to a standstill a centerpiece of New York’s Race to the Top plans. Now the data clearinghouse that would make the evaluations possible is also at risk.

New York’s Race To The Top application said that a pilot data program would be in place by this September to begin collecting information in some of the state’s school districts, and the system was scheduled for wide release in October 2012. By 2013-2014, the portal was to serve 90 percent of the state’s intended audience, according to the Race To The Top application.

An SED spokesperson said, “The Comptroller has allowed political pressure to get in the way of vital technology that would help our students.  Our office will review all options to implement the kind of system our schools need to move forward.”

NYSUT and its New York City affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, wrote to state officials urging the contract be rejected.

Finally, last week, the Department issued a schedule for state elementary and intermediate grade assessments, then pulled it back, then on Friday issued a revised schedule which still provoked consternation – several districts, mostly in Central and Northern New York, will need to reschedule an April break to accommodate the new schedule.

• NYC tenure approval rate down to 58 percent
• Impact of federal debt ceiling debacle on New York State
• State revenue outlook
• Cheating

NYC tenure approval rate down to 58 percent
Following the adoption of new procedures for tenure decisions, New York City’s teacher tenure approval rate dropped from the high 90 percent range to 58 percent various media sources report.  Here is the New York Times article.

Only 3 percent of the eligible teachers were rejected outright, about the same share as in the prior year; 39 percent had their probationary period extended, allowing them another year to gain approval.

Here is more on the City’s new procedures.

The City rates teachers into one of four categories, mirroring those prescribed in the new statewide teacher and principal evaluation procedures – highly effective, effective, developing and ineffective.  Only teachers receiving the first or second rating can be recommended for tenure.

Student performance data is one factor in the City’s tenure evaluations, but does not appear to comprise a specific, fixed percentage.

In 2008, legislation to address disputes over the use of student performance data in New York City tenure decisions sparked the most bitter conflict in memory between the teacher unions and and school district management groups.  

Impact of federal debt ceiling debacle on New York State
Yesterday, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli shared some warnings about the impact on New York State if Congress and the president fail to raise the federal debt ceiling in time to avert a default by the federal government.

The Comptroller told Rochester’s WXXI radio that the state’s pension fund would be hurt by a sudden drop in the stock market. 

“This could throw the markets in a tail spin that will hurt New York’s pension funds ,” said DiNapoli. “At a time when we are still digging out from the great loses of 08 and 09.”

The station also reported,

The New York State budget could be in the red by $7 billion dollars in the next two months alone. The federal government is due to make billions of dollars in payments to New York in August and September, the bulk for the federal and state shared Medicaid program. DiNapoli says there’s a chance, though remote right now, that the legislature would have to return to deal with another budget deficit, though he says that’s a “worst case scenario”.

and

A drop in nation’s credit rating caused by a debt default, could also affect states’ credit ratings. That would make it more expensive for state and local governments to borrow money for capital projects, like road and bridge repair- because interest rates would be higher, says DiNapoli.

The Comptroller says school districts and local governments would likely be even more deeply impacted, because they are also operating on tight budgets and some are even borrowing just to meet operating expenses.

“If it’s going to cost more to borrow money, that’s an unanticipated expense, and means there will probably have to be a cut somewhere else,” the Comptroller said.

State revenue outlook
Last week, the Comptroller issued his monthly “cash report” for June 2011.  The conclusions were hopeful, with tax receipts up $800 million from what the enacted state budget projected for the April-June quarter, and expenditures down by $1 billion.

The Comptroller urged some caution, noting that timing of expenditures and large tax payments contributed to part of the positive results.

E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for New York State Policy identified one cause for concern in the Comptroller’s report:  first-quarter withholding for the personal income tax (PIT) was below what the enacted budget assumes, with growth of 1 percent over last year so far, compared to projected growth of 1.8 percent.

Payroll withholding comprises the largest share of PIT receipts.

As noted above, a federal default could have huge negative consequences for the state’s finances.

Also, economic news today is disappointing.

Any day, the Governor’s Budget Division will release its first quarter update on the state’s financial plan.  Yesterday, Governor Cuomo said he still expect the state to face a $2.5 billion structural deficit in developing a budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year.

Cheating
This year, the State Education Department instituted some new procedures aimed at preventing “doctoring” of standardized tests, in order to help students pass or perhaps to make schools look better.

For example, schools are now barred from “re-scoring” open-ended questions (such as essay questions) on Regents exams after their initial rating.

I will confess to questioning  the calibration of the state’s moves — whether the magnitude of problems reported up to the time they were adopted warranted all the new impositions on schools.

Also, I sympathized with school officials who reported that they applied review procedures with integrity, so that student scores were sometimes adjusted down, as well as up.

But in the months since the changes were announced there have been widely-publicized “cheating” scandals in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

This past Sunday, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle ran an editorial calling on state and local officials as well as parents and community members to be vigilant in looking for evidence of test cheating.

This week there was  a report of a New York school district referring a possible cheating incident to the local district attorney.

The scandals have provoked a nationwide debate a on the role of standardized testing.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote, “…existence of cheating says nothing about the merits of testing.”  But he does acknowledge, “poorly designed laws are also part of the problem” and “NCLB has created the wrong incentives for boosting student achievement.”

No one defends cheating.  But another commentator observes, “we’re living in an age of brutal optimism about testing [emphasis added].”  In New York, we have been moving to correct weaknesses in the state’s tests, while at the same time attaching more consequences to them.

The writer adds,

Low test scores tell us nothing about a child, we’d like to think, but nearly everything about his school and teachers. … If any individual child fails, it won’t be because he is disabled, poor, hungry, homeless, can’t understand English, or maybe just isn’t that smart, but because he’s been failed by “the system”—those same bad-apple teachers and principals who cheat, or who are just too damn incompetent or lazy to teach their students.

She contends that bad behavior has been “incentivized” by state and federal policies,  and when that happens, “…it’s a good time to reconsider public policy, not to double down on it.”

On the other hand, the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews argues, “Easing test pressure won’t save kids.” He favors trying additional forms of accountability, other than reliance on standardized testing, but concludes, “teachers and students, like all of us, must learn how to deal with some forms of pressure.”

Compellingly, Mathews argues, “School administrators and teachers who changed answers did something worse than cheating. They lost faith in the ability of their students to learn.”

Another writer (Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute), hardly mention cheating scandals at all, but offers his conclusion that “consequential accountability” tied to standardized tests is probably the key factor behind one of American education’s under-recognized success stories.

Mr. Petrilli notes,

In both the “basic skills” of reading and math, and in the social studies subjects of history, civics, and now geography, African-American, Latino, and low-income fourth- and eighth-graders have posted huge gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) since the early 1990s.

He explains that the progress means, “today’s poor and minority students are achieving one, two, and sometimes three grade levels higher than their counterparts in the early 1990s were.”

Mr. Petrilli, concludes by noting the downsides to our current approaches to testing and accountability, (such as narrowing of curriculum and instruction) and asks whether the gains are worth it.

States are permitted to add to the Common Core Standards.

Over the past summer, the State Education Department assembled work groups to recommend additions for new York.

Now SED is seeking reactions to the recommended additions through online surveys.

You may review the recommendations and complete the surveys here:

• English Language Arts and Literacy
• Mathematics

The SED website explains,

The State Education Department will be gathering input from October 20th, 2010 to November 29th, 2010. After the survey data and comments are compiled, there will be a revision period in December prior to the submission of the final materials for Board action in January 2011.

The New York City Department of Education computes value-added scores for its teachers and a group of news organizations made a freedom of information law request for release the ratings for individual teachers.  The Wall Street Journal was one of the news outlets making the request.

The City DOE was prepared release the information on Wednesday but the City teacher union threatened a lawsuit to block release.

Now the DOE is saying it will release the data tomorrow (Friday), unless the courts intercede.

The union filed suit this morning.

UPDATE:  The City DOE agreed to hold off on releasing individual teacher data until at least late November.  A State Supreme Court Judge will hear arguments on November 24 on the teacher union’s lawsuit seeking to prevent the release.

Andrew Rotherham had a wise piece on the place of value-added analysis in Time magazine last month.

Mr. Rotherham once worked for our national affiliate, the American Association of School Administrators.

The article begins noting that although the adjustments were justified based on new analysis, “…evidence had been mounting for some time that the state’s tests, which have formed the basis of almost every school reform effort of the past decade, had serious flaws.”

It explains,

The fast rise and even faster fall of New York’s passing rates resulted from the effect of policies, decisions and missed red flags that stretched back more than 10 years and were laid out in correspondence and in interviews with city and state education officials, administrators and testing experts.

The Times carefully explains how the tests had become overly predictable, allowing teachers and schools to anticipate questions and prepare students to succeed.

Gothamschools.org stressed this finding back in July.

Problems began, the Times observes, with “…the state’s decision to create short, predictable exams and to release them publicly soon after they were given, making coaching easy and depriving test creators of a key tool: the ability to insert in each test questions for future exams.”

The article includes comments from former State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, who said his administration of the State Education Department was confident that the tests had been working properly  because they had undergone multiple reviews by independent experts.

The article concludes by noting that, “The state intends to rewrite future tests to encompass a broader range of material, and will stop publicly releasing them.”

Discontinuing public release of the tests would help make them less predictable and allow test-makers to embed field test questions within actual tests.  Currently the state conducts field tests entirely separately, with the risk that students may not take them seriously, undermining their dependability.

A point not mentioned by the Times is that ending release of high school tests is probably a necessary precondition for on-line or on-demand testing — permitting students to take Regents Exams when they or their teachers believe they are ready, rather than at fixed points in the calendar.

The Times also discusses how the state tests have become more consequential, especially in New York City, where they are used to assign grades to schools, decide which students must attend summer school or be retained in grade, and to help determine which teachers should extra pay and tenure.

The tests will take on increased importance throughout the state, due to the new teacher and principal evaluation law.  That law requires evaluations to result in a single composite performance score for each teacher or principal, with 40 percent to be based on student performance, including 20 percent based on results on state assessments, where applicable.

In a letter to then Commissioner-Elect David Steiner in August 2009, we said,

Teaching to the test is inevitable, so we need tests worth teaching to…  Tests also need to generate data that is more instructionally useful. We are looking for a broader, deeper assessment process that actually produces the information that schools need and policymakers want. The technology of testing must change as well – like other states, we should move toward more online, on-demand assessment.

Senior Deputy Commissioner John King observed to the Times, “If people had known what an effective lever the tests would be of driving behavior, I think they would have designed the tests differently.”

That may be a hopeful element in this story:  The state had a powerful influence on schools, albeit through tests which now appear to have been flawed.  With better tests, state actions might now have a better influence.

The Commissioner’s column begins, “Improving student performance, making sure our students are ready to succeed in college and careers and closing the large achievement gaps between races and ethnicities: These remain the top challenges for New York State.”

He then briefly describes how the state’s reform agenda and receipt of $700 million in Race to the Top funding will address these challenges.  He cites strengthening  state assessments to get a meaningful picture of how students are doing as “the one reform on which all others depend.”

Commissioner Steiner makes “new news” with this announcement,

One major area of focus: The Board of Regents, building on its raising of third- through eighth-grade test score standards, will do the same thing with its high school-level Regents exams. Rather than simply report the current graduation rate – based on passing levels in five subjects that have been getting tougher in the last few years but fall well short of college-readiness – the board will announce the “college-ready graduation results” in every district and for all subgroups in New York State [emphasis added].

UPDATE (September 17): The Commissioner’s proposal for reporting “college-ready graduation results” was discussed by the Board of Regents this past Monday.

The specific proposal read,

The Department now proposes to publish college- and career-ready graduation rate calculations that show what percentage of students are graduating from high school with a score of 80 or better on their math Regents exam and 75 or better on their English Regents exam. Schools and districts will be able to evaluate this information in combination with the grades 3-8 math and English proficiency data to get a better sense of how effectively they are preparing students for college and careers.  To facilitate comparisons, the college- and career-ready graduation rate data will be published alongside actual graduation rate data. The Department plans to publish this year’s data by December 2010.

The specific score thresholds — 80 for the math Regents, 75 for English — were chosen based on data suggesting that students earning those scores or better are likely to achieve success in their first year in college, without requiring remedial classes.

See here for more details on the proposal.

Southern Tier Regent James Tallon uttered a memorable line — “The release of data is never benign.”  Several Regents raised questions and concerns, and the proposal will be brought back for more discussion, perhaps with changes.

Over the weekend, Capital Region BOCES Superintendent Charles Dedrick had a column in the Albany Times Union arguing that a property tax cap could hurt the state’s neediest students because of their greater dependence on state aid.  In the event of a state aid cut or freeze, a uniform percentage limit on tax levy increases allows a poor district to raise less revenue than its more affluent peers forcing it to undergo greater spending austerity and widening gaps in resources.

Today the Times Union has a piece that is getting attention from education bloggers (this one included) for its conclusion that “Regents exams, once touted as a gold standard of evaluation, are so hard to fail they have become meaningless. are so hard to fail they have become meaningless.”

The conclusion might be valid – I’ve heard criticisms of the exams from superintendents – but the analysis is limited, omitting any discussion of how raw test scores are converted to final scores.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made news for saying parents should have access to information on how well individual teachers do at raising their students’ test scores.

The Secretary’s comments came after the Los Angeles Times began a series using student test scores to estimate the value-added effectiveness of teachers in that city.  Later this month, the paper plans to publish an online database with ratings for more than 6,000 elementary school teachers.

The teacher union leader has called for a boycott of the paper and education scholar Diane Ravitch called the reporting disgraceful.

While parents could benefit from the information, I question the value-added by the paper’s decision to make individual teacher data available for anyone to see.  It seems likely to divert real understanding of teacher performance into quick glimpses at how individual teachers measure up.

Often controversial Washington, D.C. superintendent Michelle Rhee aid she would also consider making value-added scores public.  But she added, “It would have to be managed in the right way and … given the right context.”  She warned that releasing the data could confuse parents and create logistical problems for administrators who could be swamped with demands from parents for higher-rated teachers.

Last week New York State United Teachers announced it was deferring a decision on whether to make an endorsement in this years race for Governor.

NYSUT President Richard Iannuzi said,“Andrew Cuomo has historically been a supporter of education funding and organized labor while advancing a strong social justice agenda.  Lately, his positions on property tax caps and statements about public employees have raised a lot of concerns among NYSUT members. We want to hear more and learn more before deciding whether to take a position in the governor’s race.”

NYSUT and the Civil Service Employees Association remained neutral in the statewide AFL-CIO’s endorsement vote, allowing Mr. Cuomo to gain the two-thirds vote necessary to earn that endorsement.

NYSUT also did not make endorsements in about half the State Senate elections.

Perhaps most notably, the Department will continue to administer January Regents Exams.

Here is the Department’s memo outlining planned changes to the state’s assessment program for the coming school year.

Below are the reductions the Department will still implement:

• Discontinuation of paper-based scoring materials for Regents Exams. All scoring materials and answer keys will be posted to the Department’s website and schools will be responsible for downloading prior to scoring
• Elimination of Component Retesting in Math & ELA
• Elimination of Grades 5 and 8 Social Studies Exams
• Elimination of Grade 8 Second Language Proficiency Exams
• Elimination of August Administration of Algebra 2/Trigonometry and Chemistry Exams
• Elimination of HS Foreign Language Regents exams except for Spanish, French and Italian

SED also cautions that further reductions will eventually be necessary, if additional funding is not forthcoming.