The Notebook

• Teachers are complaining about flawed scoring guides for this year’s state tests. (Insideschools)
• David Coleman, College Board’s new chief, said future SATs will be Common Core-aligned. (EdWeek)
• A parent reports that state test prep took a backseat to a talent show at her son’s school. (Insideschools)
• A teacher says project-based learning keeps students motivated through exam season. (Mr. Foteah)
• A teacher says the city’s plan to flag teachers subject to disciplinary action is problematic. (JD2718)
• A city program encourages District 75 teachers to incorporate more art into lessons. (Schoolbook)
• Students in P.S. 22′s chorus perform Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution.” (PS22 Chorus Blog)
• A teacher details his experience in the “Rubber Room,” with an apologia for taxpayers. (Protect Portellos)

The first court appearance in the union lawsuit to halt hiring decisions at 24 turnaround schools ended with the judge telling the city and unions to resolve their dispute out of court.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis urged the city and teachers and principals unions to resolve their contractual disputes through arbitration, rather than litigation. If the two sides would agree to let an independent arbitrator hear their case, then she would not need to rule on the unions’ request for an injunction to halt hiring at the schools.

Union and city lawyers both said they wanted to resolve the dispute quickly because schools would be harmed if hiring decisions are not well before the end of the school year.

“If you’re both saying you need the arbitrator as soon as possible, an injunction would not be necessary,” Lobis said. “If what you’re saying is really sincere, then you’ll get it to the arbitrator as quickly as possible.”

After conferring this afternoon, city and union lawyers accepted Lobis’s suggestion. The two sides are meeting tonight to select an arbitrator and meeting dates, with the goal of resolving the legal questions about teacher and principal staffing at the turnaround schools by early June.

If they agree on an arbitrator, the city plans to continue laying the groundwork for rehiring at the schools. But it would hold back from finalizing any personnel decisions until an arbitrator is agreed upon or the matter returns to court.

Still open for dispute is the question of whether there will be one arbitrator to review both the United Federation of Teachers’s case and the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators case (the unions’ preference), or if two arbitrators will review each case individually (the city’s preference).

The city and teachers union have not had good luck letting a third party referee unrelated disputes in the recent past. After negotiations over teacher evaluations broke down in December, the union asked for a third party to step in. The city has resisted entering mediation even as the state’s labor relations board has twice ordered a mediator to step in.

A teacher from Long Island City High School who listened in on the hearing said the turnaround schools will be harmed regardless of the lawsuit’s outcome. “It’s like they’re pushing Humpty Dumpty off a wall,” the teacher said. “You will have a lot of trouble putting [the schools] back together again.”

Holes in the Department of Education’s oversight of tutoring companies that work in city schools allowed one of the companies to collect payments without proving it had delivered services, according to an audit by Comptroller John Liu.

Liu found that Champion Learning Center collected about $860,000 in the 2009-2010 school year for tutoring students who had not signed into tutoring sessions or for tutoring sessions that officials had not certified had taken place.

The audit highlights the murky world of “supplemental educational services” providers, companies that offer tutoring mandated under the No Child Left Behind law. They are private entities but are subject to a host of city and state regulations, and the city must both monitor them and give them access to students.

The audit comes weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against another SES provider, Princeton Review, for falsifying attendance records and bilking New York City out of millions of dollars. In that case, investigators found that the company had submitted false signatures showing that tutoring sessions had taken place.

Liu does not conclude that outright fraud took place at Champion Learning, which New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez revealed three years ago took home as much as $320 an hour for serving city students when overhead costs were included. Rather, Liu found that the group violated some regulations by delivering tutoring during school hours and played fast and loose with others — and that the city’s monitoring systems allowed for the possibility of fraud.

Liu wants the city to try to recoup the irregular payments to Champion Learning, and city officials said they would heed the suggestion.

“While the law requires that we offer contracts to all state-approved providers, they still have to comply with their contracts and applicable regulations,” said Marge Feinberg, a department spokeswoman, in a statement. “We will seek to recoup all payments for services that were not permitted or that could not be verified.”

Liu’s office has also referred the audit to the city’s Special Commission of Investigation for further scrutiny. SCI has previously detailed improprieties by other SES providers in the city.

Liu’s audit of Champion Education Partners is below.

Nick Childers’ 10th-graders at Denver’s West High School are studying  the causes of World War II. As the teens enter the classroom, he greets each by name, makes eye contact, and shakes their hands.

West High School teacher Nick Childers talks to LEAP peer observer Marianne Kenney.

On this spring day, however, there is an unexpected – or at least partially unexpected – guest. Marianne Kenney is one of Denver Public Schools’ 45 paid “peer observers.” She’s a former Cherry Creek teacher and passionate school reformer. She also helped write the state’s content standards in social studies as Colorado’s former social studies specialist.

It’s her job to unobtrusively watch DPS teachers in action and grade them against a grid of expectations. She is in charge of observing 70 secondary and 25 upper elementary educators. Today, the subject of her scrutiny is Mr. Childers, U.S. history teacher and Teach for America alumnus.

Kenney sits at a desk in a rear corner of the room, and flips open her laptop. Childers begins the lesson.

Welcome to the fish bowl that is teacher effectiveness in Colorado. Right now, one of the biggest fish in the bowl is Denver Public Schools.

DPS stands apart from other Colorado districts for its combination of size and magnitude of challenges. Seventy-three percent of its 80,000 students qualify for free- and reduced-priced lunch based on family income.  It also stands out because of the work and money it is pumping into LEAP, Leading Effective Academic Practice, the district’s pilot teacher evaluation program, which focuses as much – if not more – on professional development as it does on rating teachers. Other Colorado districts testing out new teacher evaluation models are Jeffco, Eagle, Harrison, Brighton, and Douglas County.

All Colorado districts will be required to implement some form of “educator effectiveness” measures after the passage of Senate Bill 10-191 two years ago. With the help of a three-year, $10 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, DPS got a jump start and created its own system.

“What sets us apart is how thoughtful we’ve been,” said Tracy Dorland, deputy chief academic officer for teaching and learning in DPS. “It’s not just a system of evaluation. It’s a system that respects the teaching profession.”

DPS test-drives teacher effectiveness  

Key to SB 10-191 are comprehensive teacher evaluations to  “provide a basis for making decisions in the areas of hiring, compensation, promotion, assignment, professional development, earning and retaining non-probationary status, dismissal, and nonrenewal of contract.” Most teachers now work under collective bargaining rules that place a greater emphasis on years in the classroom than results. Under SB 10-191, at least half a teacher’s evaluation beginning in 2014-2015 will be based on his or her students’ academic growth as evidenced by test scores and other, yet-to-be-determined academic measures.

With LEAP, DPS is also experimenting with peer observations, principal observations and student feedback. In addition, the district is piloting meetings between teachers and school leaders to discuss a teacher’s “professionalism” –  the things a teacher does that don’t always get captured during a classroom visit, such as relationships with colleagues and parents. Built into LEAP is support for teacher improvement: Books to read, videos to watch, online or in-person classes to take – all available to the teacher via Schoolnet.

“There is not a teacher out there in any classroom who doesn’t want to be the best they can be,” said former LEAP spokeswoman Amy Skinner, who is now working for the Colorado Department of Education as Race to the Top communications director. “It’s the hardest job in the world. You’re not doing it if you don’t want to get results for kids. (LEAP) is about giving them more of that support they’ve never had.”

LEAP began with a 16-school pilot in spring 2011, then expanded to 127 district schools this year — 94 percent of all district schools — resulting in 3,800 teachers going through the process.

A centerpiece of LEAP was the hiring of 45 peer observers – trained and experienced educators who have the knowledge and expertise in the same subject area as the teacher they’re evaluating. The $3.8 million price tag of the peer observers  comes out of the DPS general fund.

Under the old teacher evaluation system, teachers were rated “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” More nuanced  information was provided to teachers, but most ranked “satisfactory” nonetheless. Statistically speaking, the ratings didn’t add up. In 2007-08, DPS principals and assistant principals gave unsatisfactory ratings to 33 out of 2,185 teachers evaluated – or 1.5 percent. And that was actually one of the highest percentages of unsatisfactory ratings in any metro district, according to a report in Education News Colorado.

It remains to be seen whether a similar pattern will emerge with LEAP, which uses numerical ratings against four major areas: Positive classroom culture and climate; effective classroom management; masterful content delivery; and high-impact instructional moves, such as checking for understanding of content and language objectives or differentiating lessons based on ability.

A score of 1 or 2 means the teacher is not meeting expectations; a 3 or 4 means a teacher is approaching expectations; a 5 or 6 signals an effective teacher; and 7 is distinguished.

During the first of three evaluation windows this year, teachers were given numeric scores. In the second window, they weren’t. In the third, numeric scores were used again but the framework had changed. As a result, DPS officials declined to release any of the ratings at this time.

“Until we are able to show more data points, it is unfair to share the observation data,” said Skinner.

In the past, teachers also complained about inconsistency in how principals evaluated them. At one school, a principal might have said a teacher was “top-notch.” But at another school, a different principal gave the same teacher negative reviews. Politics could also become a factor. And observations by principals were not consistent and only happened once every three years.

“It was more about a relationship with an adult as opposed what you did with the kids,” said Pam Shamburg, a Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) representative on LEAP.

A look at peer observation

At first, many DPS teachers weren’t happy about unannounced visits to their classrooms by peer observers.  But LEAP

LEAP peer observer Marianne Kenney takes notes during her visit to teacher Nick Childres' U.S. History class.

staffers say teachers are warming up to the idea now that they’re getting used to the observers. Of the teachers who participated in LEAP observations in spring 2011, 81 percent reported they would be able to improve their practice based on feedback, and 74 percent said they would speak positively about the observation and feedback experience to colleagues.

This year, trained peer observers visited teachers at least twice, evaluating them against the original 21-indicator rubric and later  against a condensed, 12-point rubric. (Check out the revised rubric.)

Candis Hitchcock, 57, a veteran special education teacher at South High School, said she likes the idea of peer observations – even though she was skeptical at first.

“You’re going to be evaluated no matter what,” Hitchcock said. “It’s nice to have someone from outside come in. My observer was wonderful. She taught special ed, too. Just because I have all these years of experience doesn’t mean I know everything.”

But she worries about all the things an observer doesn’t see – like the time spent running a sensitive IEP meeting with parents, or carefully completing mounds of legal paperwork.

“I would love to be observed holding an IEP meeting,” Hitchcock said.

And she’s not sure other parts of her job are captured, either.

“It’s much more than academics,” she said. “I’m a counselor, a mother, a father, a feeder. I take time to be patient with kids if they’re upset. You can’t say, ‘You can’t do that – we’re doing math right now. You can’t cry.’ There are many things they don’t really see us do.”

Shamburg, though, said there are other teachers who have not been too happy about their peer observers – especially if the observers are young and brash and telling a veteran teacher how things should be done.

Building principals also play a key role as to whether teachers embrace the peer observations.

“You can feel it when you go into a building,” Shamburg said. “The (teachers’) attitude is mirrored by the principal.  They’re not always comfortable having a second eye.”

Childers’ number comes up

As for Childers, he knew he had one more observation this school year by Kenney. He found out five minutes before her visit. For the next 45 minutes, he would be watched closely.

LEAP peer observer talks to students during a recent teacher evaluation at West H.S.

A timer on a cord dangles from Childers’ neck – his way of making sure he stays track with his lesson plan, which he carries out with military precision. The 20 students sit in clusters, working silently at their desks. They draw pictures and write a sentence to go along with each of four vocabulary words: totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism, and militarism.

Many of his students are English language learners, so images are a key part of building vocabulary.

Kenney occasionally gets up and wanders around the room with her laptop. She listens in on quiet, one-on-one conversations. Sometimes, she asks students questions about what they’re doing, and why.

Childers watches his timer, then moves on to the next segment of the day’s lesson. He instructs students to write down the day’s “content objective.” Today, the objective is to analyze Hitler’s goals for Germany and the reasons for Japanese militarism. He shares stories about his own family members being persecuted in the Holocaust.

A follow-up visit

Kenney is back the next day over Childers’ lunch hour. This time, her visit is no surprise. This is the most delicate part of the LEAP peer observation process. Kenney has to talk to Childers about his teaching in a way that is non-judgmental. She has to keep her opinions out of it, and avoid “should” statements.

They talk about her earlier visit this school year and what he has worked on over the past several months based on Kenney’s first round of feedback. He says he has worked on creating “thoughtful” class groupings, and differentiating assignments. Both agree his classroom management skills are top-notch.

Peer observer Kenney meets with Childers a day after she visits his class.

Now, she has to deftly guide him to the conclusion she wants him to reach. She wants to see more passion about the subject matter, more creative ways to engage students in historical events.

“Not a moment is wasted in your class,” she tells him. “While working on things, you supported each kid, gave them feedback on their notes. I saw a difference from last class to this class.”

Kenney asks him to provide more context about the lesson she observed. She wants to know “the big idea.”

He talks about his students being able to write strong, 11-sentence paragraphs, support their opinions, and explain how facts or quotes support certain statements. His first answer is narrower than she wants it to be.

She tries a different tack: Say these kids are all married and have their own kids in high school. They’re now studying World War II. What would these former students – now parents -  say about what they learned in Mr. Childers’ class?

Childers pauses, then says students should remember the goals these countries had leading into World War II, the political motivations that led to war and connect them to current or future situations, such as the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Kenney wants more.  “In your heart of hearts, what’s really important; what sticks with them?”

“Half of my family is Jewish,” Childers says. “Half escaped; half didn’t. How can these things happen? How did totalitarian regimes come to be? …How can we make sure they don’t happen again in the future?”

In the end, Kenney encourages Childers to go deeper with his lessons. She offers him tangible ideas. She suggests he put students in the role of historian, have them pretend to be journalists on carrier planes when the atomic bomb was dropped. She suggests he have students think about whether they have ever felt repressed and without choices the way people living under totalitarian regimes may feel.

Then she asks Childers how she can do a better job as an observer.

He describes her feedback as “excellent.” He says he liked how she pushed him to think about the big idea, but he’s also a bit frustrated. Considering the amount of time in class and the fact that many students are well below grade level, is it more important to teach a student how to write a topic sentence or emphasize the big picture?

“I think they can do both,” Kenney says, before sending him a link to a book called Reading Like a Historian, along with some tip sheets.

Kenney recors her thoughts while conducting a class observation at West High School

For now, this observation is merely a way to help Childers improve. It has no bearing on his tenure status or movement up the pay scale. But, in 2014, it will – along his principal’s observations of him; a review of his professionalism, which includes how well he knows his students and their personal backgrounds; student test scores; and student feedback, which asks questions such as, ‘Are you always busy in this class?’ or ‘If you don’t understand something, does the teacher help explain it in a different way?’

What’s next for LEAP

The LEAP pilot will continue next year.

The district will use the revised rubric. Teachers complained the first one was too long, and sometimes redundant. The new one is more focused. The new framework also better integrates instructional technology and best practices for linguistically diverse students. Most importantly, Dorland said, the revised framework is now tied to the Common Core Standards. 

The length of the observation was also increased based on teacher feedback in the early pilot, from 30 to 45 minutes. Ratings summary sheets are now provided to the teacher in advance of the final wrap-up meeting with the observer to make the meetings as efficient and useful as they can be.

The principal observations have also not been as strong as they should be, with very few teachers actually having been observed twice during the year by a principal, Shamburg said.

LEAP staffers are now starting to put more work into the student outcomes side of the equation (i.e. test scores), to be piloted next year. The tricky part is what measures to use in non-tested subject areas, such as music, art or library.

For Shamburg, a former lawyer turned educator, adding test scores into the mix demonstrates how “politics has overcome common sense.” To the public, it seems straightforward to link test scores to teacher evaluations. But in DPS, for instance, a majority – or about 70 percent of teachers – do not teach classes in which standardized tests are administered, which means the district must figure out what other reliable assessments to use.

Unlike many of his peers, Childers said he supports the idea of linking student achievement to teacher evaluations – the most controversial aspect of SB 10-191 – with conditions.

“If you didn’t have that it would be like having a sales job and none of performance tied to how many sales you made. If there’s not any learning going on, then there’s not any teaching going on.”

But Childers is adamant that the focus needs to be on where the student starts out the school year, and the growth he makes while in a class. It is not fair, Childers said, to apply the same benchmark goals to all students without taking into consideration where they started the school year. Some of his students start off at a third grade reading level.

Another huge piece that needs to be worked out is how each piece of the evaluation will be weighted for each teacher.

“The pieces that will be in the new evaluation system aren’t all there yet,” Shamburg acknowledged.

In 2014-2015 when LEAP becomes the law, things will be different. While no one category would result in a teacher losing non-probationary status or being placed on an improvement plan, an overall score will ultimately be used to determine these and other decisions.  However, non-probationary teachers in the “approaching” category would maintain their status even though their overall rating is not in the “effective” range.

Then, there’s the continued cost of LEAP. The Gates grant runs through next summer. The  main ongoing expense is  the peer observers. There are sure to be debates about how to best spend the $3.8 million it took to hire them.

 The LEAP office continues to seek out feedback from teachers through its website.

“We are being deliberately more responsive and more open,” DPS spokesman Mike Vaughn said. “ We want to think about this long and hard, and make sure we take the time to get it right…(People) complain about tenure. But there has not been enough attention paid to how broken the support system for teachers has been.”

Teacher views after first peer observation fall 2011

• 66.8 percent – The observer had the subject knowledge to rate the content of my lesson.

• 70 percent – During the feedback meeting, my observer provided feedback that was appropriate for the content of my lesson/grade-level.

• 70 percent – During the feedback meeting, my observer helped me understand which indicators I need to focus on for growth.

• 71.6 percent – During the feedback meeting, my observer facilitated a collaborative discussion of my teaching.

• 60.7 percent – The Framework is a useful tool for self-reflection about my teaching practice.

•68.7 percent – The feedback experience was positive.

This survey by DPS was based on 1,849 survey responses sent to 3,523 teachers.

A Elisa Cohen, North Denver parent, looks back on the long, winding path through a variety of schools and home-schooling to her daughter’s high school graduation.

My baby graduates from high school tonight. What a long strange trip it’s been. From magnet to home-schooling to charter school to online high school to one neighborhood school and finally to this last one – South High – my kid has experienced all the educational opportunities the first decade of the century has to offer.

In 1996 the magnet movement was in full swing. As I understand it, magnets were designed to lure children of all races into integrated programs that would then prove to the federal government that we did not need mandatory and costly busing. My white babies were lured into Denison Montessori by test scores, word of mouth, free ECE tuition and free buses that would take them to and from this school located at Sheridan and Jewell.

Free soon turned into $500 a month for tuition and at one point the school board debated ending the free buses to the magnets. This is the first time I stood up in a public meeting and squawked. Things change, I discovered, and not always in our favor.

After several bad years for my kid (my other kid had a marvelous time in different classrooms in the same school) I pulled my daughter out of school and began homeschooling. We turned to the children’s librarians in the downtown central library. They loaded my daughter up with a new stack of books each week, and she began her years of reading.

We practiced shaking hands while looking into someone’s eyes and offering a respectful and cheerful salutation. I found a remarkable math teacher on Craigslist, a man with a Ph.D. in engineering and a delightful way with children. We discovered a home-school acting cooperative run by Christians. “We’re not the wild-eyed Christians,” said the founder when I asked if our being hippy Jews might be a problem.

For gym my daughter insisted on belly-dancing, and I found a woman from Uzbekistan who taught my daughter how to dance well enough to open a show at the Oriental Theatre where over 300 paying guests hooted and hollered. My sister-in-law disapproved. I bargained with a French professor at Metro: if I signed up and paid for French 101, my daughter could attend as well. Another professor at Metro allowed my daughter to attend his Revolution and Reform class as long as she did the work. The entire family studied Revolution and Reform that semester.

Throughout the homeschooling journey, we tested. Although the state only requires testing every other year for homeschooling, I, and the four superintendents of our homeschooling endeavor – her grandparents – wanted some verification that what we were doing was working. We used the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and each year it confirmed she could read, write, calculate and find a city on a map. We used the Accuplacer to determine her post-secondary readiness in reading and writing and math. Finally her ACT scores showed colleges that she had not been just eating bonbons during her high school years.

As her academic needs outpaced my content knowledge, we enrolled in a part-time home-school charter school in Jefferson County. We became skeptical when they didn’t discuss the age of the planet in geology because it conflicted with the good book. We tried the online approach via a public online school. While this meets the needs of some, sitting in front of a computer all day did not work for my very social kid.

Many homeschoolers just skip high school and go directly to college, but my daughter wanted the high school experience. Part education activist, part Northside loyalist, I enrolled my daughter at North High School knowing that if she got in with the go-getter crowd and attended the classes with the teachers I had met who held high standards, she could get herself a decent education.

Part of that worked out well. She became friends with kids who had their eyes set on postsecondary success. She had some great teachers who helped her succeed. The 4 on her AP History exam is my proof, for you naysayers out there who might question if I know what academic rigor looks like.

But I could see that she was not reading or writing enough in the 10th grade to be ready for college. At her fall parent teacher conference, I asked the English teacher if she was ever going to put a book into my daughter’s hand that year or if she would ever be asked to write an extended essay. “If you want your daughter to read books, you could have her read them at home,” she suggested.

“So you are asking me to home-school after she has been in school all day long?”

This led to an honors literature syllabus being approved for that year. But how in the world did a school with 33 percent of its students at or above in reading not have an honors literature course in the first place?

This exhausting exchange led me to review the Concurrent Enrollment laws. While DPS has created a system to allow 11th and 12th graders the opportunity to attend college classes if they proved academically ready, the law was written to allow 9th through 12th graders if the schools they attended did not have classes that met their academic need.

I walked this rule exception up the chain of command at DPS, and the district allowed her to begin taking college classes in the 10th grade. This patchwork quilt of opportunities seemed to be working, but then my daughter suggested South High School in her junior year as an easier way to the same end result.

For those who only look at data points from CSAP, you might once again think I was a reckless mother for choosing a school that does not hold students to a high level. To these “one-test” data-pointers, I say come to see the next play produced by Jennifer Rinaldi. Attend the International Day when the new immigrants from around the world who attend South High show off their cultures. Visit Mr. Nichols chemistry class and see how he builds up academic discipline. South is not perfect, but it was close to perfect for my kid.

My baby is graduating tonight. Thank you to all of her teachers – the district teachers, counselors, administrators, DPL librarians, the Craigslist tutors, the home school cooperatives, my family and friends. Testing, parental involvement, rigor and relevance, choice – it all mattered on this twisted journey to tonight’s diploma.

About the author

Elisa Cohen is a mother, a graduate student in UC Denver’s School of Public Affairs, the editor of the North Denver Tribune, a former teacher at North High School and a future teacher at West Generation Academy.

For a fascinating trip through the looking glass, watch the video below from a Memphis, Tenn. TV station. Nice to know Denver has figured it all out.

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A screenshot from the state's proposed enrollment targets calculator. It shows the range of target enrollments for a school enrolling 150 students in Brooklyn's District 15.

The state is preparing to take a step forward in implementing a two-year-old clause in its charter school law that requires the schools to serve their fair share of high-needs students.

When legislators revised the charter school law in 2010, their main objective was to increase the number of charters allowed. But they also added a requirement that charter schools enroll “comparable” numbers of students with disabilities and English language learners, populations that the schools typically under-enroll.

What comparability would mean has never been clear — until now. Last week, the state unveiled a proposed methodology for calculating enrollment targets, and it intends to finalize the algorithm at next month’s meeting of SUNY’s Board of Trustees, which oversees charter schools.

The targets would vary from school to school and be determined based on the overall ratio of high-needs students in each district. The proposal includes a calculator that determines enrollment targets for any school based on its location, the grades it serves, and the size of its student body.

Under the proposed methodology, a charter school with 400 students in grades five through eight in Upper Manhattan’s District 6, for example, would have to enroll 98 percent students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 15 percent students with disabilities, and 44 percent ELLs. In District 2, which has more affluent families and fewer immigrants, a similar school would be expected to enroll 64 percent poor students and 13.4 percent ELLs. But it would still need to have 15 percent of students with special needs.

Some charter schools already meet and exceed their enrollment targets. But many others fall far short, as a charter sector self-assessment published last month indicated. The report found that 80 percent of charter schools enroll a lower proportion of poor students than their district.

Under the law, repeated failure to meet the enrollment targets could result in a school losing its right to operate. But more immediately, charter schools that don’t meet their enrollment targets will be expected to show a “good faith” effort to boost their numbers, according to Cynthia Proctor, a spokeswoman for SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute.

“Once the methodology is approved and targets set, part of developing authorizer practice will certainly be conversations with schools and related guidance on expectations in terms of good faith efforts to meet targets,” Proctor said in an email.

Those efforts are likely to include focusing recruitment efforts on high-needs populations and asking the state for permission to give preference to different groups of high-needs students in their admission lotteries, as some schools have already done.

“Some of the charters may need to change their enrollment procedures to make sure they’re reaching out to those families and places and centers,” said Jacqueline Frey, who runs DREAM Charter School in Harlem.

But Frey added, “From my perspective, this doesn’t change the nature of how we do our business.” The school has more special education students than the targets would require but slightly too few low-income students and ELLs.

Other charter school operators say the targets represent a step forward in addressing ongoing inequities in charter school enrollments but don’t solve the problem.

“It seems like it’s the outcome we all want, but it doesn’t sound like it’s telling us how to get there,” said Morty Ballen, the founder of the Explore Charter Schools network.

Indeed, schools face real challenges around enrolling some high-needs populations. State law requires that they admit students via a lottery and fill their seats, so charter schools cannot simply set aside a portion of seats for high-needs students. Once schools are full, they cannot admit midyear arrivals, who are often immigrants who do not speak English. Plus, schools that help some students shed their ELL or special education designation could be dinged if their portion of high-needs students decreases.

The methodology could still be changed to reflect some of the challenges. The state’s proposal notes, for example, that ELL students are not evenly distributed within school districts, but instead tend to concentrate in certain neighborhood pockets, so the methodology might generate targets that are unreasonably high or low for schools.

The targets are only for charter schools, but their creation is causing the state to look at enrollment trends in district schools, too. Together, the scrutiny can only be good for students, said James Merriman, executive director of the New York City Charter School Center.

“We support efforts to improve transparency around special education and student enrollment in both charter schools and district schools with the end goal of improving achievement for all kids,” he said.

SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute is holding a webinar May 18 to detail the proposed target methodology and will accept comments about it until May 29.

“We hope that one of the realizations that emerges from the extensive process followed to bring us to the point where we are now is that this is complex work,” Proctor said.

Chicago voters overwhelmingly back Mayor Rahm Emanuel's push to extend the school day, but far more of them side with the teachers union than the mayor on overall efforts to improve education, a new Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows.

Sizable majorities of Chicago residents as a whole (86 percent) and public school parents (92 percent) agreed with if teachers are going to teach longer hours, they should be paid more for it.

Chicago Teachers Union officials are calling Marc Wigler “a spy,’’ a “stool pigeon” and a “rat’’ following his April 24 ouster for life from the union for allegedly feeding a top Chicago Public Schools labor official information about an internal union meeting. Wigler was accused of sending CPS labor relations chief Rachel Resnick a 50-bullet-point email, detailing what CTU officials told union delegates during a special meeting the evening before, CTU officials say. Wigler, who earned $85,000 last year as a resource teacher working in multiple schools, declined to comment Tuesday. (Sun-Times)

Some parochial schools in Chicago will close because of the NATO summit May 20-21. But, Chicago Public School officials plan to hold classes at schools near McCormick Place. (ABC 7 News)

The State Board of Education has given preliminary approval to a nearly $1 million contract with the consulting firm that former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas heads. According to documents posted on the board's website, the contract would call for Vallas Group to work on "coordination of interventions in low-performing school districts."

Reading In Motion released the results from a study revealing that a combination of music-based curriculum, coaching of teachers and small-group instruction can raise the number of kindergarten students who are reading at grade level to 92 percent, compared to 63 percent without these components. The study involved six Chicago Public Schools and 550 students. In the first year, teachers got 63 percent of their students to grade level in reading, using their standard methods. The same teachers were able to get 92 percent of their students to grade level the following year with the use of Reading In Motion’s program which incorporates all three components – music, teacher support and small group instruction. (Press release)

IN THE NATION
Under a new pilot program, kindergartners could help put Georgia at the forefront of a growing movement to make student surveys part of how teachers are rated. Students in every grade will participate in the program, and, depending on its results, the state may incorporate the feedback into teacher evaluations as early as next year, when it will join other measures such as student test scores. (Washington Post)

As a response to the Department of Education’s $10 million funding cut to the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, advocates held a briefing on Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the program’s strong track record and share data showcasing the program’s positive impact on underserved students. Founded in 1986, McNair prepares low-income, first-generation and minority undergraduates for careers in academia. (Press release)

The National Center for Education Statistics is rechecking data on about 5,000 high schools after faulty information from the federal agency led to erroneous rankings for the high schools on U.S. News & World Report's "Best High Schools" list. (Education Week)

• Common Core standards architect David Coleman will head the test-making College Board. (Times)
• The city’s response to the union “turnaround” suit says a delay would be damaging. (GothamSchools)
• A janitor at P.S. 160 in the Bronx is being hailed for foiling a potential kidnapping. (Post, NBC)
• The principal removed after being accused of lewd behavior is being demoted. (Post, Daily News, NY1)
• A growing emphasis on standardized testing nationally has given rise to scattered rebellions. (WSJ)
• The backlash has led to intense criticism of testing firms even as the firms continue to expand. (WSJ)
• Florida schools won’t be penalized for low writing test scores after all scores fell. (Orlando Sentinel)
• Michelle Rhee’s ongoing advocacy through StudentsFirst continues to win big funders. (Reuters)
• A lawsuit funded by reform advocates takes aim at California’s tenure and seniority rights. (L.A. Times)

• A Los Angeles teacher says a robust teacher evaluation protocol has turned into a checklist. (Hechinger)
• Jay Mathews says he changed his mind about value-added ratings: They won’t work. (Class Struggle)
• A city teacher with top students scored low while her students aced an advanced exam. (GS Community)
• Analysts say the “Pineapple” debacle isn’t likely to hurt Pearson’s growing education arm. (Crain’s NY)
• Two Denver schools are under scrutiny after test scores fell amid tighter security. (EdNews Colorado)
• Reading materials at city schools are likely to change under Common Core standards. (Learning Matters)
• A teacher and union leader reports that a principal sent to sensitivity training has resigned. (JD2718)
• A Park Slope parent makes and sells maps showing the zones for neighborhood schools. (SchoolBook)
• A teacher worries what will happen to a depressed student over the summer. (Miss Eyre/NYC Educator)
• Tech leaders are showing an increasing interest in public schools and their students. (Fast Company)
• A half-hour show on education innovation by Channel 13 features Chancellor Walcott. (Metrofocus)
• A parent asks whether she must honor her child’s teacher’s summer school suggestion. (Insideschools)

City lawyers have filed their response to a union lawsuit that seeks to derail plans to move forward on 24 school closures. Both sides are due in court tomorrow to argue their case about whether a temporary restraining order on the closures should be extended.

The lawsuit seeks to prevent the Department of Education from following through on its decision last month to “turn around” 24 schools at the end of the school year. The plans include the replacement of up to 50 percent of the teaching staffs at the schools.

Lawyers for the principals and teachers unions filed the lawsuit last week, and the DOE agreed to halt all hiring until Wednesday’s hearing as part of the restraining order.

As we reported last week – and as the city’s response below argues – one problem the city has with the motion is that further delay to its plans could “cause disruption” to the hiring process.

The hearing will be for a preliminary injunction, so the unions will need to  successfully argue, among other things, that the closures are harmful enough to justify an extended restraining order. They will also need to prove a high likelihood of ultimately winning the case.

Whatever the Judge Joan Lobis rules on Wednesday — if she rules at all (a preliminary injunction on last year’s closure lawsuit ended with no decision) — it will only be on the temporary restraining order, not on the larger merits of the lawsuit.

Department of Education Legal Response – UFT/CSA Lawsuit

State officials on Tuesday opened investigations into possible cheating at two Denver elementary schools, interviewing the principals and staff at Beach Court Elementary and Hallett Fundamental Academy. Principals of the two schools were placed on administrative leave.

Denver Public Schools leaders were releasing limited information about the investigation, including the names of the schools, which have been confirmed by other multiple sources.

DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said district staff conducted a “very thorough” analysis of 2011 assessment data for schools across the city.

“Where that analysis raised statistical concerns, we shared the information with the state Department of Education and asked the state to lead an examination,” Boasberg said. “I want to stress that the existence of this statistical analysis does not imply wrongdoing nor have we reached any conclusions.”

Learn more

• See state test results in recent years for Beach Court Elementary and for Hallett Fundamental Academy
• Read the district’s press release on the investigation

The Colorado Department of Education, though its legal counsel, the state Attorney General’s office, has hired a New York-based consulting firm to assist in the investigation. DPS is footing the bill. The same firm, Alvarez & Marsal, was hired in March to look into similar concerns in the Washington D.C. public schools.

“We do feel we have a duty to look further where we saw statistically unusual patterns, and that is why we asked the state to look into those cases,” Boasberg said. “Ultimately, the decisions on any potential consequences, if any wrongdoing is discovered, is for the district.”

Parents of students at the two schools were notified of the investigation and a districtwide communication to parents went out Tuesday afternoon.

Sources confirmed the analysis of DPS test results included an examination of erasure marks on student answer sheets. Results showed the two schools far exceeded district averages in the number of wrong answers erased and replaced with correct responses.

As part of their initial analysis, district officials placed testing monitors in a number of schools during the spring administration of the TCAP state exams. Last week, when third-grade reading TCAP results were released, both Beach Court and Hallett posted double-digit declines.

The principals

• Hallett Principal Charmaine Keeton has more than 30 years experience in education, with 24 years as a classroom teacher. Hallett is her first principalship. She has led the school since 2008-09.
• Frank Roti has been Beach Court’s principal for a decade, coming from two years as assistant principal at West High School. Before that, he was a classroom teacher and new teacher trainer in Missouri.

Beach Court dropped 40 percentage points on both the English and Spanish-language versions of the exams while Hallett, which did not administer the Spanish-language version, dropped 12 points. Remaining TCAP results will be released in late July.

Beach Court Principal Frank Roti has led the school since 2002 and Charmaine Keeton has been Hallett’s principal since 2008. Both principals were notified Tuesday of the investigation; DPS school board members were briefed Monday afternoon in closed session.

Beach Court has been the recipient of glowing media reports and district praise since 2005, when the high-poverty neighborhood school in Northwest Denver began posting strong increases in reading, writing and math.

In 2009, the district held a press conference at the school to announce DPS’ strong state test results and to applaud the work of Roti and his staff. The school also has received national praise, highlighted at NBC’s Education Nation event in 2010.

Hallett, also a high-poverty school, is a magnet program drawing students from across the district to its back-to-basics curriculum. The school was formerly known as Knight Fundamental Academy and its program was moved into the former Hallett Elementary building in Northeast Denver in 2009.

Both schools have recorded strong gains in test results, particularly Beach Court, which saw its reading proficiency rate rise from 40 percent in 2004 to 85 percent in 2011. Hallett’s reading proficiency hit 63 percent in 2004, dropped to the 50 percent range from 2005 to 2010 and then climbed from 50 percent in 2010 to 66 percent in 2011.

Beach Court is rated on the DPS performance report card as a “blue” or distinguished school, meaning it “exceeds expectations” and ranks as one of the district’s highest-performing schools. Hallett is rated as a “green” school, or one that “meets expectations” set by DPS. Both schools are rated “performance” by the state, its top rating.

It’s unclear whether additional years will be examined as part of the investigation or whether additional schools might become involved.

“This will not be a protracted investigation,” said Jo O’Brien, the state’s assistant commissioner for testing. “The due diligence on the data, initially performed by DPS, which was very thorough and very well done, has been confirmed and added to with the resources of the state’s larger metrics and methodology … We do not expect this to be long at all.”

O’Brien said it’s not unusual for a school or district to call and ask state officials to check out a statistical anomaly in the million-plus state tests administered annually. What is unusual about the data brought forth by DPS, she said, is “a level of severity that caught our eye.”

Tuesday’s action marks the first state-led cheating investigation at a Denver school, but it’s not the first time questions have been raised about gains in DPS.

Last year, USA Today conducted an analysis of reading and math scores in seven states, including Colorado, and found 69 Colorado schools where students moving from one grade to the next posted dramatic growth, or jumps greater than 99 percent of their peers in the state. Of that total, 29 percent were in DPS. Beach Court was on the list for gains made between 2006 and 2007.

But state assessment officials admitted Colorado leaders declined to pay for erasure analysis as part of their testing contract with CTB-McGraw Hill and their own statistical analysis did not flag those schools. DPS administrator Connie Casson said then that district leaders did not conduct systemic analysis of scores, such as what was done by USA Today, for potential cheating. She said they did look into incidents brought to their attention by staff in schools or by district instructional leaders poring over results.

In March, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a national look at cheating and cited DPS among districts with test score results warranting a second look.

“The accuracy of our student progress data is very important,” Boasberg said Tuesday. “Families … use the data to understand how kids are doing, and how much progress they’re making. Teachers use the data to inform their instruction, to know what to focus on, to know how to target their teaching, and therefore it’s very important that we have completely accurate information about how our kids are doing.”

Van Schoales, executive director of A+ Denver, a citizens advisory group to DPS, said the possibility of cheating is “incredibly disappointing and sad for the kids and families of the schools, if true.”

“It suggests that kids have a certain level of knowledge and skills that they don’t have,” Schoales said. “If you’re told in elementary school, you’re a good reader and writer and mathematician and you switch into another school and all of a sudden your scores drop, you could draw all kinds of conclusions that may not be right about why that is. The real reason why is because you don’t know those things in the first place.

“If you’re not self-aware about what you know and can do … then you’re really not in a position to get any better.”

Higher test scores can mean more money in Denver, where a performance-based system known as teacher and principal “ProComp” awards bonuses based on student growth and performance on state exams.

For example, a teacher enrolled in ProComp this year could earn bonuses topping $2,000 each if their students exceed district expectations on state exams or if their school is designated as a “high-growth” school or a “high-performing” school on the district’s annual report card.

Statewide, the full implementation of Senate Bill 10-191, the Great Teachers and Leaders Act, in 2014-15 will link student test scores with decisions about teacher and principal pay, retention and dismissal.

Because of those added consequences, as well as the state’s accountability system, which also relies heavily on the exams, O’Brien said the Department of Education this fall will debut enhanced test security policies.

Beach Court test scores

Hallett test scores

During her brief stint as city schools chancellor, Cathie Black pulled the brakes on a planned rollout of special education reforms. Now, educators and parents are asking the city to slow things down once more.

They say the departure of the city’s top two special education officials will leave the Department of Education ill-equipped to carry out the planned reforms. They are also charging that the city’s proposal to change the way special education instruction is funded could encourage schools to place disabled students in settings that are not ideal for them.

The special education reforms are meant to encourage schools to move disabled students to settings that are less restrictive. The shift is in keeping with best practices in special education, and students are supposed to have their services changed only if it makes sense for them. But the city wants to add an incentive: Under a proposal likely to be approved next week, students who receive special education services for only a portion of the day would bring more city funds than students in self-contained settings for the entire day.

It’s a proposal that has educators and parents alike concerned. ”When it comes to special education we all know that as you move a child to a less restrictive environment, it’s a better thing, but it only works when it is appropriate for the child,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said at a union conference on Saturday. “When you start pushing to make that decision based on budget, then we have to start to question whether it’s appropriate or not.”

The elected parent council from Manhattan’s District 2 aired the same concerns in a letter sent last week to Laura Rodriguez, the outgoing deputy chancellor in charge of special education. “While it is difficult to tell exactly what the net result of the new Fair Student Funding formula will be, it seems likely that the proposed formula is neither sufficient nor flexible enough for schools to develop the best support structure for the students with special needs,” the letter reads.

The council is asking the city to delay the special education reforms until after Rodriguez’s successor, Corinne Rello-Anselmi, is firmly in place and a new deputy has been named. Lauren Katzman was the executive director of special education for the department until last month, when she left to head special education in Newark.

“During the time when a new initiative is introduced, a stable staff, particularly the architects of the reform, at the leadership level is critical in avoiding confusion and facilitating a smoother implementation,” the council’s letter says.

The Panel for Educational Policy, which has never rejected a city proposal, is set to vote on the new funding formula next Wednesday. The complete letter sent last week by District 2′s Community Education Council is below.

The Logan Square Neighborhood Association is establishing the Logan Square School Facilities Council to make sure no closed-door decisions are made at the Board of Education about the future of Ames Middle School.

Three elementary schools currently feed into Ames (Mozart, McAuliffe and Nixon), but starting next year Mozart will keep its 7th graders, and 8th graders the following year. LSNA says this decision was made behind closed doors, without local principals or the network chief being made aware of the decision until it was a done deal. LSNA learned later, from the CPS website, that a public meeting was held March 12 regarding the decision, but the organization can find no one who was aware of this decision. LSNA is concerned that enrollment at Ames will drop, making way for a closing or co-location. (Academically, Ames is not at risk for turnaround or closing.) LSNA has a very strong history at Ames. The school was built as a result of an LSNA school overcrowding campaign in the mid-'90s. The LSCs of Ames and surrounding schools have all voted to endorse the Logan Square School Facilities Council.

Deborah Campbell, a 7th grade science teacher at Josephine Locke Elementary School in Chicago, left Monday to work with scientists studying the ecosystem in Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Georgia. She plans to incorporate this experience into her lessons to better engage students in the sciences. Through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Teacher at Sea program, Campbell is  will spend11 days working on a ship, living the life of a field scientist. Campbell will be blogging about her voyage. You can read her posts here.

Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey filled in for union president Karen Lewis on FOX Chicago Sunday. A lot of the decision centered on teacher pay, a recent poll gauging teachers' willingness to strike, the union's reaction to school closures and the union's upcoming pep rally.

State education officials stepped up involvement in North Chicago public schools last month, announcing plans to replace the locally elected school board. (WBEZ)

IN THE NATION
Education Week is doing a special series on education advocacy groups and the influence these emerging interests are having over education policy and practice, particularly at the state and local levels. This week's content includes three stories, a video and an interactive game related to "The Changing Face of Education Advocacy." Read the entire series here.

"Degrees of Debt," a new series by The New York Times, examines the implications of soaring college costs and the indebtedness of students and their families.

It appears that DCPS is finally prepared to comply with the early retirement provision of the contract it signed with the Washington Teachers’ Union. The 2010 collective bargaining agreement says that teachers with good evaluations and 20 years of service who lose their jobs in the annual “excessing” process are eligible for early retirement with full benefits. (The Washington Post)

For Abraham Moussako, a 2011 graduate, working on the student newspaper at Bronx High School of Science was an exercise in frustration.

He writes today in the Community section:

Getting an article approved in your school newspaper covering an incident that garnered the institution bad publicity citywide is the sort of thing that probably would be a chore in any circumstance. But it was an even dicier situation at the [Science] Survey, where the administration took its power of prior review over the paper seriously.

Moussako’s description of several run-ins that he and other editors had with the school’s famously hands-on administration fans a longstanding debate about the role of school officials in reviewing student journalism. Reports from advocates of student journalism suggest that many city principals exercise their legal right to review and curb reporting that appears in school newspapers.

Bronx Science Principal Valerie Reidy is one of them. She told GothamSchools she has a responsibility for every word that appears in the Science Survey, so she reviews the paper for grammatical errors, tone, and whether issues are presented in a balanced way. While some students don’t like her involvement, she said it’s no different from the way she works with the student government, where students gain experience in politics but don’t actually make school policy.

Fundamentally, she said, she is involved with the newspaper’s management for educational reasons.

“Good journalism is the scientific process,” Reidy said. “Our goal [at Bronx Science] is that everyone can analyze situations and think clearly and show both sides of an issue objectively before drawing conclusions.”

But sometimes, according to Moussako, the issue for student journalists wasn’t how to cover an issue but whether they could write about it at all. He describes spiking an editorial about widely reported conflicts between Reidy and teachers at the school after Reidy rejected it. Speaking with GothamSchools, Reidy suggested that those conflicts don’t belong in the student paper precisely because they have gotten attention in the city’s professional press.

“In a school newspaper are we going to allow that newspaper to vent every single complaint of a teacher or should it be about student issues?” she asked.

• Manhattan Beep Scott Stringer: Exam errors should make the state halt new evaluations. (Daily News)
• The Daily News says Stringer’s teacher evaluation stance puts him on the fringe and should be rejected.
• A labor panel again backed mediation for the city’s evaluation talks. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• Another Brooklyn chess team, from Sunset Park’s P.S. 503, won a national tournament. (SchoolBook)
• Walcott maintains a blistering pace of school visits, especially compared to Joel Klein. (GothamSchools)
• A senior at Fordham wants the university to “adopt” high schools at the Roosevelt campus. (Daily News)

Faced with the not-so-user-friendly new state standards, a literacy coach offers suggestions to daunted teachers.

Change is challenging.

Transition between the old and familiar to a new and ambiguous unknown is tough.

Just ask a literacy teacher trying to navigate the new Colorado Academic Standards.

In late April, on a spring day that felt more like summer break than second semester, more than 30 literacy teachers representing grades six through 10 in Aurora Public Schools left their students with a substitute. They gathered at the district Professional Learning and Conference Center and were joined by district leaders, literacy coaches and English Language Acquisition consultants as the newly formed Curriculum and Instruction Literacy Advisory Group.

The goal? To begin the curriculum redesign and revision process to transition and align literacy instruction to the new Colorado Academic Standards for reading, writing and communicating.

The day’s end result? A group of exhausted, wide-eyed, confused and bewildered teachers who left wondering how it’s all going to come together in time for transitional field testing on the first day of school in August.

True to Colorado’s independent pioneer spirit, the standards for Reading, Writing and Communicating are a blend of original state-created language and the national Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. The new standards address 21st Century skill and readiness competencies, and include “relevance and application” language that outlines the possible real world uses and contexts of mastering a certain standard or skill cluster.

Totaling 170 pages when opened as a PDF, the new state standards are dense and daunting. Upon first read, the document is deterring to teachers who were sold on a pitch of “fewer, higher and clearer” standards – the original message from education leaders responsible for drafting the first version of the current document.

New standards are slated for implementation in 2013-14.

Faced with this timeline and a new state standardized assessment system looming in the not-so-distant future, teachers in Aurora Public Schools and across the state are rolling up their sleeves and giving the Colorado Academic Standards a close read. And a re-read. They are annotating, discussing and picking apart the document. You might say they are doing to the standards what the standards suggest they do with their students. They are “reading for all purposes.”

Which leads to the question, could teachers working through the standards serve as a model for the type of reading, writing and communicating work the document is asking of students? Could they use a not-so-user friendly document to practice 21st century learning and thinking?

If they did, it might result in the following “What would a 21st century learner do?” list of five tips to support other teachers:

1. Use available tools and information. Take advantage of the resources that live within the common core standards and the appendices as well as the emerging websites, blogs and curriculum resources popping up across the nation aligned to the standards.
2. Read the standards. Understand the content of your grade level standards as well as the big picture (the grade level above and below the grade you teach) and ask yourself: What is the recurring learning? The essential learning? What do the standards suggest that students should really know and be able to do at this grade level?
3. Think critically and creatively. According to the Colorado Department of Education’s website, “Standards are not the same as lesson plans or curriculum. They are the content understandings and abilities that lead a student to success beyond school.” Use what’s working in your classroom to transition to new standards and explore and experiment with new ways to engage your students in reading, writing, listening, speaking and critical thinking. Use your practice to drive discussions about relevant assessments. Don’t wait for the assessment to dictate or smother powerful pedagogy.
4. Collaborate. You are not alone. Talk to your colleagues. Network with teachers beyond your building, district and state. Read the blogs, tweets (#Teaching2030, #CommonCore, #CCSS) and wikis of teachers across the nation who are undergoing similar transitions and pick their brains (virtually or in person) for best practices and potential pitfalls.
5. Take risks. The change may be inevitable, but the way teachers harness and leverage the change is not. Use the new standards as an opportunity to explore and play with your instructional practice to find new ways to make learning authentic and relevant for the 21st century learners in front of you. See the new standards as a learning opportunity, not a political mandate.

Change is challenging. But it is also filled with opportunity and hope.

Let’s turn transition into transformative teaching and learning.

About the author

Jessica Cuthbertson is a Literacy Teacher Coach serving Aurora Public Schools. She is an active member of the Denver New Millennium Initiative, a project of the Center for Teaching Quality.

• A series of articles tackles the growing clout of big advocacy groups, and their mixed results. (EdWeek)
• A teacher at a turnaround school says he’s not getting clear details about hiring. (Chaz’s School Daze)
• The city’s scoring of the state’s math and reading tests should be finished by Wednesday. (SchoolBook)
• Parents are upset after New Jersey’s state test asked third-graders to reveal a personal secret. (CBS)
• Educators are signing a petition to keep the state Global Studies Regents exam. (Mr. D’s Neighborhood)
• A teacher describes five test-prep strategies that work for him — but also make him sick. (NYCDOENuts)
• A teacher who taught AP Calculus for the first time this year explains why it was also the last. (JD2718)
• Ravitch notes the nasty names that charter advocates called her and other critics in emails. (DR’s Blog)
• A teacher asks why his colleagues are surprised by the charter backers-Joel Klein emails. (Jose Vilson)
• Since David Wakelyn resigned as Gov. Cuomo’s education deputy, no one is in charge. (Ed in the Apple)
• In Georgia, students in every grade will complete surveys that help evaluate their teachers. (Hechinger)
• When the math gets ahead of one teacher, she tells her students she needs to slow down. (Mrs. Ripp)
• A teacher singles out a former student who makes her feel like she has made a difference. (SchoolBook)

For the second time, the state’s labor relations board has ruled that the city must accept mediation in its teacher evaluation talks with the United Federation of Teachers.

The board, the Public Employees Relations Board, first decided in March to heed the UFT’s request and appoint a mediator to broker negotiations about teacher evaluations in the 33 schools that until December had been receiving federal School Improvement Grants. But the city appealed the decision, arguing that it was no longer planning to negotiate a separate evaluation system for just those schools.

Now the board has affirmed its stance and once again ordered the city into mediated talks with the union.

When the board first granted the request, its director of conciliation said that because the city had not yet formally applied to switch the schools to a reform model that does not require new teacher evaluations, it was still obligated to seek a deal for the 33 schools. Today, the board ruled that the city’s bid to switch the overhaul model — to “turnaround,” in a swap that the state has not approved — “does not nullify its obligations.”

City lawyers are regrouping after the setback. “We strongly disagree with the board’s ruling and are reviewing our legal options,” said Department of Education spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti in a statement.

The ruling is separate from the lawsuit that the UFT filed last week to stop the city from carrying out turnaround at 24 schools. But UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement that PERB had supported a point that is fundamental to the union’s case.

“As we plan to tell the court at this week’s hearing, today’s PERB decision is an affirmation that the Department of Education needs to work with the teachers to find a way to improve these schools,” he said.

The Department of Education must respond in writing to the union’s lawsuit by the end of the work day on Tuesday, and the two sides are due in Manhattan Supreme Court for oral arguments on Wednesday.

In a second decision today, PERB certified the UFT as the bargaining agent for teachers at Sisulu-Walker Charter School in Harlem. The unionization bid there had been stymied by a recalcitrant board, even as the son of an anti-apartheid leader the school was named after pressed for recognition. The union represents teachers at 14 charter schools.