Education Standards

Some Public School Students Will Sit Out State Tests This Week in Protest

"These tests are harmful. They do nothing but stress us out and take away precious learning time. They don't make learning fun, they are all-consuming. ... We do not learn from these tests. Do we not go to school to learn?" Owen Hotaling, a freckled fifth grader in a sweatshirt and a bright red kn ... More >>

System Failure: The Collapse of Public Education

From our high schools to CUNY, New York City's numbers are in—and they are terrifying.

Hey DOE! It's Kind of Your Fault Boys and Girls High School is Under-Performing, Community Says

Those advocating to preserve the current structure of Boys and Girls High School say the New York City Department of Education has failed to calculate the role it has played in contributing to the school's drop in performance in recent years. The historic Bedford-Stuyvesant high school is facing th ... More >>

Bloomberg Fail: 'Hit List' Seeks to Close Down 36 Public Schools

Two days ago, City Hall released its 'Progress Report' for the country's largest public school system. In it, 217 of New York City's public schools were blacklisted for receiving either an F, D or the third C in a row on the Department of Education's report cards. It was the highest amount of a ... More >>

Bloomberg Unveils Plan for New Schools, Mum On Education Ideas of Mayoral Hopefuls

Yesterday afternoon, Mayor Mike Bloomberg joined Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott to unveil the city's plan to open 54 new schools this fall -- which the mayor touted as an important step in the reform efforts he began when he took control of the school system at the start of his administration. ... More >>

Parent Group Visits All Schools In Need of Improvement In Struggling Bronx District

​Juana Gonzalez, 35, standing on a quiet corner outside P.S. 58 in the Bronx yesterday afternoon, said she was feeling a bit nervous. The mother of three, whose two sons attend struggling schools in one of the city's lowest performing school districts, was waiting for dismissal -- but she wasn't ... More >>

Obama to Free New Jersey Schools From No Child Requirements

President Obama is expected to announce today that he will allow ten states to be exempted from the strict test-based measures of the No Child Left Behind Act. The states are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee -- and our beloved neighbor New ... More >>

Evaluate Teachers? Let Students Also Do It

Governor Cuomo has political capital—why waste it on more reliance on standardized testing?

Mayor Mike Bloomberg Heckled At MLK Event

It wasn't exactly the warmest reception the mayor has ever received. Mike Bloomberg stopped by the House of Justice in East Harlem earlier today -- where apparently most local electeds that matter (or hope to matter) were making their MLK appearances. Folks in the audience packed tightly into one l ... More >>

Bill de Blasio, John Liu, and Scott Stringer: Mr. Mayor, Why Did You Talk About Teachers That Way?

After Mayor Mike Bloomberg finished his State of the City speech in the Bronx, Runnin' Scared tripped over many reporters and shoved a recorder in the face of a few relevant pols to get their reactions. We reached Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, Comptroller John Liu, and Manhattan Borough President ... More >>

Bloomberg Schools Flunk the Constitution

We're raising a generation that doesn't know its rights

New York Students Not Ready For College; Regents Are to Blame

​Cathie Black is going to get screamed at for this one! A new report says that just 23 percent of students who graduated from New York City public schools in 2009 were ready for college. This number, the New York Times reports, "is well under half the current graduation rate of 64 percent, a ... More >>

Fight Night at the Schools Meeting

Brooklyn Tech High School will play host to tonight's meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, and it promises to be doozy. Barring interruptions from the weather, the panel should have quite a large audience in the house, as they debate closing some 25 low-performing high schools. If you pla ... More >>

Racial Inequality in Bloomberg's Schools

Bloomberg's Schools No. 2 Pick: Test-Prep Principals Are "Weak"

​So now that it looks like Cathie Black will become chief publisher of the New York City Department of Education, so long as Mayor Bloomberg appoints longtime school administrator Shael Polakow-Suransky as her editorial director, what do we know about her prospective sidekick?

Is New York Children Learning? New Test Scores Admit Defeat

​The New York state education department issued its annual test scores for 3rd- through 8th-graders this morning, and the takeaway is: They blow. The number of students judged proficient in English fell from 77% in 2009 to 53% this year; in math, the percent earning passing grades plunged from ... More >>

Many, Many Children Left Behind in Ed Doc, The Lottery

Test Cheats on Students: 'Partial Credit' Given for Wrong Answers on State Math Exam

Now we hear that public school students taking New York state's math test often get partial credit for wrong answers. As the state has been touting its reform credentials lately, the timing of this obvious score inflation couldn't be more embarrassing. According to the Post, "A kid who answers that ... More >>

Black Parents vs. the Teachers' Union

Union intransigence hits a low point

Test Scores Under Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein: A Mixed Report Card

​Results were released yesterday for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the results are very mixed under the tenure of Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. The national test, which looks at reading proficiency, showed some progress for the city's fourth-g ... More >>

Corby Kummer Stands Up for Alice Waters

Edible SchoolyardA nightmare of Caitlin Flanagan-sized proportions.​ On Tuesday, Caitlin Flanagan lobbed a large stink bomb in the direction of Alice Waters, attacking her Edible Schoolyard program in the pages of the latest issue of the Atlantic. Today, the Atlantic Food Channel's Corby Kumme ... More >>

Are High-Stakes Tests Harming NYC Schools?

Are No Child Left Behind and Bloomberg's report cards pushing schools to go grade-grubbing?

John Liu Sees a 'Dark Cloud' Over City Hall

Liu prepares to take over after beating Yassky to the comptroller bouquet​John Liu is taking no prisoners as he prepares for his January 1 launch as city comptroller. As the Post's David Seifman reports, Liu has informed 60 top managers at the office that their services won't be needed. At the ... More >>

The City's Bid to Save Cash Leaves New Teachers Out in the Cold

Barrett: Now Even the Times is Burnishing Bloomberg-Klein School Myths

​Since Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein do have a real record to sell, why do they insist on embellishing it? And why does every newspaper in town, now even including the New York Times, lend itself to the Department of Exaggeration's (DOE) campaign to merge the renewal of mayoral control and the re- ... More >>

City Says Fat Kids Lag in Learning; We Suggest the Prince Fielder Approach

Mike Bloomberg, whose Administration has made education a priority, has bragged on rising test scores, greater matriculation into CUNY schools, and especially the shrinking achievement gap between minority students and white students. But what about the achievement gap between physically fit and phy ... More >>

Mayor, UFT Head Getting Cozy; Whither Education Reform?

If you've read today Wayne Barrett story on Mayor Bloomberg's tendency to cut deals with the teacher's union, and why (if he's serious about school reform) he should cut it out, you may be interested in what PolitickerNY's Jason Horowitz reports about Bloomberg's mayoral control renewal campaign: he ... More >>

School English Test Scores Up; Critics Remain Unconvinced

Mayor Bloomberg happily announced that English scores are up in city schools. 69 percent of students in Grades 3 through 8 met state standards for reading. That doesn't sound so hot, and the statewide figure is 82 percent. But last year the city rate was 58 percent, so that's an 11-point gain, and ... More >>

More Questions on City's School Grades

On First Day of School, Mayor's Ed Policy Gets Spot Exam

Randi Weingarten and the National American Federation of Teachers: No Child Left Unhealed

To work, a public school must be active in students' lives before and after class

Parents Say Standardized Tests No Way to Pick Kids for Advanced Classes

Looking a Gifted Horse in the Mouth

Bloomberg Still in Denial About His Miserable Minority-Contracting Record

Stuyvesant, Bard Just Missed Mediocrity

New York's Fumble Recovery

Why Rutgers deserves more New York love, and Notre Dame less

Weighting for Lefty

Solving for Malcolm X at a Brooklyn confab

Scattered Class

Software gives peek at admissions odds

Dispersed and Unequal

New Orleans children are abandoned again, this time in Baton Rouge schools

Educate Yourself

Feel the Draft? It's in Our Schools.

Testing to Create Dropouts?

Playing the Numbers Game for Kids' Futures

Bush's New Federal Math Leaves Kids Far Behind

A Texas Hoax May Be the President's Waterloo

The High-Stakes Testing Trap

Rising Standards, Rising Dropouts

In School: The 'Success' of Failure

'The Dropout Rate Is Rising'

Bloomberg vs. Failing Schools

The Case for Merit Pay

Budgetary Bias

Groups Charge Discrimination in Education Spending

Misguided Multiculturalism

Our Historical Illiteracy

Fire Rudy Crew

The state fails 97 New York City schools

Trapped in Bad Schools

'If a Teacher Is Doing a Good Job, I Don't Care If He or She Is Green'