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Math Not Mathing
NYC official reveals plunging math scores at schools using new DOE curriculum: ‘Decline across the city’
NY Post, 8/17/2024
Scores on Algebra 1 Regents exam plummeted by 14 percentage points at south Queens schools that used a controversial new curriculum teachers have blasted as “a complete disaster,” a superintendent revealed this week
Josephine Van Ess, superintendent of Queens South High Schools, told parent leaders Wednesday that the 29 high schools under her watch, all but one of which used the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, saw their average pass rate plunge from 59% to 45%.
The commercial curriculum — which forces teachers to give scripted lessons on a rigid schedule, expects students to “discover” solutions with little instruction, and frustrates kids lacking prerequisite skills — is partly to blame.
Illustrative Math Meltdown
NYC teachers blast new math curriculum amid leaked reports of failing test scores: ‘Complete disaster’
NY Post, 8/10/2024
NYC Algebra teachers are dreading the next school year — when nearly all of them will have to use a commercial math curriculum being blasted as “a complete disaster.”
Last year, teachers at 265 schools piloted the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, which Chancellor David Banks is betting on to improve the city’s lagging math scores.
Illustrative Math overhauls how teens learn math. Teachers must stick to scripted lessons on a rigid schedule. Students work in groups to tackle problems and are expected to “discover” the answers with little instruction. Gifted students can handle it, but those below grade level without the prerequisite skills become frustrated, teachers said.
Class Size Law Inequities
New class size caps could worsen teacher turnover at high-poverty schools, report warns
Chalkbeat, 7/25/2024
New York City’s highest-poverty schools could experience an exodus of teachers in the coming years, an unintended consequence of a sweeping class size mandate, according to a new report.
All of the city’s public schools must limit their class sizes by 2028 to between 20 and 25 students, depending on the grade level, thanks to a new state law. But more affluent schools tend to have more crowded classes, which will require more teacher hiring.
Low Income Loses with Class Size Law
Will Implementing Class Size Caps Exacerbate Hiring Challenges in New York City’s Highest-Poverty Schools?
The Urban Institute, 7/25/2024
New York State passed a law in 2022 requiring New York City’s public schools to reduce classes to 20 students in grades K–3, 23 students in grades 4–8, and 25 students in grades 9–12 by the 2027–28 school year. The city will need to hire thousands of new teachers to comply with this mandate. This additional need is likely to strain hiring in subjects and schools where vacancies have historically been harder to fill. These newly hired teachers will be concentrated in lower-poverty schools, but teachers who transfer into these new openings from other schools in the city will create additional vacancies that need to be filled.
Elections Watch
Matching funds heat up SD 11 race: Toby Stavisky vs Yiatin Chu
Queens Chronicle, 8/15/2024
Rajkumar in comptroller race
Queens Chronicle, 8/15/2024
How the Israel-Hamas War Could Shape the New York City Mayoral Race
NY Times, 8/18/2024
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander officially announces mayoral bid against Adams
NY Post, 7/30/2024
The Working Families Party follows DSA fanatics
NY Daily News, 7/26/2024
Could New York become a swing state in 2024?
Fox5, 7/12/2024
Other Headlines
Supreme Court maintains block on entirety of Biden administration’s new Title IX rule
CBS, 8/17/2024
In Demand: The Colleges Where Students Start Jobs Right Away
Wall Street Journal, 8/17/2024
The New Rules Governing Student Conduct at Colleges Across the Country
Wall Street Journal, 8/16/2024
Math Scandal
The Cheating Scandal Rocking the World of Elite High-School Math
Wall Street Journal, 8/15/2024
America’s top colleges and finance-industry recruiters have long had their eye on teenage whiz-kids who compete in a prestigious high-school math contest. Now, allegations of cheating are threatening to disrupt it.
Online leaks of tests for the country’s best-known math contest—the 74-year-old American Mathematics Competitions—are upsetting students who have spent years preparing for the exams. Ahead of the coming school year and test season, angry parents and math coaches have pushed the contest’s administrator to tighten controls.
NYC elected officials push for student newspapers at every high school
Gothamist, 8/14/2024
AAUP Ends Two-Decade Opposition to Academic Boycotts
Inside Higher Ed, 8/12/2024
Missing the Mark
Nearly 6 out of 10 middle and high school grades are wrong, study finds
The Hechinger Report, 8/12/2024
If we graded schools on how accurately they grade students, they’d fail. Nearly six out of 10 course grades are inaccurate, according to a new study of grades that teachers gave to 22,000 middle and high school students in 2022 and 2023.
Inflated grades were more common than depressed grades. In this analysis, over 40 percent of the 33,000 grades analyzed – more than 13,000 transcript grades – were higher than they should have been, while only 16 percent or 5,300 grades were lower than they should have been. In other words, two out of five transcript grades indicated that students were more competent in the course than they actually were, while nearly one out of six grades was lower than the student’s true understanding of the course content.
8 million student-loan borrowers on Biden’s new repayment plan just got more bad news after a federal court officially blocked cheaper payments and debt cancellation
Business Insider, 8/9/2024
Northeastern completely reinvented itself. Here’s what that could mean for higher ed as a whole.
Boston Globe, 8/9/2024
FAFSA Fiasco
College Financial Aid Applications Delayed for Second Straight Year
Wall Street Journal, 8/7/2024
Most families won’t be able to start filling out their federal college financial-aid forms until late fall, as the government’s new online form continues to cause headaches for the second year in a row.
…The Education Department said Wednesday that it will limit applications to a small set of students and schools beginning Oct. 1, and then make it widely available by Dec. 1. Their aim is to avoid the types of technical glitches that plagued last year’s application, which prevented some applicants from submitting their forms, and inaccurate calculations that caused erroneous aid estimates to be shared with schools.
Back to school 2024: All NYC public elementary schools will lock front doors by early fall
siLive, 8/6/2024
The Urban Family Exodus Is a Warning for Progressives
The Atlantic, 8/5/2024
Study: Charters Boost College-Going — Even When Test Scores Fall
The 74 Million, 8/4/2024
Score Inflation
The College Board’s new method for raising AP scores
Advance, 8/2/2024
The College Board has released a preliminary explanation of what I have called the Great Recalibration of AP Exams. The report confirms that the central thesis of my article was correct: Hundreds of thousands of AP scores have been intentionally “recalibrated” upward since 2022. While I avoided sensational headlines about score “inflation,” I called the increase in scores a “radical transformation” of the AP program. But I had no idea just how radical the transformation actually was until the College Board released a report explaining the changes late last month.
NYC public schools, a fencing powerhouse and home to Olympians
Chalkbeat, 8/1/2024
California Lost 420K Public School Kids in 4 Years — & May Drop 1M More by 2031
The 74 Million, 7/31/2024
New Black studies curriculum to launch in NYC schools this fall
siLive, 7/29/2024
NYC students to get free OMNY cards, allowing for year-round travel any time of day
Chalkbeat, 7/25/2024
Dress Code Updates
How NYC schools’ new inclusive dress code would impact students
Fox5 NY, 7/19/2024
The NYC City Council has approved a bill to create a more uniform dress code for students in response to criticism that some schools target students for what they wear.
The council voted on Thursday to approve legislation that would require the Department of Education to be more inclusive when it comes to their dress code policy.
Unlikely Ed Allies Join Forces to Cut Chronic Absenteeism in Half
The 74 Million, 7/18/2024
NYC Cell Phone Ban Planned
NYC planning a school cellphone ban for February, principals say
Chalkbeat, 7/17/2024
New York City, the nation’s largest school system, is considering a plan to ban cellphones in its roughly 1,600 schools starting in February, according to several principals briefed on the possible policy.
Schools would have to come up with their own policies, principals told Chalkbeat, whether they collect devices at the start of the day or have students carry their phones in Yondr pouches, cloth cases for phones that are locked with a magnet from morning to dismissal..
New York schools must notify parents ahead of lockdown drills, under newly amended rules
Chalkbeat, 7/15/2024
Progress Declines
Faddish thinking is hobbling education in the rich world
The Economist, 7/12/2024
That the pandemic messed up schooling is well known. Between 2018 and 2022 an average teenager in a rich country fell some six months behind their expected progress in reading and nine months behind in maths, according to the OECD. What is less widely understood is that the trouble began long before covid-19 struck. A typical pupil in an OECD country was no more literate or numerate when the coronavirus first ran amok than children tested 15 years earlier. As our special report argues, education in the rich world is stagnating. This should worry parents and policymakers alike.
In America long-running tests of maths and reading find that attainment peaked in the early 2010s. Since then, average performance there has gone sideways or backwards. In Finland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, among other places, scores in some international tests have been falling for years. What has gone wrong?
Many Americans Think K-12 STEM Ed Lags Behind Peer Nations. They’re Half-Right
The 74 Million, 7/11/2024
Outmigration Woes
‘Urban Family Exodus’ Continues With Number of Young Kids in NYC Down 18%
Bloomberg, 7/10/2024
Families are still leaving large US cities, with the number of young children in New York City down by almost a fifth since the beginning of the pandemic, according to an analysis of the latest census data.
Since April 2020, the under-5 population has fallen by 18% in New York, 15% in Cook County, which includes Chicago, and 14% in Los Angeles County, the Economic Innovation Group said in a report.
Asian American students lose more points in an AI essay grading study — but researchers don’t know why
Hechinger Report, 7/8/2024
Unions Trump Students
New York Sells Out Children Again
Wall Street Journal Editorial, 7/7/2024
This being an election year, Democrats are looking to reward their union allies. Look no further than New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who recently signed a bill repealing hard-won school reforms. The new law reverses changes to teacher tenure and evaluations that were negotiated in 2015 between former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republicans who then controlled the state Senate.
…local districts and unions will be allowed to bargain collectively over performance reviews, which no longer will have to take into account student performance. This means fewer teachers will get bad marks, and those who do won’t face the threat of removal.
America’s biggest education experiment is happening in Houston. Could it change U.S. schools?
ABC13, 7/4/2024
Mo Money Mo Problems
Better Results with Lower Spending: Public Education in Massachusetts and New York
Empire Center, 7/3/2024
New York’s most-costly-in-the-nation public school system spends 36 percent more per student than neighboring Massachusetts ($29,873 versus $21,906, as of school year 2021-22). Yet the Bay State far outperforms New York in national assessments, most recently posting the highest combined score in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), while New York came in below the national average. What accounts for this surprising result?
New York measures to fire ineffective teachers repealed
Times Union, 7/2/2024
NYC is short billions to comply with class size law, chief fiscal watchdog warns
Chalkbeat, 6/25/2024