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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Klein to principals: Failing students need “extra attention” in fall | GothamSchools

Klein to principals: Failing students need “extra attention” in fall | GothamSchools

Klein to principals: Failing students need “extra attention” in fall


Thousands of city students who failed their math and reading exams and should have been held back can expect “extra attention” from their schools in the fall, but no formal city-mandated assistance.
That’s the message of a memo Schools Chancellor Joel Klein sent principals this afternoon.
“I expect each of your teacher teams to continue to identify your students’ areas of strength and areas that require extra attention,” Klein wrote. “This is particularly critical for those students who received low scores

Number of teachers rated unsatisfactory rose again last year

u-ratings-super-for-real-this-timeMore teachers than ever received unsatisfactory ratings last year, suggesting that the city’s push to rid the school system of more struggling teachers is working.
Principals gave unsatisfactory ratings to 1,813 teachers, 17 percent more than in 2009, according to data the city released today. They also denied tenure to 234 teachers this year, 80 percent more than last year. And

Told they passed, thousands of students failed state exams

Thousands of students are moving up to the next grade this fall even though they failed last year’s state reading and math tests.
Caught between two sets of conflicting test standards — one produced by the city, one by the state — over 10,000 students were wrongly labeled as passing or failing.
Some of them, about 1,807, will get to skip the last week of the summer session, which they had attended unnecessarily. The new state standards show that these students passed their exams.
But the vast majority of them, about 8,500, were initially told they passed and will shortly learn that they actually failed. City education officials have decided to promote these students to the next grade level, though in a typical