Whenever Eduflack writes about the "successes" of New York City's school improvement efforts under Chancellor Joel Klein, I get publicly flogged by some audience or another. Most take significant issue with my conclusions that NYC Department of Education has improved the quality of the public schools. Others take issue with giving Klein (and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg) credit for such school improvement. And even if I can get the opposition to acknowledge an uptick in student achievement in NYC, they will immediately retort that the gains are minimal, and not nearly enough to declare turnaround efforts in New York a success.
My responses to such criticism have been relatively simple. The test scores, at least on New York's state exams, do show gains in both reading and math in NYC. If you don't believe the final tallies coming from Albany, you should at least acknowledge that NYC has won the Broad Prize, and that Broad similarly crunched the numbers and found academic gains across the city. And if the gains aren't big enough for you yet, first, give it time. Then remember how large the NYCDOE truly is. Upticks in a system that size are worthy of praise.
Always a glutton for punishment, Eduflack is going to raise the NYC achievement flag again. Today, we're going to reflect on a forum hosted yesterday by the Alliance for Excellent Education. Offering a multi-hour symposium yesterday under the banner of "Informing Federal Education Policy Through Lessons from New York City," the Alliance also put a spotlight on a new report it has released, "New York City's Strategy for Improving High Schools."