Curious2

NYC Math Test Workbook

To assist in reviewing the results for the latest math tests, I have gathered some data and compiled it into a single workbook that you can download here.  In addition to including some hard-to-find data, the workbook includes filters that allow you compare results based on whatever criteria you find interesting.  The results are sorted by grade and mean scale score.

Some notes:

1. I started with the workbooks provided on the DOE website on this page.

2. I added data from insideschools.org to note schools that are “gifted and talented”, “selective”, and “unzoned”.  Insideschools defines these terms as follows:

“Gifted program: Elementary school programs for which students are selected based on tests, performance assessment or prior grades.  The selection process for G&T was standardized citywide in 2007 and some schools listed on Insideschools as having gifted programs did not accept incoming classes for 2008.”

“Selective program: Middle school programs use a test or screening method such as academic records or an audition to choose its students.  They may be considered the equivalent of elementary school gifted and talented programs.  High school programs use their own admissions criteria, generally a test, audition or portfolio, to select their students.  Some selective programs are located in neighborhood schools; others are open to students from other areas.”

“Unzoned: These schools serve students from a whole district or even all boroughs, and accept children by special application or lottery.  Also referred to as option, choice, or magnet schools.”

Please note that these classifications are difficult to track and change often and, therefore, some of this data might be out of date.

3. I added demographic information for the 2007-08 year made available from files on this DOE page.  Note that this demographic data is a year old.  I haven’t been able to get the most current data.

4. I added the geographic district for all schools (including charters) for comparison purposes.

Charter School Expenses

Using the same data set discussed here and here, I calculated the total expenses per pupil at 58 New York City charter schools for the 2007-08 school year.  Here is the workbook with my calculations.

The total expenses for the 58 schools was $236,230,149.  The total enrollment was 17,680.  This comes out to a per pupil calculation of $13,361.  The average school expenses per pupil was $13,520.  The median school was $12,948.  For the 2007-08 school year, the “base funding” per pupil, i.e. the fixed amount per pupil received from the DOE, was $11,023.  So spending on the average student was $2,338 above the base amount. 

These numbers, from what I understand, include all expenses by the charter school, including the value of services rendered by a CMO (Charter Management Organization).  Through a friend, I asked an auditor the following question:

“When does an audit for a school need to reflect the value of free rent and other free services rendered by a CMO? In other words, can the CMO and/or Friends Of organization just give a school lots of free stuff including rent, accounting help, etc. and the school can ignore those benefits in their audit?”

The answer:
“The School has to record fair value of these services when incurred.  The school cannot ignore these services and is required to recognize the value as long as it meets certain criteria. The service requires specialized skill; like accounting, legal, design, architect, carpenter, etc.., and the service would typically need to be purchased if not contributed. You should also recognize services that ‘enhance or create a nonfinancial asset’ like services (skilled or non skilled) to constructing a building.  Donated facilities like rent should also be recognized at fair value not what they would have charged the school.”

In other words, if these audits were completed correctly, these expenses should include an estimated value of the services rendered by the CMO’s for the benefit of the school.  To be clear, since DOE space is given free to traditional public schools, it is not included in expense calculations for schools that are housed in public space. 

As always, I encourage charter school operators and other readers to help me to further improve this analysis.

Here are some additional notes:

1. I subtracted out Kipp To College costs because these amounts are not used for current students.  This is their alumni program.
2. I averaged across KIPP schools for per pupil expenses.  KIPP seems to run some network-wide expenses through KIPP Academy.
3. The data is missing for Bronx Charter School for the Arts because I have a bad copy of the Statement of Activities.
4. I removed  The New York Center for Autism.
5. I included fundraising expenses.

The Logical Next Step in an Illogical System

As I have written in the past (here and here), there is an excess supply of people that want to teach in New York City.  Back in November, on a panel at a Teach For America alumni summit, Vicki Bernstein, the Executive Director of Teacher Recruitment and Quality for the DOE,  confirmed this fact and pointed out the upside of the situation: schools could be more selective in future teacher placements.

For most traditional public schools, that upside disappeared yesterday. 

As GothamSchools reported, Chancellor Klein’s latest memo instructs principals to restrict their teacher hiring to “existing DOE staff, as opposed to people from outside the system.”  This includes informal commitments already made to prospective candidates: “You should reach out to these people and tell them that they will have to wait; those jobs might not actually be there and that you are unable to hire them at this time.  We are making no commitment to candidates, including Teach for America and Teaching Fellows candidates…”

So traditional public schools in NYC can only hire existing teachers, including a large number in the “excess pool”, i.e. teachers that lost their past jobs and have been unable to find a new position.  Teachers in the excess pool, though, still get paid.  This creates the financial problem: “We are imposing these restrictions because we cannot afford to support a growing excess pool, which currently includes 1,400 staff in all titles.” 

In other words, traditional public schools  can’t hire the teachers they would like to, because the DOE continues to pay teachers that no school has wanted to hire. 

Randi Weingarten, president of the teachers’ union, is pleased:

“I give them credit for seeing what a waste of talent and money this is, and for actually switching gears.”  Kafka would have loved Randi Weingarten.

New schools are given more flexibility:  “All new schools must hire at least 50% from current staff (from the closing school or elsewhere in the system), but will be able to hire 50% of their teachers from outside of the system.” 

Charter schools are not subject to the rules at all.  As a result, their competitive advantage has increased.  The exodus of parents away from traditional public schools will continue.

Charter School Philanthropy Revisited

In an earlier post, I reviewed some philanthropy statistics for New York City charter schools.  The information came from IRS filings (“Form 990”).  However,  annual charter school financial audits are better and more timely sources for this data.  The audits are available about six months earlier than the Form 990’s.  Also, the audits present the information in a clearer fashion.

Thanks in part to the New York Freedom of Information Law, I was able to get copies of almost all of the financial audits for the school year ending in 2008.  The key page in the audit is called the “Statement of Activities”.  Here is a PDF with these statements for the 58 charter schools in my sample.  Here is a workbook with my calculations for these schools.

Overall, the total amount of philanthropic contributions for the 58 schools was $25,511,490.  The total enrollment was 17,680.  This comes out to a per pupil calculation of $1,443 (as compared to $1,175 for my 990-based 2006-07 calculation).  The average school philanthropy per pupil was $1,654 (as compared to $1,366).  The median school was $1,081 (as compared to $697). 

Some of this difference represents growth from one year to the next.  Most, though, is attributable to differences in the reporting methodology.  In particular, the 990’s do not generally include in-kind donations and the audits do.  (I had assumed otherwise in the comment section of the prior post!)  Also, I made a change mentioned in the notes below that affect the median calculation.

I encourage charter school operators and other readers to help me to further improve these calculations.

Here are some additional notes:

1. I subtracted out Kipp To College costs because these amounts are not used for current students.  This is their alumni program.
2. I averaged across KIPP and Achievement First schools for per pupil philanthropy.  These schools route disproportionate amounts of their philanthropy through one school.  If I didn’t make this change, the total average would be the same, the average school would be 8% higher and the median school would be 29% lower.
3. The data is missing for Bronx Charter School for the Arts because I have a bad copy of the Statement of Activities.
4. I removed  The New York Center for Autism.
5. I included restricted funds.
6. I included in-kind donations.
7. I included fundraising but did not subtract out fundraising expenses.

FOIL Me

In order to learn more about charter school philanthropy and expenses, I needed to get copies of the annual financial audits that all charter schools are required to produce.  Charter schools send these audits to their authorizers.  For New York City schools, there are three authorizers: the NYC DOE, the State University of New York (SUNY), and the State Education Department (SED).

In this case, the NYC DOE has the good-government solution: all audits for DOE-authorized charter schools are available on the DOE website in PDF format.

SUNY and SED, on the other hand, do not have the audits available on their websites.  Luckily, the people I interacted with at the two organizations were professional and courteous.  They both gave the same advice: “You need to FOIL me.”  FOIL refers to New York State’s Freedom of Information Law.  As instructed, I sent an email requesting the documents, being careful to include the magic phrase “Freedom of Information Law”.  In both cases, after about a week and a half,  I received the documents.

SUNY gave me a link to a PDF file that I could temporarily access on their website.  SED, on the other hand, only has the audits in paper form, so they had to mail a copy to me.  Also, with SED, I had to pay 25 cents per page and they needed to receive a check before they could proceed.  I hope they use the funds towards the purchase of a scanner.

Two questions are raised by this experience:

1. Why don’t SUNY and SED simply put these files on their websites?

2. Why do SUNY and SED make people “FOIL them” for these documents?

For both institutions, it is policy to require FOIL requests for information that is not available on their website.  Apparently, it can be quite time-consuming to fulfill these requests, especially if the documents only exist in paper format.  The FOIL requirement can discourage some of these requests.  If people knew that a FOIL request is as simple as an email with the FOIL phrase included, they might not be discouraged.  One solution, of course, is for the organizations to put the files on their websites.  See question #1.

I will make all of these audits available online very soon.  My efforts, though, should not be necessary.

Crossing the Line?

Elizabeth Green’s story, “Teachers union sent scripted questions to City Council members”, may serve as a  wake-up call.  A friend called me and shouted “You’ve got to be kidding me!” about eight times.  He got the wake-up call. 

Others active in public education are surprised that people are surprised.  That should be a wake-up call too.  Perhaps this soft corruption exists in part because of a lack of public awareness.  Perhaps if we better educate people about “how things work” (as Green subtitles her story), we will get better political outcomes.

All special interest groups use money and pressure to influence the political process.  We hope that their methods don’t cross the line, but different people draw that line in very different places.  Instead of changing human nature, here are four mechanisms to change government that might decrease the effects of inappropriate interest group influence:

1. Increase government transparency.  We can’t oversee what we can’t see.

2. Simplify the role of government.  We can’t oversee what we can’t understand.

3. Reduce the role of government.  The greater the role of government, the greater incentive for inappropriate interest group influence.

4. Allow for private competition to serve as a check on government corruption.  When the government is a monopoly provider, there is no competitive check on the inefficiency caused by interest group influence.

 

School Progress Report Statistics

The New York City Department of Education produces an annual progress report for every school in the city for which there exists sufficient test data.  The DOE website gives a good description of the reports.  The DOE also makes available an Excel workbook with all of the results for the year 2007-08.

I compared the results for charter schools with traditional schools.  Here is the workbook with my additional calculations and results.

Some conclusions:

1. With respect to overall letter grades (i.e. A,B,C,D,F), charter schools performed slightly better than traditional schools, but the results are not statistically significant.

2. With respect to the overall numeric scores (which range from 9.6 to 106.5), charter schools performed significantly better than traditional schools.  The difference between this result and the letter grade result is explained by a disproportionate number of very high scores for charter schools.  This information gets "lost" in the large number of schools that get A's.  (Almost 40% of schools received an overall grade of an A.)  The following graph gives a good picture of the situation by plotting the different frequencies of scores normalized by the mean and standard deviation of the overall school population.  Notice that very high scores are much more common for charter schools.  Notice also that there are a disproportionate number of charter schools with very low scores.  This is attributable to two charter schools that received amongst the worst overall scores in the city.

3. Charter schools performed significantly better than traditional public schools in all three components of the overall score: environment, performance, and progress.  The most impressive average score was actually the "environment" component which is based on attendance figures and surveys given to teachers, parents, and students.  In other words, charter schools performed particularly well on the metric that has nothing to do with test scores, but rather attempts to represent teacher, parent, and student impressions.

4. I looked at the performance of various "support networks" for schools.  In New York City, traditional public schools can select one of a number of different support options to help to manage their school.  Only two of the support organizations had statistically significant results: the Empowerment Schools showed small but statistically significant out-performance; the schools using the Knowledge Network Learning Support Organization (KLSO) showed larger and statistically significant under-performance.

Waiting for Contracts

As we watch the KIPP/UFT battle unfold, one thing seems clear: we won't see a union contract between the two organizations anytime soon.

The unionization process for KIPP AMP is governed by the Taylor Law and overseen by the Public Employment Relations Board ("PERB").  If and when the PERB certifies the UFT to represent the AMP teachers, KIPP will be required to begin collective bargaining.  This won't necessarily lead to a contract, though.  From a primer published by Atlantic Legal:

"In essence, collective bargaining is the obligation of the union and the employer to meet and confer in good faith concerning employees' terms and conditions of employment.  Thus, a good faith effort must be made by both parties to seek agreement.  However, an agreement is not required or guaranteed, since neither side is forced to accept any terms it does not want."

The teachers at Merrick Academy, a charter school in Queens, were organized by the UFT in November, 2007.  Today, sixteen months later, there still is no contract. 

Green Dot New York Charter School was formed in partnership with the UFT and began operation this past September.  Again, there still is no contract.  (I have heard that a 50-page contract is coming soon.)

Meanwhile, the UFT faces a difficult situation in agreeing to a new contract with a charter school.  If they agree to a short contract (like the Amber contract or the Green Dot contract in Los Angeles), it begs the question of the necessity for the standard 165-page version.  Moreover, shorter contracts have the potential to infuriate teachers that are already unhappy with contract compromises of recent years as well as UFT sponsorship of charter schools.

I have never read a teachers' union contract that seems consistent with the operations of a KIPP school (or any of the other high-performing charter schools that I have visited).  The UFT has its own political issues in agreeing to a short contract.  There is nothing that forces a compromise.  We might be waiting for a very long time.

    

  

Another Great Charter School: KIPP Infinity

Last week I visited another great New York City charter school: KIPP Infinity in West Harlem.  Infinity serves grades 5 through 8.

In the most recent NYC Department of Education progress report, KIPP Infinity received the highest overall score amongst all 1,043 elementary, middle, and K-8 schools that were graded.  On their 2007-08 "Learning Environment Survey Report", in which parents, teachers, and students are surveyed, the scores were uniformly excellent and, often, outliers.  For example, on parent engagement, they scored a 125% on a scale from 0 to 100%.   

As I talked with principal Joe Negron in his office (a table in the hallway), it was clear that his focus is on further improvement.  He noted, for example, that while most of Infinity's students pass the state tests, few of them have advanced into the most selective high schools. 

The students at Infinity seem focused and mature for middle schoolers.  Unlike the great elementary charter schools I have mentioned (here and here), Infinity generally has one teacher per classroom with an average class size of 25.  Still, the students seem attentive and engaged.  Many of the teachers have been at the school since day one and turnover has been very low.  Clearly, they are doing a tremendous job.

Interestingly, all KIPP schools plan on using MAP tests to help them to better assess student progress on a national level.  Infinity is happy about this development: they don't believe that the state assessments are sufficient for them to take their students to the next level.

As part of the larger KIPP NYC network, Infinity staff can focus on educational issues.  A "Shared Services Team" for the network provides support in the core functional areas of finance, HR, operations, technology, and development.   

Of course, being a KIPP NYC school has brought the distraction of the KIPP AMP unionization controversy.  Negron confirmed that, contrary to some early media reports, Infinity teachers were not involved in the situation. 

Charter School Statistics: Philanthropy

I have been compiling some New York City charter school data from tax filings.  "IRS Form 990" is the required federal filing for tax-exempt organizations.  On these public documents, you can find information about fundraising and spending.  Since these forms are usually filed several months after the end of the reporting period, the most recent data I could find was for the 2006-2007 school year.  (I hope to get 2007-2008 data later this year.) 

For the 39 schools for which I could get good data, the total amount of contributions received directly from individuals and foundations was $11,625,432.  These same schools served 9,898 students in that school year.  Therefore, the average per pupil philanthropic contribution was $1,175.

Several notes on this:
1. The 39 schools were taken from a list of 50 New York City charter schools in my database.  These 50 schools were chosen because they have taken state exams in 2007-2008. 

2. 11 schools were not included because either I couldn't find the 990 form (8 cases) or the filing didn't make sense to me (3 cases). 

3. I think it is possible that some of these schools receive additional philanthropic funding through other entities.  I intend to do further research on this.