In Brief

Parent Satisfaction Survey

As part of his initiative to improve communication with parents, Chancellor Harold O. Levy has mailed out 125,000 surveys to provide them with an opportunity to speak out about overcrowding, textbook supplies and school safety. The two-page survey gauges parent satisfaction with the school system as well as their involvement in school activities. KPMG Consulting was contracted for $605,000 to develop, design, translate into four languages, print, scan and analyze the mailings to the families of ten percent of the overall school population. A final report on the results is to be presented to the Board in the middle of July. —NYCBOE

New Head of Hunter College
Campus Schools

Hunter College has chosen David J. Laurenson to take the helm of its elementary and high school for the intellectually gifted, known as the Hunter Campus Schools, located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He will hold two titles: Principal of the High School and Director of the two Campus Schools. He fills a position that has been open for two years, during which Christine Cutting served as the acting principal of the high school. Laurenson leaves a position as executive director/director of external relations at the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science, a public, residential school for gifted and talented students. Laurenson held previous posts as Principal and Assistant Principal at laboratory schools at the University of Toronto, which he said were comparable to those run by Hunter College. —Hunter

Middle Schools Taskforce

A new Board of Education Taskforce, chaired by Board Member Irving Hamer, will focus on improving middle schools. The purpose of the Taskforce on Improving Middle Schools is to create and recommend policies to improve student achievement in low performing middle schools. Its first goal will be to complete an analysis of the schools by reviewing middle school student data, including test results, attendance, referral rates, promotions and retentions. It will then review policies and regulatory provisions that impede middle school improvement. In addition, the Taskforce will identify and examine those factors that positively affect achievement among targeted categories of students: English Language Learners and students with disabilities. —NYCBOE

Fourth Grade ELA Results

The Grade four English Language Arts (ELA) test results showed that for the second year in a row, New York City public students continued to improve. However, this year’s 2.2 increase in those scoring at or above grade level did not meet last year’s increase of 9 percent. The City’s gain was greater than the overall State’s gain of 1.3 percent, which helped to work towards narrowing the State-City gap in test scores. The report shows that students who attended summer school last year shoed significant improvement, with students scoring at Level 1 (the lowest) decreasing from 72 percent to only 44 percent. Districts 10, 23 and 25 showed the largest improvements in student performance. —NYCBOE

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