GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Teachers are complaining about flawed scoring guides for this year’s state tests. (Insideschools)
• David Coleman, College Board’s new chief, said future SATs will be Common Core-aligned. (EdWeek)
• A parent reports that state test prep took a backseat to a talent show at her son’s school. (Insideschools)
• A teacher says project-based learning keeps students motivated through exam season. (Mr. Foteah)
• A teacher says the city’s plan to flag teachers subject to disciplinary action is problematic. (JD2718)
• A city program encourages District 75 teachers to incorporate more art into lessons. (Schoolbook)
• Students in P.S. 22′s chorus perform Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution.” (PS22 Chorus Blog)
• A teacher details his experience in the “Rubber Room,” with an apologia for taxpayers. (Protect Portellos)

The first court appearance in the union lawsuit to halt hiring decisions at 24 turnaround schools ended with the judge telling the city and unions to resolve their dispute out of court.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis urged the city and teachers and principals unions to resolve their contractual disputes through arbitration, rather than litigation. If the two sides would agree to let an independent arbitrator hear their case, then she would not need to rule on the unions’ request for an injunction to halt hiring at the schools.

Union and city lawyers both said they wanted to resolve the dispute quickly because schools would be harmed if hiring decisions are not well before the end of the school year.

“If you’re both saying you need the arbitrator as soon as possible, an injunction would not be necessary,” Lobis said. “If what you’re saying is really sincere, then you’ll get it to the arbitrator as quickly as possible.”

After conferring this afternoon, city and union lawyers accepted Lobis’s suggestion. The two sides are meeting tonight to select an arbitrator and meeting dates, with the goal of resolving the legal questions about teacher and principal staffing at the turnaround schools by early June. (more…)

Holes in the Department of Education’s oversight of tutoring companies that work in city schools allowed one of the companies to collect payments without proving it had delivered services, according to an audit by Comptroller John Liu.

Liu found that Champion Learning Center collected about $860,000 in the 2009-2010 school year for tutoring students who had not signed into tutoring sessions or for tutoring sessions that officials had not certified had taken place.

The audit highlights the murky world of “supplemental educational services” providers, companies that offer tutoring mandated under the No Child Left Behind law. They are private entities but are subject to a host of city and state regulations, and the city must both monitor them and give them access to students.

The audit comes weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against another SES provider, Princeton Review, for falsifying attendance records and bilking New York City out of millions of dollars. In that case, investigators found that the company had submitted false signatures showing that tutoring sessions had taken place. (more…)

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A screenshot from the state's proposed enrollment targets calculator. It shows the range of target enrollments for a school enrolling 150 students in Brooklyn's District 15.

The state is preparing to take a step forward in implementing a two-year-old clause in its charter school law that requires the schools to serve their fair share of high-needs students.

When legislators revised the charter school law in 2010, their main objective was to increase the number of charters allowed. But they also added a requirement that charter schools enroll “comparable” numbers of students with disabilities and English language learners, populations that the schools typically under-enroll.

What comparability would mean has never been clear — until now. Last week, the state unveiled a proposed methodology for calculating enrollment targets, and it intends to finalize the algorithm at next month’s meeting of SUNY’s Board of Trustees, which oversees charter schools.

The targets would vary from school to school and be determined based on the overall ratio of high-needs students in each district. The proposal includes a calculator that determines enrollment targets for any school based on its location, the grades it serves, and the size of its student body.

Under the proposed methodology, a charter school with 400 students in grades five through eight in Upper Manhattan’s District 6, for example, would have to enroll 98 percent students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 15 percent students with disabilities, and 44 percent ELLs. In District 2, which has more affluent families and fewer immigrants, a similar school would be expected to enroll 64 percent poor students and 13.4 percent ELLs. But it would still need to have 15 percent of students with special needs. (more…)

• Common Core standards architect David Coleman will head the test-making College Board. (Times)
• The city’s response to the union “turnaround” suit says a delay would be damaging. (GothamSchools)
• A janitor at P.S. 160 in the Bronx is being hailed for foiling a potential kidnapping. (Post, NBC)
• The principal removed after being accused of lewd behavior is being demoted. (Post, Daily News, NY1)
• A growing emphasis on standardized testing nationally has given rise to scattered rebellions. (WSJ)
• The backlash has led to intense criticism of testing firms even as the firms continue to expand. (WSJ)
• Florida schools won’t be penalized for low writing test scores after all scores fell. (Orlando Sentinel)
• Michelle Rhee’s ongoing advocacy through StudentsFirst continues to win big funders. (Reuters)
• A lawsuit funded by reform advocates takes aim at California’s tenure and seniority rights. (L.A. Times)

• A Los Angeles teacher says a robust teacher evaluation protocol has turned into a checklist. (Hechinger)
• Jay Mathews says he changed his mind about value-added ratings: They won’t work. (Class Struggle)
• A city teacher with top students scored low while her students aced an advanced exam. (GS Community)
• Analysts say the “Pineapple” debacle isn’t likely to hurt Pearson’s growing education arm. (Crain’s NY)
• Two Denver schools are under scrutiny after test scores fell amid tighter security. (EdNews Colorado)
• Reading materials at city schools are likely to change under Common Core standards. (Learning Matters)
• A teacher and union leader reports that a principal sent to sensitivity training has resigned. (JD2718)
• A Park Slope parent makes and sells maps showing the zones for neighborhood schools. (SchoolBook)
• A teacher worries what will happen to a depressed student over the summer. (Miss Eyre/NYC Educator)
• Tech leaders are showing an increasing interest in public schools and their students. (Fast Company)
• A half-hour show on education innovation by Channel 13 features Chancellor Walcott. (Metrofocus)
• A parent asks whether she must honor her child’s teacher’s summer school suggestion. (Insideschools)

City lawyers have filed their response to a union lawsuit that seeks to derail plans to move forward on 24 school closures. Both sides are due in court tomorrow to argue their case about whether a temporary restraining order on the closures should be extended.

The lawsuit seeks to prevent the Department of Education from following through on its decision last month to “turn around” 24 schools at the end of the school year. The plans include the replacement of up to 50 percent of the teaching staffs at the schools.

Lawyers for the principals and teachers unions filed the lawsuit last week, and the DOE agreed to halt all hiring until Wednesday’s hearing as part of the restraining order.

As we reported last week – and as the city’s response below argues – one problem the city has with the motion is that further delay to its plans could “cause disruption” to the hiring process. (more…)

During her brief stint as city schools chancellor, Cathie Black pulled the brakes on a planned rollout of special education reforms. Now, educators and parents are asking the city to slow things down once more.

They say the departure of the city’s top two special education officials will leave the Department of Education ill-equipped to carry out the planned reforms. They are also charging that the city’s proposal to change the way special education instruction is funded could encourage schools to place disabled students in settings that are not ideal for them.

The special education reforms are meant to encourage schools to move disabled students to settings that are less restrictive. The shift is in keeping with best practices in special education, and students are supposed to have their services changed only if it makes sense for them. But the city wants to add an incentive: Under a proposal likely to be approved next week, students who receive special education services for only a portion of the day would bring more city funds than students in self-contained settings for the entire day.

It’s a proposal that has educators and parents alike concerned. ”When it comes to special education we all know that as you move a child to a less restrictive environment, it’s a better thing, but it only works when it is appropriate for the child,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said at a union conference on Saturday. “When you start pushing to make that decision based on budget, then we have to start to question whether it’s appropriate or not.” (more…)

For Abraham Moussako, a 2011 graduate, working on the student newspaper at Bronx High School of Science was an exercise in frustration.

He writes today in the Community section:

Getting an article approved in your school newspaper covering an incident that garnered the institution bad publicity citywide is the sort of thing that probably would be a chore in any circumstance. But it was an even dicier situation at the [Science] Survey, where the administration took its power of prior review over the paper seriously.

Moussako’s description of several run-ins that he and other editors had with the school’s famously hands-on administration fans a longstanding debate about the role of school officials in reviewing student journalism. Reports from advocates of student journalism suggest that many city principals exercise their legal right to review and curb reporting that appears in school newspapers.

Bronx Science Principal Valerie Reidy is one of them. (more…)