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Mayor Bloomberg and his administration are often portrayed as pragmatists, as anti-politicians who simply want to get things done. But the mayor and his team are not perfectly apolitical.

This fact is highlighted in this week’s New York Observer, where Eliot Brown profiles Mark Page, the city’s budget director. Page, by Brown’s account, is so apolitical that he puts the rest of the administration to shame. (This is perhaps a result of his background: Unlike many Bloomberg officials, who left self-made corporate careers to enter politics, Page, the grandson of J.P. Morgan, was raised in wealth but has always been a bureaucrat.)

Brown:

The mayor approaches budgetary decisions weighing a set of competing needs including approval ratings, the feelings of the Council and his legacy as a fiscal steward. Not so Mr. Page.

“He’s clearly not on an ego trip-he doesn’t want to get out there and be the darling of the press,” said John Cape, the state budget director under Governor Pataki who dealt with Mr. Page in city and state budget skirmishes (with almost always no hard feelings at their conclusion, he noted). “He really is a practitioner. He’s a scholar of New York City history, finances and politics, and he just wants to have people sort of leave him alone and do his job.”

A Bronx elementary school teacher explains how she and a co-teacher tackled their students’ behavior problems, child by child:

“He’s in his zone,” my co-teacher would say. We could tell what kind of day it was going to be as soon as he slithered into the classroom while supporting himself on the cubbies. The glassy no-contact eyes, the tilted head, the muffled voice. We knew it was going to be one of those crawling on the floor, saying no every five minutes, doing whatever you want kind of days. So we’d monitor and say, “Do some work, get a sticker; get five stickers, go to computer.” It worked. Meltdown averted for the time being…

• Bad budget news: from Governor Paterson, talking to school leaders. (Daily News)
• Optimistic budget news: from Senator Schumer, talking about a possible federal bailout. (Liz Benjamin)
• Next up for re-zoning (and likely drama): Meet District 2! (Inside Schools)
• The 19-year-old model who is living with a former teacher is now camera-shy. (New York Post)
• The mayor’s popularity has dropped by nine points, according to a poll. (Daily News; NY1)
• Teachers need a “bundle” of traits to be successful, a study of city teachers finds. (Ed Week)
• A special ed parent says standardizing New York’s IEP’s will lead to more inconvenience. (EdNews.org)
• Columbia students are voting on whether to bring a military program to campus. (New York Post)
• Randi Weingarten’s predecessor at AFT is a possible Labor Secretary. (Associated Press)
• City schools are closed tomorrow and Friday for Thanksgiving. (New York Times)

Lots of state education funding news today. First, Governor Paterson removed his proposal to enact mid-year cuts. From a letter he sent to school leaders today:

While school aid reductions remain on the table, it is unlikely the Legislature will consider them any time soon. Therefore, we would be well into the final quarter of our fiscal year and even further into the school year before any action would likely occur.

So mid-year is off the table, but Paterson says that means cuts next year will have to be much worse; the state simply cannot afford to ramp up school spending as it had been doing, he wrote.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity has already pushed out a response to this letter. The group, which led the 14-year-long lawsuit asking for more funding for New York City schools, asks Paterson to find ways to raise revenues before cutting budgets. One idea is to raise income taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

The full letter is below the jump, and for a review of all planned budget cuts, see my cheat sheet here. (more…)

The latest name to surface as a possibility for the Secretary of Education post in the Obama administration is Oprah Winfrey, over on the Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog.

Elsewhere, Joe Rothstein, editor at U.S. Politics Today, suggested her, along with Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, for Obama’s “team of type-A’s”:

Why not? It will take star quality to make the changes that must be made in our educational system. Through her Oprah Winfrey Foundation, Oprah’s awarded hundreds of grants to organizations that support education and has donated millions of dollars toward providing a better education for students who have merit but no means. She’s also worked to develop schools to educate thousands of underserved children internationally.

But a year ago, Oprah told Diane Sawyer she’s not looking for a government job. “I don’t think there’s position in government that really anybody could offer to me that would be more interesting or compelling than what I’m doing already,” she said. EdWeek’s Campaign K-12 linked to the interview.

I’ve been on a few college tours with middle schools kids over the years, and what sixth graders notice isn’t that different from what one Brooklyn second grader learned on a visit to a CUNY campus:

“They have automatic toilets,” he said enthusiastically. “I like this college because of the bathrooms – and the computer classes.”

The cafeterias and gyms tend to make an impression, too.

My question is, when building college expectations among young children and teenagers, what should educators and tour guides emphasize? Facilities, food, and fun? The nuts-and-bolts of college, like what a major is and the difference between a seminar and a lecture? What they need to do to get in?

What’s right for different grade levels, and how do we help kids envision themselves on the path to college in a way that will actually get them there?

Teachers rallied outside the Department of Education yesterday.

A few hundred teachers and union leaders rallied outside Department of Education headquarters last night to urge the DOE to fully implement a recent agreement creating incentives for principals to hire teachers who lost their jobs when their schools closed or were phased out.

The teachers, known as Absent Teacher Reserves or ATRs, have been covering classes and doing other assignments in schools, their salaries paid centrally by the DOE. The agreement will require Chancellor Klein to send a letter to all principals encouraging them to hire ATRs, and will provide financial incentives over the next 8 years for schools to place these teachers on their own payrolls. The incentives are meant to counteract the higher cost to a school of hiring a more-experienced teacher.

Several ATRs I spoke to at the rally said they were optimistic that the agreement will work because it is such a good deal for principals, though one added that even a letter from Klein will not convince all principals to look past the stigma attached to ATRs, since they have been portrayed negatively in the press. And another teacher said with school budgets as tight as they are, she doubts anyone will get hired, incentives notwithstanding.

About one in six secondary school classes in the United States is taught by a teacher who didn’t major in the subject and isn’t certified to teach it, a new report by the Education Trust concludes.

The problem is even worse in schools with a high percentage of poor students, where more than a quarter of classes may be taught by an “out-of-field” teacher. Middle school classes and math classes are also more likely to be taught by less-expert teachers, the report says.

This is worrisome because previous studies have found that secondary school teachers with more expertise in their content area get better results from students — especially in math.

Bringing it closer to home, New York State does better than the national average in making sure that classes are taught by teachers who know their subjects well, according to the Education Trust report.

Still, a look at more recent data shows that although it has narrowed somewhat, a teacher-qualifications gap persists in New York State. (more…)

Another Wall Street Journal report on how the financial crisis is hitting foundations highlights the Harlem Children’s Zone. HCZ, run by the mayoral control proponent Geoffrey Canada, was promised $25 million grant by the Starr Foundation, which is run by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former chief executive officer of AIG.

Now, the Journal reports:

Anyone with a foundation whose endowment is heavily invested in AIG stock “is taking a bath,” says Mr. Greenberg, adding that he intends to fulfill current commitments but that gifts would inevitably be fewer and smaller in the months ahead. “You can’t give what you haven’t got.” …

Among the beneficiaries feeling the pinch are Harlem Children’s Zone Inc., to which Mr. Greenberg recently pledged $25 million. “I’m spending a lot of time now thinking about how we could replace the kind of support we’ve received from Wall Street,” says Geoffrey Canada, president of the organization, which provides parenting classes and charter schools for poor families. Mr. Canada says he is cutting 10% of his staff of 1,400.

Other New York City education projects could be affected. (more…)

With the English Language Arts exam approaching, Bronx teacher-blogger Ruben is trying to cushion his students from test-prep stress:

I can deal with the stress. My main concern is to avoid projecting it too heavily onto the students. I can’t control it when other teachers make statements like, “If you don’t pay attention you’re going to be sitting right here next year, because you won’t pass the test!” However, I am doing my best to take the edge off the test and the dullness/tedium away from the endless stream of practice tests.

Today I asked the kids to try to find one interesting fact in the reading and after the practice test was over they all shared favorite parts they read in the stories, articles and poem. Will it work in the long term?