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Alexander Russo smartly picks up this screen shot from the C-SPAN video of Arne Duncan’s confirmation hearing. That’s Jon Schnur right behind him, on our left of the screen. (He’s the smiling gray-haired guy.)

Schnur, you remember, is our poster boy for the next-generation reform movement of which Joel Klein is one important part. For a long time we couldn’t come up with a name for them, but then we landed on idealocrats, which, the more I think about it, the more I decide is so perfect. Another unclear thing was whether President Obama sided with this crowd or not. Sitting within whisper-distance of Obama’s chosen education secretary is strong evidence in the “yes” direction.

A screenshot from video of Arne Duncan's confirmation hearing. (Via Russo)

Meet the Department of Education’s new chief lobbyist, Micah Lasher.

At the Post’s Daily Politics blog, Liz Benjamin reports that Lasher, a 27-year-old political whiz kid fresh off a stint in Rep. Jerry Nadler’s office, is now the DOE’s executive director of public affairs. That’s the position held by Terence Tolbert until his sudden death at the beginning of November while he was on leave working for the Obama campaign in Nevada. Lasher has already updated his Facebook profile (above) to reflect his new job.

As the DOE’s top lobbyist, Lasher is now responsible for pushing the DOE’s agenda in Albany. At the top of that agenda, of course, is convincing lawmakers to preserve mayoral control before the 2002 law giving control of the city schools to the mayor expires at the end of June. Lasher will also have to work some magic if the city’s schools are to escape relatively unscathed in this year’s budget fight. (Fortunately, he has experience working magic; he published a book on the subject when he was just 14.) (more…)

People at Educon in Philadelphia (via Flickr)

Last week, I chronicled an academic discussion on the subject of where school reform should go under President Obama. Over the weekend, a bunch of tech geeks had a conference on the same subject — and their ideas will probably end up being just as important to the future of schooling.

The conference, called Educon, attracted members of the increasingly large but sorely underlooked education movement called Learning 2.0, the MySpace/Twitter-inspired approach to school, in which technology facilitates extra interaction between students and teachers (and students and students and teachers and teachers). Among the people gathered in Philadelphia was at least one group from New York City: 20 staff members at CIS 339 in the Bronx, a middle school whose approach to technology I profiled in the Village Voice a few months ago.

You can read 339 Principal Jason Levy’s takeaways from the conference at his Principal 2.0 blog, here, including notes from the panel he ran, on what to do if your principal says no to a new idea. (One apparently good consideration is “The ‘Media’ Test:  Where in the NY Post will this story end up?”)

David Warlick also provides good notes from a panel discussion on the direction President Obama should take education. The conference’s convener, Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, made the case that “accountability has to be a richer more complex conversation.” Another person talked about making accountability more “intelligent” with tests that assess for deeper learning, not just memorization.

Naturally, Warlick communicated his own takeaway via Twitter:

I just twittered: “The point of ed reform is having classrooms where it just doesn’t matter if kids are getting tested — to them or the teachers.”

• Thousands of immigrant students have never been to school before they move to the city. (Times)
• The Harlem Children’s Zone and other charities are at risk in the recession. (Wall Street Journal)
• Kids statewide aren’t getting enough time in gym classes. (Newsday)
• Administrators at a Bronx school told kids to keep quiet about abuses, parents say. (Post)
• Educators consider the value of teaching penmanship. (USA Today)
• Republicans are worrying about how to cut school funding later if they increase it now. (AP)
• Jay Mathews says parents need more information when picking preschools. (Washington Post)

• Getting through high school is not enough: The college dropout rate is also steadily dismal.
• Fordham encourages universities to compare charter schools’ effectiveness to traditional public schools.
• Another Paul Tough piece on Harlem Children’s Zone is out, in Mother Jones. (Via EarlyStories.)
• Happiness with the DOE web site’s new “Community Input” page.
• Mike Petrilli argues that the terrible economy could help weed out the worst charter schools.
• Joanne Jacobs flags the next Texas miracle: a 100-0 high school basketball victory.
• Job help for ATR’s is moving apace, says New York Teacher.
• Russo says Brooklyn is evidence that gentrified neighborhoods don’t necessarily mean gentrified schools.

A week from today, Mayor Bloomberg plans to release his proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Yesterday, though, he was in Albany to lash out at Governor Paterson’s proposed budget for the city, which he said would force him to fire thousands of city employees.

Could these layoffs hit the schools? In the future, yes, that is completely possible. But for now, mass firings are just a rhetorical tool. Lots of balls are still in the air, including the state budget, which won’t be finalized until the end of March; the city budget, which comes at the end of June; and the federal stimulus bill, which seems very likely to include some funds for schools. Any one of those could tip the balance away from the worst.

If the worst does come true, it will be the mayor, and not the state or the city Department of Education, who will ultimately determine whether teachers are fired. If the mayor — Bloomberg for now, maybe someone else in the future — authorizes layoffs, the teachers contract has strict guidelines dictating how they’d occur. The basic principle: Those hired most recently go first. (This is what happened the last time the city laid off teachers, during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s.)

If the mayor doesn’t order layoffs, schools could find themselves in an even tougher spot, because they’ll have to endure more budget cuts in other places, like programs and supplies. Though some principals tell me they’d rather handle budget cuts by eliminating teachers’ positions, not by cutting services, that might not be possible, either. The DOE forces principals to cover those teachers’ salaries until they find a job somewhere else in the system. Overall, barring a stimulus or Wall Street miracle, we’re looking at a bunch of possible futures, none of them good.

For the last month, After Ed TV has been posting episodes of a reality show, called “School ReDesign.” In the show, education and architecture students, both from Columbia University, team up to sketch out the classroom of the future.

In this week’s episode, the winning design is revealed: A flexible classroom that can be rearranged to meet students’ individual needs and reconfigured depending on the lesson. But the youngest judge, an 8th grader at Tompkins Square Middle School, worries that using the design as it’s intended could distract children and take away from learning time.

Here’s another set of folks not being swept along by the rising tide of transparency: Schools that want to admit children according to their own preferences, not the Department of Education’s rules.

DOE policy prohibits elementary schools from giving preference in kindergarten admissions to children attending the schools’ own pre-K programs. But some schools are hoping to escape having to follow the rules simply by not being forthcoming about how they admit their students, according to a report posted today on the Times’ City Room blog. Elissa Gootman writes:

But one official at a popular elementary school that picks students by lottery said the school intended to give priority to this year’s prekindergartners anyway, insisting that the school not be named so it might “fly under the radar” and avoid City Hall’s attention.

I’m also hearing that some non-lottery schools are considering quietly exploiting a loophole in new DOE rules about kindergarten admissions as they register next fall’s kindergarten classes. (more…)

The Facebook campaign to make Weingarten senator.

The Times reports today that, early this morning, there were only two possible contenders to replace Hillary Clinton whom Governor Paterson had not called to say “Sorry, you’re not it”: Kirsten Gillibrand, a congresswoman from upstate New York, and Randi Weingarten, the local and now-national union president. Gillibrand is definitely Paterson’s pick, but just before that became clear, there was a groundswell to push Weingarten for the choice.

It didn’t come from teachers; it came from the gay and lesbian community. Above is the image from the Facebook campaign a BGLT group created on behalf of Weingarten, who publicly came out recently. There’s also this story on the Queerty blog.

Did Weingarten ever really consider taking the seat? At first, I thought she was having her name floated simply as a way to raise her image and political stature, not because she was serious. But lately I’ve been getting the sense from people Weingarten consults that she sincerely considered changing jobs. The fact that this Facebook campaign doesn’t hurt that idea.

United Federation of Teachers officials said Weingarten will have a comment on Gillibrand later today.

Hat tip to Examiner on the Facebook campaign.

• Some pre-K parents are angry because the DOE is asking them to reapply for kindergarten. (Post)
• After finding a time capsule, kids at PS 3 have created a new one of their own. (Post)
• A new study suggests that Obama could close the achievement gap on his own. (Times)
• Parents fear that two soon-to-open schools could become overcrowded fast. (Downtown Express)
• Kids from a Queens high school visited the construction site of a new school. (Downtown Express)
• Chicago is debating a 30-year-old court order meant to ensure racial integration. (Chicago Tribune)
• A new book shows that schools in China and India aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. (Washington Post)
• The governor of Massachusetts is protecting school funding in his budget cuts. (Boston Globe)