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The city teachers union is accusing the elite KIPP charter school network of waging an intimidation campaign against teachers who are trying to unionize. The dispute began in January, when teachers at a Brooklyn KIPP school shocked the charter school world by petitioning to join the powerful United Federation of Teachers.

At the time, Dave Levin, KIPP’s cofounder and the superintendent of its New York City schools, indicated that he was open to working with the union — even though many KIPP supporters oppose working with unions, which they argue block schools’ ability to teach at-risk urban students by imposing strict work rules on schools. (KIPP stands for the Knowledge is Power Program.)

Now, the union is accusing Levin of urging teachers not to unionize and painting a bleak picture of what will happen if they do. The accusations are cataloged in two complaints the UFT sent to the state labor board in the last nine days arguing that KIPP is improperly blocking teachers’ ability to unionize. The latest complaint, filed Wednesday, adds to complaints first aired in a Sunday New York Times story reporting that KIPP is resisting the teachers’ organizing drive.

The complaints accuse a KIPP human resources official of telling teachers that he is concerned that the Brooklyn school will lose its affiliation with the KIPP network if they organize; they accuse the school’s founding principal, Ky Adderley, of sitting in the hallway every day to monitor teachers, and they accuse Levin of making a rare attendance at a staff meeting to encourage teachers to reverse their decision to unionize.

Levin and a KIPP spokesman did not return telephone messages requesting comment today. (more…)

A statistic that Joel Klein, Al Sharpton, and Mort Zuckerman have all recently employed to bemoan the racial achievement gap appears to be wrong.

Here’s the statistic, as Klein and Sharpton recently summarized in the Wall Street Journal (and Mort Zuckerman used it here):

“today the average 12th-grade black or Hispanic student has the reading, writing and math skills of an eighth-grade white student.”

The problem isn’t the principle behind the claim; America definitely has a racial achievement gap. The problem, according to an official at the National Center for Education Statistics, is in the specific way that Klein et al describe the gap.

The best available measure we have to compare all American kids is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the NAEP test. But the NAEP test, which is given only to a sample of students across the country, not to every child, does not permit the kind of detailed comparison Klein’s statistic would demand, Arnold Goldstein, the NCES official, said. “It would be great if we could. It’s kind of frustrating not to be able to make these sorts of statements,” said Goldstein, who is program director for design, analysis, and reporting at NCES’s assessment division. “But that’s a limitation of the data.”

I contacted the Department of Education several times for comment but got no response this week. UPDATE: A spokesman, Andrew Jacob, wrote to say that Klein got the statistic from “No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning,” a book by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom. (more…)

Weeks after I reported that a Department of Education official steeped in management skills would be evaluating the city’s special education system, parents and advocates remain concerned that he isn’t telling the whole truth about his intentions.

Last night, Garth Harries, the official tasked with reforming special education, traveled deep into Queens to explain his new role at the DOE to hundreds of parents and teachers at a meeting of the citywide parent council for District 75, which serves the city’s most disabled children. Many District 75 parents and teachers worry that the district is at risk because it is expensive and unusual in its structure.

At the beginning of the meeting, Harries confronted the parents’ fears, saying:

I know that there are and have been rumors about my purpose. I just want to be really clear about it: No one has asked me to reorganize District 75. No one has asked me to cost cut.  That’s important for all of you to understand. The lens for this work is improve services for students so that our kids can do better.

Despite Harries’ reassurances, parent after parent gave impassioned defenses of the district, often in tears, saying their children had made strides in District 75 programs that they had been told elsewhere would be impossible. They also questioned Harries’ ability to make smart decisions about special education because he lacks experience in the field.

They seemed more reassured after District 75 Superintendent Bonnie Brown explained that she wouldn’t allow Harries to make substantive decisions about instruction without her consent. “If you don’t trust him, at least most of you have some level of trust in me,” she said. “I’m not going to let him screw around with us.”

Watch this video to see Brown, who appeared with Harries before the council, explain how she sees Harries fitting into the DOE’s special education leadership team:

Michelle Rhee touted her red-track/green-track teacher pay proposal last night at Pace University, saying it’s made such a splash that Mayor Bloomberg asked Chancellor Joel Klein if they could bring a similar model to New York. The proposal, which is being negotiated with the D.C. teachers union right now, would award some first-year teachers nearly $40,000 raises in exchange for giving up their tenure rights — while others could choose a “red” path where they retain tenure but are paid less.

Rhee said the model came up in a recent chat with Klein, who she said she speaks to regularly to share “best practices” and to commiserate. Klein told her that Mayor Bloomberg had asked if they could bring the red/green plan to New York. “Apparently Klein said to him, ‘Not even you have enough money to do all of that in New York City,’” she said. Rhee’s plan, if passed, will be financed by private philanthropy for the first five years, she said.

A spokesman for the Department of Education, David Cantor, said the story is true.

Rhee spent part of her talk referencing the divide within the Democratic Party, where some education experts argue focus should be on improving schools and schools alone and others push for a broader focus. Rhee, who is firmly in the first camp, along with Klein, explained her objections to the second group by describing her experience as a second-year teacher. (more…)

• Mayor Bloomberg again said the federal stimulus could save teachers’ jobs. (Daily News, Post)
• Applications to the city’s Teaching Fellows program are way up for fewer jobs. (Daily News)
• The military is starting 8-week goal-setting programs at nine city high schools. (AP)
• Teachers at Brooklyn’s John Dewey High School are worried the school could be shut down. (Daily News)
• The new online vote for district parent councils has started. (Post)
• The Riverdale Press highlights how hard it is to get in to a specialized high school.
• A Queens student was left alone on a locked bus yesterday. (Daily News, Post)
• A statewide commission to promote teaching black history is inactive. (Times)
• The recession is a boon for virtual field trips. (Education Week)
• Greg Toppo at USA Today reviews Jay Mathews’ book about KIPP charter schools.

• Lisa Nielsen offers a rubric for assessing how well schools teach 21st century skills.
• Educators should take care not to intrude into students’ private minds, says Diana Senechal.
• Marni Goltsman at Inside Schools suggests a book about raising children with autism.
• A tribute to the union’s Grapevine, which is not featured prominently at www.uft.org.
• Teachers, don’t forget you can use Donors Choose to apply for funds for small programs.
• A high school student feels a little sad that all her homework is tied to the computer.
• Andy Rotherham thinks KIPP has the upper hand on the union in the organizing fight.
• Chicago school students report being badly abused by teachers. (Via Joanne Jacobs.)
• Politics K12 has detailed education updates on the stimulus package, which is ready to go.
• Mike Antonucci regrets that teachers union’s financial disclosures might disappear.

Betsy Gotbaum, the current public advocate, has routinely directed her scrutiny toward the Department of Education.

This week, the city’s first public advocate, Mark Green, entered the race to take over for Gotbaum when she vacates the position at the end of this year. Green served from 1994 to 2001, and he paid attention to education, too — but he focused his efforts on what was then the Board of Education.

Here’s one of his first battles:

Mark Green, the city’s Public Advocate, sent a letter to Mr. Cortines on Friday asking that the board’s recycling regulations be adopted and released as soon as possible.

“It’s inexcusable that the Board of Education’s foot-dragging has gone on for five years,” Mr. Green said. “We can’t undo the board’s malfeasance, only hope that other governmental institutions do everything possible to accelerate the recycling programs.”

The battle to force the schools to recycle, by the way, is still being fought.

Unleashing anger from Upper East Side parents, Department of Education officials last night backed off a plan to move a high school there to East Harlem in order to make space for an elementary school.

Neighborhood parents had praised the plan because it would create a new elementary school with its own space immediately in a baby-boom neighborhood, but teachers and parents at the high school that would have to move called it racist, saying their students — who are mainly black and Hispanic — should not be pushed to a building across from a housing project in order to make room for white families.

The department’s new proposal is to keep the high school where it is and open a new elementary school in temporary quarters, while looking for a permanent space.

The plan would add a new elementary school to a section of the Upper East Side that has not had a local, zoned school for nearly a decade. The unusual situation arose when officials deemed PS 151 unsafe and closed it in 2000. Neighborhood parents and elected officials have been pushing the city to open a replacement for 151, but until recently school officials hedged, saying that nearby schools could accommodate the neighborhood’s children. (more…)

Raising class sizes by two students per room and making a slew of paid parent coordinators part-time employees are among a slate of options the Independent Budget Office is recommending to City Hall for how to plug the city’s projected $4 billion budget gap.

The IBO list, which went out in a report released this morning, includes 70 ways to cut costs or raise revenue and puts a dollar tag on each option. The city would save $187 million annually by reducing class sizes by two students on average, a change that would require the city to eliminate 2,100 teacher positions, according to the report. Moving parent coordinators who work at schools with fewer than 500 students to part-time status would save $14.9 million, the report says.

The report does not recommend following the options one way or another, instead laying out arguments for and against each one. Those in favor of increasing class sizes, the report says, would argue that research on the costs of marginally larger classes is inconclusive, while opponents would cite research on the benefits of lower class sizes in early grades and the potential risk of driving qualified teachers out of the system. (more…)