GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A charter school has joined the American Federation of Teachers’ L.A. branch.
• Kevin Carey warns universities to look at the way the Internet is affecting newspapers.
• Teachers in Kansas broke away from the NEA union and formed their own.
• Old, but: Lessons for education, from Bernie Madoff.
• Education Trust is publishing new data on student achievement.
• A fight in Kentucky over whether a teachers union leader should be on the board of ed.
• Politics K12 says Duncan’s mayoral control statement will irritate teachers unions.
• The government wants you to be on the lookout for fraudulent uses of the stimulus.
• Will Richardson highlights a detailed plan for how to transform a school’s technology.
• Charter schools have really made it: A student is on “American Idol.”

When he knows what he wants, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan doesn’t mess around.

Just yesterday, the Post reported as an exclusive Duncan’s endorsement of mayoral control for New York City, which is up for renewal before the end of June. Today, in an unusual assertion of federal power in local politics, Duncan told a forum of mayors that he would have their backs in their fight to win control of their cities’ schools. From an AP article that was just filed:

“I’ll come to your cities,” Duncan said. “I’ll meet with your editorial boards. I’ll talk with your business communities. I will be there.”

Mayoral control is set to take center stage at a convention later this week sponsored by the Joel Klein-headed Education Equality Project. Duncan, who ran Chicago’s schools for more than seven years under the control of Mayor Richard Daley, is delivering the opening speech.

Some advocates are saying that the state budget betrays the hard-won Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement, which declared the city schools need more money.

But union president Randi Weingarten, a supporter of the case and the groups that filed it, is taking a different point of view. In a statement she just released, she declares that the state budget “reaffirms Albany’s commitment” to the lawsuit. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, she says, “was deferred but not denied.”

The state budget erases two years of increases in funding that would have grown to more than $5 billion by 2011, postponing them until the future. Only 37.5% of the funds promised over a four-year period have been doled out so far. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s executive director, Geri Palast, has repeatedly said that state lawmakers should give the city a “down payment” of funds for next year.

Here’s her full statement: (more…)

On the eve of what looks like an imminent vote by legislators to approve a state budget, two education advocates are asking Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to consider halting the process immediately. Their concern: That the current budget does not give enough of the stimulus dollars to needy districts like New York City.

The budget erases two years of planned increases in funds to New York City and other needy school districts, postponing them to the future. In a letter sent to Duncan yesterday, the groups, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the Alliance for Quality Education, also criticize the way the budget spreads out the state’s pot of federal education stimulus dollars, a $2.5 billion total, between the state’s school districts.

The call for Duncan’s intervention hinges on language in the stimulus law passed by Congress, which urges states to prioritize “equity and adequacy adjustments” passed in state laws when doling out their stimulus dollars to schools. The groups argue that New York’s budget “appears to be in violation” of that language. (more…)

• Mayor Bloomberg is happy Arne Duncan likes mayoral control but says the results matter most. (Post)
• The state budget deal is better for New York City’s schools than expected, according to the mayor. (NY1)
• Charter schools are shut out in the state budget unveiled yesterday. (Post)
• Some top students are among the eighth graders who didn’t get in to any high school. (Daily News)
• Bronx students talked progress report grades to British schools official Ed Balls. (BBC)
• Studies show that schools can cut down on obesity by encouraging students to drink water. (Times)

• A San Diego education reporter is in town to look at the city schools. Send her advice!
• Considering the city students who didn’t get put into any of their high school choices.
• Leonie Haimson collects a whole bunch of bad news for Chancellor Joel Klein.
• A report finds that structured lessons in high school science lead to better college grades.
• Parents and advocates are rallying tomorrow at PS 125 in Harlem.
• Here’s the link to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s blog, which his staff writes.
• Duncan was fingered by the NRA for being the most anti-gun member of Obama’s cabinet.
• The St. Petersburg Times explains why it’s so hard to fire a teacher — even if he’s bad.
  

The Department of Education’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins in July is down 10 percent in the last year, and classroom instruction has taken the brunt of the cuts, according to a report released today by the city’s Independent Budget Office. 

The report, analyzing Mayor Bloomberg’s preliminary budget for 2010, includes a concise summary of the dizzying sequence of school budget cuts since January 2008, when Mayor Bloomberg first announced that he was planning to cut the DOE’s budget. It also provides this graph, which shows that classroom instruction has taken the biggest hit:

The city’s schools desperately need a healthy allocation of federal stimulus funds to maintain basic services, the IBO report concludes. That’s not news: The mayor said in January, when he presented the preliminary budget, that federal funds would be necessary to prevent massive teacher layoffs. And Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told the City Council last week that some teacher layoffs are still on the table unless state lawmakers pass along more than $500 million in stimulus funds.

One confusing point in the ongoing saga between the KIPP charter schools and the city teachers union is exactly how many KIPP teachers actually want to belong to the union.

While 16 teachers at the KIPP AMP school in Brooklyn submitted cards to the state labor board saying they want to join the United Federation of Teachers, at least one of those teachers changed her mind after submitting the card, and teachers at two other KIPP schools the union has tried to represent are resisting the push. Yoav Gonen described the union’s effort at those schools as “meddling” in today‘s New York Post.

But add at least one more person to the ranks of KIPP teachers who are actively seeking union help: A staff member on the payroll of KIPP Academy, one of the original KIPP schools, who turned to the union after the charter school network allegedly decided to move him to a new school and dock his pay.

The teacher detailed his complaint in a January letter asking KIPP Academy’s principal, Blanca Ruiz, for a meeting where he would be represented by a UFT official. The union sent me the letter but whited out the name of the teacher who filed the grievance, and the union did not make him available for an interview. (more…)

An ad in the subway urging parents to complete surveys about their children's schools. (GothamSchools)

It’s Learning Environment Survey season in the city’s schools. The Department of Education is aggressively reminding parents, teachers, and students to complete the surveys, which are meant to give schools information about how to improve, by the April 24 deadline.

The survey results also make up 10 percent of each school’s progress report grade, the letter grade that the DOE uses to evaluate schools. On her blog, teacher Miss Brave describes the survey-taking climate at her school, where administrators have picked up on the fact that positive survey results could contribute to a high progress report grade, which would exempt the school from facing a Quality Review for up to two years.

Miss Brave writes that administrators pressured teachers to respond favorably on the surveys:

Seriously, they did everything but stand over us with a #2 pencil and whisper “strongly agree!” in our ears. “Last year, some teachers claimed they didn’t have frequent contact with parents, but don’t forget, you send home a homework sheet every week!” “Last year, some teachers said we didn’t offer a wide enough variety of courses, but don’t forget, some of the third grade classes are getting a theater course!” Come on, a homework sheet? That counts as contact with parents? And that “theater course”? Is offered to an extremely limited number of classes, once a week for about six weeks. That’s supposed to count? It’s like we were scrabbling around for anything we could pat ourselves on the back for.

Miss Brave writes that she answered her survey truthfully, not out of integrity but because she is “fed up” by her school’s efforts to ace the city’s accountability metrics at the expense of educating students.

I reported last week on the news that the teachers union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and others are suing the city over the Department of Education’s plans to shut down struggling traditional public schools and replace them with charter schools. As I said, the lawsuit is a reaction to the city’s decision to install a growing number of charter schools inside traditional public school buildings.

The lawsuit is also part of the larger debate on who should rule the city’s public schools. For proof, view this video, taken by the union activist Norm Scott, of a Brooklyn rally at one of the public schools targeted in the lawsuit, PS 150 in Oceanhill-Brownsville. In it, City Councilman Charles Barron leads a crowd of students in a cheer that simultaneously opposes the plan to shut down PS 150 and replace it with three charter schools — and criticizes mayoral control. (“End mayoral control now!” the crowd ends up chanting at the end.)

Now, Barron is often far on the fringes of New York City politics. (He has praised Robert Mugabe.) But he’s not the only one making the connection between the controversy over charter school siting and the mayoral control fight. A source last week suggested to me that the lawsuit offers a window into the union’s thinking on the issue. The union, the source said, will probably push to prevent the mayor alone from making decisions to give space to charter schools. It will also likely challenge the mayor’s ability to give the chancellor the sole authority to shut down schools he deems struggling.