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Yesterday, Elizabeth noted that the networking component of the Department of Education’s new data system is up and running. I got a taste of the program, “ARIS Connect,” in action last week at Channel 13′s Celebration of Teaching and Learning last Friday.

As some of GothamSchools’ commenters have noted, ARIS Connect is still very new and not yet widely used. But at least a couple of teachers and administrators already have tested its waters. I saw this myself at last week’s event when a DOE representative, Kerry O’Brien, gave me a demonstration of ARIS that included a look into how educators are using the system to network with each other.

One user had posted a question in a forum about assigning homework on weekends. Four or five teachers, from neighborhoods as far afield as Hunts Point in the Bronx and the Corona section of Queens, offered responses with varying perspectives and explanations. One called the weekend “the best time” for homework because assignments can be more in depth. Another said she doesn’t assign homework on the weekend at all. At the end of the thread, the teacher who originally asked the question weighed in again, thanking her colleagues for their feedback.

The exchange is precisely what ARIS Connect is meant to do, O’Brien told me. ”The department is empowering educators to share their expertise,” she said.

One thing ARIS cannot do, according to O’Brien: Allow multiple teachers to leave notes to each other about individual students. She said DOE officials believe the ramifications of having every comment become part of a student’s permanent DOE file so far outweigh the potential instructional benefits of such a feature.

Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein this morning celebrated how much they believe they have in common with President Obama on school issues, calling his speech this week a reflection of many of the changes they’ve made to the New York City public schools.

They made the remarks in a school library alongside Deborah Kenney, the founder of the Harlem Village Academy charter school network. Among the city projects they said they feel Obama endorsed: the city’s effort to pay teachers based on their school’s performance; projects that give students feedback on their academic performance through regular tests; work improving poor-performing schools by starting new small schools and improving transfer schools; and their efforts to expand parents’ options with charter schools.

Neither Philissa nor I could be there this morning, so we don’t have the full account. But Klein praised Obama’s education speech as “bold” and “visionary” in an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer this morning. His comment:

I think his speech was bold, and I think it’s visionary, and if you look at the various components, Brian, I think it echoes a lot of what the mayor has done in the city. But more importantly [it] charts a way for the nation to deal with both the global achievement gaps that we’ve talked about many times and the racial and ethnic achievement gaps. So it’s a serious and important speech.

Here’s the full press release from City Hall: (more…)

• The DOE plans to prep a few below-grade-level students to enter specialized high schools. (Post)
• The Post takes a look at one school where teachers received performance bonuses last year.
• An investigation found that a DOE official used $55,000 in DOE funds on himself. (Daily News, Post)
• The number of families applying for free lunch in the city is up by 4 percentage points. (Daily News)
• The Times says Congress needs to back up Obama’s education speech when it reauthorizes NCLB.
• Nationally, substitute teacher applications are up, but New York City isn’t accepting them. (USA Today)
• Schools with wealthy parents get more donations from parents. (Riverdale Press)
• A former DOE official is closing dozens of Baltimore schools without phasing them out. (Baltimore Sun)
• On a new New York Times blog, experts debate the best way to teach new immigrant students.

• Diane Rehm reads my mind and discusses: 1) education reform and 2) the future of newspapers.
• Flypaper says Baltimore’s Andres Alonso, formerly of NYC, deserves more kudos.
• Ed in the Apple says Obama threw bones to both sides yesterday, but is too top-down.
• The Columbia journalism students investigating contracts list the reasons the DOE is not transparent.
• They also think they found some sketchy dealings between the DOE and a tutoring company.
• A DOE staffer says restructuring is leading her to look for new work.
• The UFT shows how that state money targeted at reducing class size didn’t really work.
• Ha ha ha (school satire!): “Madoff Sentenced to Life Term as NYC Schools Chancellor.”
• The percentage of students eligible for free lunch in the city is growing.
• Sawchuck gets extended Randi reaction to Obama. Antonucci shows NEA is definitely against merit pay.
• How widespread is grade-fudging among New York City principals?
• A run-down summarizing new federal guidelines on how to spend school stimulus money.

It’s one thing for Randi Weingarten, the teachers union president, to say she’s behind President Obama’s reform mission to track teacher performance — as long as he gets the details right. It’s another for her to lay out what those details are.

That’s what her national union, the American Federation of Teachers, did today, by way of a press release from Anderson, Indiana. Yeah, I’ve never heard of Anderson either, but apparently teachers there passed a program that will mentor struggling teachers — and give evaluations that point out their strengths and weaknesses.

“PAR is an example of an innovative, successful union-led education reform,” said Dal Lawrence. “It shows just how inaccurate the stereotype is that teacher unions are anti-reform or anti-accountability.”

Here’s the full release, which is from the Anderson union but was sent to me by the national press shop: (more…)

The large auditorium at P.S. 194 in Harlem was filled to the brim for last night's meeting. Photo by Kyla Calvert.

Despite repeated cries for a calmer debate, including one from a City Council representative who said he was dismayed by the “divided house,” it was wagging fists, name-calling, and raucous shouting matches that ruled the day at a hearing last night in Harlem.

The crowd had gathered to discuss the city’s proposal to replace P.S. 194, an elementary school the city announced in December it plans to phase out, with a charter school founded by Eva Moskowitz. But they left late last night with no consensus on what to do next, aside from the resounding certainty that the move to add more charter schools to Harlem — which now has 24 charter schools, making it second only to New Orleans in market saturation — will not happen without a bitter fight.

Among those who spoke out against the charter school coming into P.S. 194 were Annie B. Martin, president of the New York chapter of the NAACP; City Council member Robert Jackson; City Council member Inez Dickens; a staff member of state Sen. Bill Perkins; and a representative of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Jackson not only condemned the decision but said he is considering holding a hearing at City Hall to pursue the matter.

The dissenting voices often collided with equally passionate parents and teachers at the charter school, Harlem Success Academy 2, and the two camps found themselves in several shouting matches.

At one point, a P.S. 194 mother screamed so loudly into the microphone about her despair that 194 is shutting down that a Harlem Success mother stood up with her finger to her mouth. “Shh!” she said. When the woman did not calm down, the charter school mother took her twin son and daughter by the hand and pulled them out of the auditorium. “I don’t need my kids to see this,” another Harlem Success mother had said moments earlier, tugging her children out of the assembly hall. At other moments, emotional testimony led pockets of the audience to rise to their feet in anger. The shouting drowned out any words. (more…)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the philanthropist Eli Broad at an inauguration party thrown by Broad. (Via Flickr)

The education philanthropist Eli Broad is based in Los Angeles, but at an event this week in Manhattan he painted a vivid picture of the unique influence he’s exerted in the New York City schools.

Broad said that his foundation has given money to the two charter schools the union president here, Randi Weingarten, opened; has trained seven or eight of the top officials in Chancellor Joel Klein’s Department of Education; and was a player in Klein and Weingarten’s merit-based pay deal.

The remarks came at an event at the 92nd Street Y Monday, where the writer Matthew Bishop of the Economist interviewed Broad on a small stage. Broad said the close relationship began as soon as Klein took the job. “From the first day Joel took office, literally, we met with him,” he said. He is close with other education leaders, too.

In Washington, D.C., the Broad Foundation has met repeatedly with superintendent Michelle Rhee and is believed to be one of the groups that would fund Rhee’s plan to give teachers more money in exchange for giving up tenure rights. Broad said on Monday that several of his staff members are taking jobs in Arne Duncan’s U.S. Department of Education.

The relationships are part of the Broad Foundation’s aggressive education agenda, which includes opening many charter schools, adopting corporate models for school leadership, and changing the way teachers are compensated. Because they are not beholden to public opinion, philanthropies can be “far more aggressive” in their goals than most politicians, Broad said. “We don’t mind taking risks. We don’t mind being criticized, at times even being hung in effigy,” he said. (more…)

The New York Post’s editorial board read President Obama’s speech on education yesterday as a ringing endorsement of both Chancellor Joel Klein and mayoral control.

 As I noted yesterday, Obama did not mention New York City in his speech. But at a press conference at a Brooklyn charter school last month, Obama’s new secretary of education, Arne Duncan, praised Klein’s reforms and hailed Mayor Bloomberg for taking control of the city schools.

From the Post’s editorial today:

Mayor Bloomberg’s fight to retain control of city schools got a boost yesterday from a formidable source: the president of the United States.

OK, President Obama didn’t explicitly call upon Albany pols to renew mayoral control when it expires in June.

But he might as well have.

Indeed, many of the reforms Obama demanded yesterday, in his first major education-policy address as president, could have been ripped point-for-point from Bloomberg’s seven-year effort to reform the New York school system.

In this week’s memo to principals, Chancellor Joel Klein offers some tips about the best ways to use the reams of student data the Department of Education is providing. One suggestion that seems slightly out of character (or at least out of caricature): Don’t gather too much data!

The motivating idea seems to be to save both paper and time by replacing binders stuffed with spreadsheets with online reports generated by ARIS, the computer data system that the city relaunched this year.

Here’s Klein’s own words, part of a list that he says the teachers union helped create:

2.    Evaluate the information you gather and reduce redundancy in reporting. Consider whether information on student and school performance that is now being made available to your school through ARIS, your Progress Report, Quality Review, Learning Environment Survey, Inquiry Team Tool (ITT), and your Periodic Assessment reports makes it unnecessary for your school to continue gathering information in other, more time-consuming and less effective ways.

In particular, consider whether it is effective to print out and assemble binders of assessment results. In many cases, assessment information is available in ARIS or in other places on the Internet, and can be more easily accessed and analyzed in an online format. And, as you know, you need not create any binders or other documents for the sole purpose of preparing for the Quality Review. Quality Reviewers focus only on data and reports that schools actually use in the regular course of the day and the school year. For example, you can show reviewers how you use the “student groups” function in ARIS to track the progress of groups of your students throughout the year.

The full memo: (more…)

• Analysis of Obama’s education speech. (Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal)
• New York City is already doing some of the things Obama suggested. (Post, Daily News)
• Less than a third of the charter schools opening this fall have found locations. (Insideschools)
• Even without research to back them up, some schools are trying single-sex classes. (Times)
• The DOE extended the deadline for parents to become candidates for district councils. (Daily News) 
• A for-profit schools operator is buying up lots of real estate in the city. (Observer)
• A Williamsburg principal is giving a kidney to his son. (Daily News)
• A former Queens middle school teacher pled guilty to sending sexual materials to his students. (NY1)
• Schools are using the poor economy as a chance to teach financial literacy. (Christian Science Monitor)
• Senate Democrats dealt a crippling blow to the D.C. voucher program. (AP)
• The Daily News gives Obama’s education speech two thumbs up.