GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Can you identify these pieces of science equipment? Julia Stiles says she couldn't when she was in public school. Via Flickr.

The actress Julia Stiles’ recent e-mail exchange with Chancellor Joel Klein started after she told him at an event that she hadn’t had any science classes in her public elementary school (Greenwich Village’s PS 3). Yesterday, New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog published a message from someone who said Stiles fabricated the embarrassing story she told Klein, about how she couldn’t identify a beaker once she started at a fancy private school.

Could it be that Stiles really never had a science class in elementary school? A brand-new blog that purports to be by Stiles repeats the claim. And here’s another hint, from 1992, when Stiles would have been finishing fifth grade:

Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez unveiled a plan yesterday to drastically overhaul science instruction in New York City’s public schools, including adding an extra year of laboratory science to high school requirements and more than doubling the number of science periods offered to elementary school students. …

The plan, which comes at a time when the school system is struggling with overcrowded classes and a shortage of supplies, does not include any estimate of its cost. Nor does it have a timetable. Mr. Fernandez said a team of school officials would now begin studying those aspects.

Mr. Fernandez’s vision will also demand radical changes in how teachers are trained and recruited; right now high schools cannot find enough licensed high school science teachers and elementary schools are hiring teachers who may have taken no college science. …

How have things changed since Stiles was in school? As the chair of the City Council’s education committee, everyone’s favorite charter school operator, Eva Moskowitz, made the sorry state of science education a top issue, getting the Department of Education’s head science administrator to give her program a barely passing grade in 2005. The city launched a $60 million science curriculum in 2007. But the test that would have measured its success is now two years overdue.

Steve Evangelista at his charter school, Harlem Link. (Photo courtesy of Evangelista)

Eva Moskowitz, the City Council member turned charter school operator, has for years been blunt about the forces that oppose her approach to improving education: other politicians, the city teachers union, and anyone else who has a stake in what she sees as the status quo. Last night, in a quiet conversation on 144th Street in Harlem, Moskowitz learned that she has a new critic, and he’s a little different from the others.

He’s Steve Evangelista, a Harlem charter school operator himself.

Evangelista approached Moskowitz with his concerns after a public hearing to discuss a Department of Education plan to install Moskowitz’s Harlem Success Academy 2 charter school inside a traditional public school building.

The Harlem Success school, along with another charter school that’s already in the building, would effectively replace P.S. 194, an elementary school whose low test scores and declining enrollment moved the DOE to phase it out of existence. The school has only 14 kindergartners this year, and about 70% of students in 194′s zone attend school somewhere else. The portion is even higher for kindergarten-aged students: 84%.

The swap reflects a goal that Chancellor Joel Klein and Moskowitz share: To replace district schools they consider failures with new, better schools — and to do so as quickly as possible. Moskowitz has set herself a goal of opening 40 charter schools in a decade.

Evangelista, who also runs a Harlem charter school, Harlem Link, came to watch the proceedings, and afterward he sought Moskowitz out to discuss her approach. When their conversation ended, he explained to me that his main concern is with Moskowitz’s dramatic ambitions. Aiming for such fast change requires her to adopt an antagonistic stance toward existing schools, he said. He worries that the attitude could ultimately doom her goal of improving public schools. (more…)

The number of New York City schoolchildren enrolled in high-quality after-school programs has risen from 48,000 in 2001, when Mayor Bloomberg was elected, to 140,000, according to a nonprofit dedicated to expanding the programs.

At a snow-dampened event on Monday, The After-School Corporation celebrated its 10th anniversary by honoring philanthropist George Soros, who originally funded the group, and thanking Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein for their help bringing after-school programs to 600 city schools. During a 6-minute video that depicted city leaders as superheroes, the group noted that under Bloomberg, New York City has become “the largest municipally funded after-school system in the country.” (more…)

• A principal who resigned under pressure last year is still on the DOE’s payroll. (Daily News)
• The DOE paid a tutoring company $79 an hour to help kids; tutors took home $62 less. (Daily News)
• The S.I. borough president’s parent council appointee resigned after forwarding racist e-mails. (Post)
• The Staten Island Advance published details yesterday about what those e-mails contained.
• A Columbia student says he wishes his classmates could study education online. (Columbia Spectator)
• In a depressed Illinois town, plans for redevelopment include a charter school. (Wall Street Journal)

• Staffing all schools with graduates of top colleges won’t be possible, a researcher concludes.
• Jennifer Freeman wonders how the DOE can support charters and also dissuade choice elsewhere.
• Steve Koss questions why one charter school made its third-graders come to school yesterday.
• A proposal is on the table for School Leadership Teams to be able to edit schools’ DOE Web sites.
• Alexander Russo says Arne Duncan is exaggerating his record leading Chicago’s schools.
• The Times of London takes on the thorny topic of how admissions decisions should be made.
• Edwize passes on the word that the AFT wants teachers to support the Employee Free Choice Act.
• And Pissed Off Teacher reminds you to enjoy today’s only-once-in-a-while Square Root Day.

As it tries to find homes for more than 20 new charter schools that are set to open this fall, the city is reigniting concerns about whether charter schools should be given space inside public school buildings.

In recent weeks, the Department of Education has announced that it will allow several charter schools to open inside existing school buildings. Last week, the DOE told Harlem’s PS 241 that it will close and be replaced by a new charter school in the Harlem Success Network, run by the divisive Eva Moskowitz. Some PS 241 backers say the DOE is favoring charter schools rather than trying to improve a low-performing neighborhood school. But charter proponents say that local schools have performed poorly for so long that the DOE is merely responding to parents’ demands by offering space for more charter schools.

PS 241 is the first zoned school the DOE has proposed replacing wholesale with charter schools. (Another charter school moved into the building in 2006.) But the arguments over whether charter schools should be given space in DOE facilities are not new. In fact, Elizabeth reported about a nearly identical situation a year ago, also in Harlem. Just substitute PS 241 for PS 123 in this summary of the politics around the charter school fight:

Ms. Moskowitz brought hundreds of parents to P.S. 123 last night to make the case that adding a new charter school there would improve public education by improving parents’ options. She said 3,500 students have already applied to the three schools she aims to open by September. … (more…)

The company that won the contract.

Here’s a story from yesterday’s New York Post that escaped our attention: Yoav Gonen reports that the Department of Education handed a $1.6 million contract to a vendor that wasn’t the lowest bidder — and whose services include a $315/hour consultant fee.

The contract went to the management consulting company Accenture, which you might recognize as one of several million companies whose spokesman is Tiger Woods. Accenture is promising to save the city school system $21 million in the next year by lowering the cost of books, equipment like overhead projectors, and software. The trick, according to schools spokeswoman Marge Feinberg, is bulk-purchasing of a variety the DOE previously could not accomplish. So whereas right now schools get about a 2% discount on books of the sort you’d buy at Barnes & Noble (as opposed to textbooks), when Accenture is done the discount will shoot to 35%, Feinberg said.

In the past, a contract with a different management consulting company that promised to save the school system money drew criticism for inflating its savings projections. Estimates of the cost-savings from the contract, with the firm Alvarez & Marsal, dropped over time, though the updated numbers remained far above the fee the company charged, about $16 million.

This contract is also attracting heat. The Post story quotes both a losing vendor and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum criticizing the department. But of course, won’t know whether these savings really materialize until next year.

The state chess champions. Photo courtesy of Eliot Weiss.

The high school chess team dubbed the Kings of New York in a 2007 book won a state title for the 10th year in a row over the weekend, at a tournament in Saratoga Springs. Sam Gomez, a 16-year-old junior, made the winning move four seconds before time ran out on his final match.

Gomez and his teammates from Edward R. Murrow High School will travel to a national tournament in Nashville next month to vie for the national title. Murrow has won both city, state, and national championships in the past, working with students who range from straight-A academic powerhouses to students who struggle in school and haven’t traveled much beyond Brooklyn.

The team, founded in 1981, had several good runs through the 80′s and early 90′s, but suffered a dip from 1995 to 1997, said longtime coach Eliot Weiss. This year’s championship is the 10th consecutive Murrow has won since 2000. The team came in second place in 1999, he said.

A Manhattan woman who wants to be known only by the name Rita pays for the team’s expenses, Weiss told me. That means that any student on the 27-member team who wants to can travel to Nashville come April 1, where they’ll stay at a resort hotel next to the Grand Ole Opry.

In Saratoga Springs, the team’s final score was a combination of points earned by the top players, who Weiss said included Gomez, Michael Furman, Alan Pizarro, Markel Brown, and Valicio Palha.

Michael Weinreb wrote about the team in a 2007 book called The Kings of New York. I first learned about them the same year, when I wrote about a local match where a middle-school chess team upset Murrow.

In New York:

• The mayor had little sympathy for parents who complained he called the snow day late. (Post, WNYC)
• Third-graders at a Harlem charter school had class yesterday anyway. (Times)
• The total number of city schools on the state’s failing list is shrinking. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post)
• Two of the schools on the list for low English scores were new creations under the mayor. (Times)
• The Daily News editorial board wants Assembly Democrats to support charter schools. (Daily News)
• Teenagers in a spoken word group are preparing for a contest. (Times)
• The City University of New York is considering opening a pharmacy school. (Post)

And beyond:

• Psychologists and economists who study whether incentives help children learn are at odds. (Times)
• New Jersey superintendents resent upgraded vocational schools. (Times)
• New Orleans charter schools are thriving, but there’s concern they push out problem students. (NPR)
• Two of Sasha and Malia Obama’s classmates are part of the D.C. voucher program. (WSJ)
• Michelle Rhee is insisting that anonymous private donors will sustain her pay plan. (WaPost)
• A look at how schools across the country plan to spend the stimulus money. (WSJ)

• The snow day led the DOE to push math tests and kindergarten deadline back a day.
• Jonathan says 6 a.m. was way too late to cancel school and a display of inconsiderateness.
• Beth Fertig has a report on ARIS — one that actually includes going into schools.
• Richard Whitmire spots the next trend in school reform, and I am proud to say Philissa and I partake in it.
• Once-split labor unions might reunite. Sawchuck puts it in an education (and KIPP!) context.
• Liz Willen is disappointed in the Times’ private school story. But highlights George Davison, who rocks.
• Rather than appoint senior staff, Arne Duncan so far is relying on a coterie of consultants, some un-paid.
• A Denver parent offers a list of what makes schools excellent, including being close to where students live.
• Edu-couple Michelle Rhee and Kevin Johnson seem to be going public.
• In Great Britain, Gordon Brown wants to ramp up math and science education in order to stay competitive.