GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The city ethics board said Joel Klein can spend city resources on his Education Equality Project. (Post)
• Mayoral control is set to be a focus at the Education Equality Project’s conference this week. (Post)
• Teachers at two KIPP schools say they never asked the UFT to get involved. (Post)
• Ed sec Arne Duncan says he favors Mayor Bloomberg keeping control of the city schools. (Post)
• The Post says Duncan’s endorsement is just another reason why Albany should renew mayoral control.
• The state budget deal stretches out CFE aid increases but eliminates special ed funding cuts. (Times)
• New state chancellor Merryl Tisch talks to the Daily News about the challenges ahead of her. 
• Randi Weingarten says scapegoating unions is not the answer to the state’s budget woes. (Daily News)
• Jay Mathews says you don’t need parent involvement to make a weak school better. (Washington Post)
• D.C. kids got Michelle Rhee to add a ninth grade to their improving middle school. (Washington Post)
• BBC News profiles ELLIS Academy, the Bronx high school that serves new immigrants. 
• Special workshops teach teenagers about how to deal with dating violence. (Times)
• In Nashville and elsewhere, leaders are lobbying for public boarding schools. (Time)
• The Washington Post‘s editorial page editor endorses the “Obama-Duncan-Gates-Rhee” reform strategy.

• Maira Kalman visits PS 47 in the Bronx, and sees the future of democracy.
• A conference Saturday is scheduled to discuss how to fight the “education deformers.”
• Chaz reports on a frank way that his teacher-friend seeks psychic revenge on Joel Klein.
• A teachers who opposes the city’s school report cards doesn’t want to fill out the survey.
• Students in Texas are no longer required to learn the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution.
• A report suggests that American students are behind, even if you only look at rich kids.
• In Los Angeles, a charter school opened on a university’s campus for the first time.
• A teacher visiting the White House wouldn’t say if she’s ever encountered bad teachers.
• An argument that “so far ed policy is pretty much the same old thing.” Dana Goldstein replies.
• Richard Whitmire declares that college is the new high school.

Here’s something to sift through over the weekend: The State University of New York’s Charter School Institute this week decided to renew three New York City charter schools’ right to exist. Two Bronx schools, the Grand Concourse Academy Charter School and the Bronx Charter School for Excellence, and a school in Brooklyn, Excellence Charter School, won the renewal, which lasts five years.

The renewal news is important because it highlights a major way that charter schools are different from traditional public schools. In exchange for being free of Department of Education bureaucracy, they must prove every five years that they should continue to exist — or face extinction from one of the three “authorizers,” of which SUNY is the most respected.

Even more exciting, the renewal news is a reminder of the renewal reports, which SUNY publishes in full on its website — and which are worth a look, particularly as the debate over charter schools heats up. Each one includes not only a detailed description of a school’s plans, but also almost endless charts chronicling its test scores, demographics, enrollment patterns, and how much money it spent per student.

There are tons of miscellaneous tidbits, too, which I hope everyone posts in the comments. Here’s my contribution: According to the most recent report on KIPP STAR, KIPP New York’s plans to build a high school that their middle school graduates can attend are moving along — and slated to cost an initial $188,000 in private donations that initial per-pupil funding won’t cover.

Lots of people nod at the idea that the biggest failing of mayoral control of the public schools has been a lack of parent involvement. The president of Manhattan, Scott Stringer, this week issued a proposal that lays out a roadmap he argues would change that.

Rather than re-thinking the citywide education board, as other advocates have done, Stringer’s proposal targets the elected parent councils that already exist. His idea is to inject gravity and authority into the councils, which are now beset by pitifully low participation rates and a reputation for powerlessness, by taking a hint from the real-estate and development world.

In that world, groups of citizen volunteers called community boards work together to develop responses to proposals from developers and policy makers on everything from whether to tear down a building to concerns about dog excrement. City Hall can’t make a decision without at least collecting a board’s formal response.

The idea is gaining some headway; Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz of Brooklyn intends to introduce a bill that would formally propose the idea to the legislature in the next few days. (more…)

As I predicted on Wednesday, most of the schools that didn’t fill up in the main round of the high school admissions process are either brand new or have reputations that are mixed at best.

But there are always hidden gems that still have spots open: either new schools led by educators with a strong track record or excellent programs inside middling high schools. In an article that it unfortunately must reprise every year, Insideschools runs down the options for the nearly 7,500 students who didn’t get a high school match this week. The site is also asking its users to recommend schools on the Department of Education’s three-page list of available spots.

I see a handful of schools on the list that look like they might be solid choices for students still looking for a high school spot. One, The Cinema School, is the selective school in the Bronx that will be run in partnership with the Ghetto Film School. I was also impressed by Brooklyn’s School for International Studies when I visited several years ago, and I’ve heard good things from students who have since attended. And the progressive Queens School of Inquiry, which is adding a ninth grade in the fall, was one of the more memorable schools I’ve visited; it was at QSI where I first encountered competitive speed-stacking.

Do you see other schools you’d recommend on the list (which you can read in full below the jump)? If so, for what kind of student? (more…)

This spring, GothamSchools’ colleagues at Livable Streets Education (like us, an initiative of The Open Planning Project) are teaching students at 15 elementary and middle schools about urban planning and street safety. In this video, Livable Streets Education Director Kim Wiley-Schwartz describes the curriculum, which is tied to state standards, and children from PS 87 on the Upper West Side show off what they’ve learned.

And in case you’re wondering, that’s a speed gun in Wiley-Schwartz’s hand.

• Chancellor Klein said the city still might have to fire 2,000 teachers. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post)
• In a suite of articles, the Christian Science Monitor takes an in-depth look at teacher training.
• The state budget is likely not to provide promised school aid increases. (Times)
• England school head Ed Balls visited the Bronx to see the city’s school reforms in action. (Telegraph UK)
• An admission lottery is sending some kids to schools far from their homes. (Downtown Express)
• Teachers in Queens have protested against their principal every day this week. (Daily News)
• Plans for a new middle school in Battery Park City are up in the air, again. (Downtown Express)
• President Obama reiterated his belief that under-performing teachers should be fired. (AP)
• Arne Duncan plans to give states their school stimulus money, whether they want it or not. (USA Today)
• Jay Mathews reports on a military-style program that helps dropouts get their GED. (Washington Post)
• Josh Greenman tells Obama to put his money where his mouth is on school reform. (Daily News)
• And too bad for Joel Klein: His favorite team, Duke, was bounced from the NCAA tournament yesterday.

• Aaron called me on my fuzzy math. But he was wrong. See you at statistics boot camp, Skoolboy!
• In Chicago, public outcry is saving some schools slated for closure. Via Alexander Russo.
• Teacher JD2718 says a high school placement system that shuts kids out is no success at all.
• Liz Willen reports on the scene at her kids’ school on high school match day: lots of tears.
• President Obama clarified his education views a little bit more during his online town hall meeting.
• New York Times reporters are getting 10 unpaid days off. So how about furloughs for schoolkids?
• Randi Weingarten talked school reform and tax reform on “Brian Lehrer Live” yesterday.
• Apparently the Boston school that inspired the Brooklyn Latin School is not vampire-ridden.

A play-based kindergarten class. Via Flickr

Kindergarten used to be a time when children dressed up in costumes, built cities out of blocks, and pretended to cook feasts in play kitchens. But now 5-year-olds are more likely to spend their school days practicing basic literacy and math skills.

In fact, kindergartners in New York City spend less than 30 minutes a day on creative play, several recent studies have found.

The shift toward academic kindergarten might boost children’s test scores in the short term but is not likely to make them successful in the long term, according to “Kindergarten in Crisis,” a report released this week by the Alliance for Childhood, a coalition of child development researchers. From the report: 

The power of play as the engine of learning in early childhood and as a vital force for young children’s physical, social, and emotional development is beyond question. Children in play-based kindergartens have a double advantage over those who are denied play: they end up equally good or better at reading and other intellectual skills, and they are more likely to become well-adjusted healthy people.

The trend toward academic kindergarten isn’t news for anyone who’s been paying attention to the city’s public schools for very long. Back in 2006, my former colleague Clara Hemphill tackled the subject in a column in the New York Times. (more…)

A figure from Bill De Blasio's report showing how many teachers' salaries could be supported by each assessment expenditure.

The Department of Education could foot the salaries of more than a thousand teachers with the money it spends measuring and promoting student performance, according to a report released today by City Council member Bill De Blasio.

By reducing spending on developing, administering, and grading tests, and by cutting the department’s media relations office, the DOE could save more than $57 million a year, De Blasio’s office found. That would be enough to support the salaries of 1,038 teachers who earn an average of $50,000 a year.

At today’s City Council hearing about the DOE’s budget, De Blasio, who is running for public advocate, told Schools Chancellor Joel Klein that he is ”perplexed by the notion that assessment is somehow more valuable than front-line” school staff. The department’s preliminary budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes potential teacher layoffs, but it does not call for substantial cuts to the DOE’s accountability office.

Klein defended spending on assessment even when budgets are tight, saying that teachers cannot do their jobs without good student performance data. (more…)