GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Nora Marcano and her son Joel, who attends Harlem Link Charter School at the Armory last night.

Parents at last night’s high-energy charter school rally took time out to tell me a little bit about their (overwhelmingly positive) experience with the schools.

They gave a more personal portrait of schools that are often defined (at least on this site) by their politics, such as Harlem Success Academy, which has been battling for space inside a traditional public school; Harlem Link, whose founder said he favors slower growth than Harlem Success; and Democracy Prep Charter School, whose students have testified at hearings on mayoral control and whose founder entered the debate on “creaming.”

“I think this is something new and not everybody believes yet,” Mayrene Lopez, the mother of a six year-old at Harlem Success Academy told me, explaining why charter schools create controversy.

Lopez said her son Justin has improved tremendously since entering the school in August as a first-grader, and she wants her two-year-old to be able to attend a charter school when she’s old enough, too. Justin didn’t get into the school the first time he entered the lottery. The next time he was put on a waiting list. And then he got in. “He’s reading and writing on his own,” Lopez said proudly. (more…)

Last Friday, DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee sent a letter to DC educators outlining the principles she claims are guiding her contract negotiations with the Washington Teachers Union and her efforts to reform education in the District.  The Top 10 list of questions and answers appended to the letter has been interpreted by some pundits as an apology of sorts.  “But I now see that we may have pushed on too many different fronts all at the same time,” she wrote. 

Cynics and true believers alike can find rich material in Rhee’s letter.  Count skoolboy in the skeptic camp.  As an outsider, this late-in-the-day effort to charm DC educators by acknowledging their concerns about working conditions, professional development, salary and job security, teacher evaluation, and other topics near and dear to their hearts sounds inauthentic.  “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is,” skoolboy heard growing up.

What’s too good to be true?  The notion that Chancellor Rhee has an adequate approach to evaluating teacher performance.  “As for accountability,” she writes, “please know that I will always focus on growth, not absolute achievement, when assessing your performance.  If your students start the year at the 5^th percentile and you move them to the 20^th percentile, you’ve done something incredible!” (more…)

Maxwell Ericson, an 8th grader at a demanding Manhattan middle school, effortlessly argues in a fashion fit for a president, has ample knowledge of the Roman art of war, and believes that Dante’s “Inferno” would be the best horror movie yet. Almost every aspect of Maxwell’s demeanor screams, “I am a smart and interesting person.” And yet his report card is screaming in mediocrity. 

Maxwell’s case is not uncommon. Many of those whose intelligence is not reflected perfectly in the way schools grade students go unrecognized, at least in school. Historians say that Einstein was a moderate student, with the average mark on his report cards corresponding to the grade “good,” not excellent. This makes an appealing story for all misunderstood geniuses, but not every Einstein gets acknowledged eventually. 

We automatically assume that gifted students will eventually find their way, on their own — they’re smart, right? But unrefined intelligence is like a muscle. If it’s not used often, it will have trouble emerging to its full power. So when schools don’t sufficiently encourage personal curiosity, students lose out in the long run, because they will be less able to start using their potential later. (more…)

The crowd at Harlem Charter Night.

Mayor Bloomberg and Lil Mama cheered charter schools, school choice, and mayoral control of the public schools before a crowd of thousands of parents and students last night.

The mayor and the rapper even shared some tactics. “Do we want more parent choice?” Mayor Bloomberg yelled. “I can’t hear you! Do we want more competition? Do we want better test scores and higher graduation rates?”

Lil Mama was more successful with the call-and-response style. She called “Parent” while the crowd screamed back, “Choice!” “You don’t have to send your child to a regular public school,” the Harlem native said before performing two of her hits, “G-Slide” and “Lip Gloss.” “You can send them to a public charter school.”

While many of the kids seemed most excited to watch Lil Mama perform, a team of volunteers and interns at the pro-mayoral control group Learn NY were on hand to encourage parents to sign a petition supporting mayoral control, and a parade of education officials used the unprecedented crowd size to push their causes. (The legislature will vote on whether to renew the mayor’s control of the public schools in June.) (more…)

• WNYC airs a report on the state of the mayoral control debate.
• The Post has an account of the charter school rally at the Harlem Armory last night.
• A new city high school will let students earn an associate’s degree in a fifth year. (Times, Post)
• A Queens teacher says her principal’s verbal attack sent her to the hospital in distress. (Daily News)
• A Bronx high school is being moved farther away from its promised site near a college. (Riverdale Press)
• Last year, GothamSchools explained the Keep It Going subway ads. Now, WNYC explains them again.

• In our community section, Jason Levy says as a principal he’s basically Jack Bauer from “24.”
• KIPP’s super-booster, Jay Mathews, weighs in on troubles at KIPP schools in Brooklyn and California.
• Supporters of Brooklyn’s PS 150 protested today against the DOE’s plan to close the school.
• The Times decided the biggest news at the mayor’s press conference today was his first aid skills.
• Edu-wonk heavyweights Andrew Rotherham and Richard Whitmire scrutinize Randi Weingarten.
• The conservative columnist George Will likes what he sees in education secretary Arne Duncan.
• In England, half of standardized tests got the wrong grades last year.
• Think planning for summer is tough? Mom Marni Goltsman says it’s harder for kids with special needs.
• Every single school employee in Pontiac, Mich., is getting fired this year. Most will be rehired.

Since August, the Department of Education has been quietly swapping data about its graduates with the City University of New York, under an information-sharing agreement that Mayor Bloomberg boasted today is the first of its kind.

Under the terms of the agreement, the mayor explained at a press conference this morning, CUNY sends performance data to high schools about their graduates enrolled in city colleges. In exchange, the DOE shares the students’ high school records with CUNY. The purpose of the swap is to gather new information about what it takes to prepare high schoolers for success in college, a looming question in a city where a growing number of public school graduates enrolling in CUNY’s two-year schools need remedial instruction.

“I don’t think anybody before has even thought about crossing that barrier,” Bloomberg said, referring to the separation between public schools and college and universities.

Bloomberg’s remarks came at a press conference about the growing number of public school students who are enrolling at CUNY colleges. At the event, which took a dramatic turn when a Lehman College student who was standing beside the mayor fainted, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said the CUNY enrollment surge is evidence that the city’s public schools are improving, particularly for minority students. (more…)

Hot on the heels of a DOE report saying that immigrant students are doing better than ever before, groups serving immigrant families issued a report of their own today, calling on the city Department of Education to “change the culture in schools” so that immigrant parents feel welcome participating in their children’s education.

Many immigrant parents would like to be involved in their children’s schools but do not feel able because of language barriers and cultural differences, according to the report, which was written by Advocates for Children of New York, where I used to work, in conjunction with a number of community groups that represent immigrants. The report calls for the DOE to develop an aggressive plan to involve immigrant families in their schools, citing research that has documented a link between parent engagement and student performance.

The premise behind the report — that parents should be involved in schools — is one that DOE officials say they support. Asked at Friday’s mayoral control hearing about parent participation among immigrant families, Maria Santos, who heads the department’s Office of ELLs, said there is “not enough.”

The report suggests a number of reasons why immigrant parents might not feel encouraged to get involved. (more…)

If you can, make sure to stop by the Harlem Armory tonight for an evening that charter school advocates are billing as the largest gathering of New York City parents ever in one space. The point is to show support for charter schools, which are proliferating in Harlem — to the delight of some parents, but not to the liking of a coterie of teachers and elected officials who have protested the schools’ growth.

Hosting tonight’s event are  Harlem Children’s Zone C.E.O. Geoffrey Canada and KIPP co-founder David Levin. Similar events have been held recently by Harlem Success Academy, the network of four charter schools founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz that has been at the center of the political fight. A Harlem Success official says she expects 6,000 7,000 charter school parents to attend tonight, plus some parochial school and traditional public school parents.

Also scheduled to attend are the rapper Lil Mama, whose adoptive mom is a board member of Harlem Success, Mayor Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and school choice advocate Howard Fuller.

Among the political currents swirling tonight will be Canada’s outspoken support for mayoral control of the public schools, which some Harlem elected officials have indicated they’d like to see curtailed; Levin’s ongoing saga with a group of his teachers who are trying to unionize; and Harlem Success’s struggle to get space inside a traditional public school. (more…)

• The city says students who are just learning English are doing better than ever. (Times, GothamSchools)
• The Christian Science Monitor takes an in-depth look at how teachers are paid. 
• Fewer city schools are failing, according to the state and NCLB. (Post, Daily News, NY1, GothamSchools)
• Families in Queens are worried about a plan to move their school off a college campus. (Daily News)
• A school custodian charged $100,000 for work that was never done, investigators say. (Post)
• States are having trouble figuring out how to use special education stimulus funds. (Education Week)
• Many foundations that give to education are reducing their donations this year. (Education Week)
• The New York Observer editorializes in support of charter schools.