GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Actual children attend the city schools, and some of them can’t sit still.
• Aaron Pallas takes a break from crunching numbers to qualify what “parent involvement” can mean.
• Merryl Tisch as state chancellor “doesn’t pass the smell test,” a school official says on Norm Scott’s blog.
• A teacher-blogger describes a very nice but not-so-sharp student who didn’t get into any high school.
• The Flypaper fellows think Arne Duncan might be all talk on the stimulus and school reform.
• A playbook for how to save Detroit’s schools from total catastrophe.
• A parent council in Queens is the latest body to weigh in against a controversial principal there.
• Andy Rotherham examines the symbolism of education reform, finding it lacking.
• Even in apples-to-apples comparisons, Teach for America teachers do better, according to a new study.
• Whitney Tilson has the R-rated version of what happened at the Education Equality Project convention.

Charter school principal Eddie Calderon-Melendez, right, speaking to parents and students at his schools' admission lottery. (GothamSchools, Flickr)

The conventional wisdom about charter schools is that they allow families a way out of their zoned schools. But for soon-to-be high school students, charter schools actually provide the nearest alternative to a zoned option, according to one school operator.

The high school admissions program run by the Department of Education is citywide, meaning that students can apply to any school in the city. But the state law governing charter schools treats high schools just like schools serving younger students: They are required to give priority in admissions to students living in their school district.

Because many charter schools have more applicants than seats, charter high schools necessarily end up with mostly students from their district. For that reason, “we’re actually a throwback to the zoned school,” Eddie Calderon-Melendez, the principal of Williamsburg Charter High School, told me last week at the lottery for the three schools in his Believe Network. (more…)

One of the questions given to a council member on Wednesday. (GothamSchools, Flickr)

Like Elizabeth, I was surprised to see a representative of the teachers union hand City Council members pre-printed cards with questions to ask during yesterday’s hearing on charter school expansion. Apparently, council members were taken aback by the move as well.

Organizations frequently provide information and suggestions for council members to use during hearings, according to a spokesman for Simcha Felder, the councilman who shared the cards with us. The spokesman, Eric Kuo, said Felder doesn’t think there is anything improper about the United Federation of Teachers and other groups suggesting questions to council members as one of their advocacy strategies.

But Kuo did say that the union took the strategy to a new level yesterday. “During the last hearing, it was more aggressive than before,” he said.

At the hearing, Felder drew uncomfortable looks from union officials sitting in the front row of the audience as he shared the cards with GothamSchools. Still, he even got up from his seat to collect the UFT’s question cards from his colleagues and pass them over to Elizabeth as well. Kuo said Felder shared the cards out of a commitment to transparency. “He doesn’t think it should be a secret” what council members have on their desks, Kuo said.

Renaissance students organized a protest against the freeze in their budget. (Lisette Lopez, Renaissance junior)

Staff at a Queens charter school that is represented by several city labor unions are growing frustrated with the unions, which they worry sat quietly by while state lawmakers slashed charter school budgets two weeks ago.

The school, Renaissance Charter School in Jackson Heights, is expecting a cut of between $500,000 and $600,000 from what was projected for next year after state lawmakers froze planned funding increases to charter schools two weeks ago.

Charter school activists have said that they’re hopeful that Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who founded another unionized charter school in Queens, will yet restore the extra funds to charter schools, but no deal has been struck yet.

That leaves teachers at Renaissance planning for possible teacher layoffs and big program cuts. (The $500,000 cut from the increase the school was expecting is especially hard to shoulder given that pension costs are skyrocketing by $300,000 next year and teacher salaries are slated to go up.)

A main frustration, a Renaissance administrator said, is that the unions to which Renaissance’s staff belong did not give them a heads up about the cuts — even though staff repeatedly asked union leaders if they should expect a cut. “Our members here feel shafted,” Nicholas Tishuk, Renaissance’s director of programs and accountability, said. “We were told that this charter school cut was mentioned two months ago, and it hasn’t been on anyone’s lips. And then we find out the Sunday night before the vote on Tuesday that not only was it on everyone’s lips; it’s actually happening.”

Most charter schools in New York City are not represented by teachers unions, since the schools operate outside of the Department of Education and therefore do not see their staffs unionize automatically. But the union has fought to bring charter schools teachers into its fold. Their slow but steady inclusion has put the union in the tricky position of on the one hand lobbying for limits on charter schools, while, on the other hand, representing some charter school staff. (more…)

In an extensive comments thread today on Brownstoner.com, a Web site that focuses on real estate in brownstone Brooklyn, readers are debating whether it makes sense to choose a home based on the local school. (Their discussion is inspired by the recent Times story about how some parents who until recently were planning on sending their children to private school are getting an unpleasant surprise when they learn they what school they’re zoned to attend.) Some say yes, but others say that rather than moving, parents should focus on improving their zoned school — and they have advice about how to do that.

Writes user BedStuy11216: 

Instead of complaining and trying to squeeze ever more kids into the already overtaxed “Good” schools, target an underfunctioning school but one that shows some promise and has an administration open to new ideas and partnerships. Organize and recruit your fellow wealthy parents to commit to sending their kids. Instead of $25- 30,000 a year have each of them commit to contribute at least $3,000 per child. Focus on something the funds will go to that will improve the overall quality of the school (library, computers, science lab, gym equipment, sound and lighting equipment for the auditorium, chess teacher, art supplies, after school program). Have them use their lofty connections to get organizations to partner with the school. Create a relationship with local politicians to get your chosen school on the radar. With extra funds and a heatlhy partnership between parents and school administrators, within two years you will see a turn around.

Other commenters are suggesting schools that are “ripe for a turnaround” of the type that PS 11 in Clinton Hill experienced after a core group of involved parents there teamed up with the school’s principal to become an attractive option for gentrifiers moving to the neighborhood. PS 11 parents threw a fundraiser for Insideschools.org last spring to thank the site, where I worked at the time, for its role in promoting new developments at the school, which included the addition of enrichment classes, a reduction in class sizes, and a partnership with the human rights organization Amnesty International. The parents I spoke to at the fundraiser, whose children have been at PS 11 for several years now, said they were working on a strategy to bolster the district’s struggling middle schools.

• The number of parents running for seats on district councils is down from two years ago. (Daily News)
• City Limits probes the low numbers of black and Hispanic students at the city’s specialized schools.
• More than 1,500 students vied for 100 spots at Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem. (WCBS, Post)
• A second-round high school fair didn’t give much hope to an eighth grader without a spot. (Daily News)
• The Post pokes fun at Comptroller William Thompson for his recent exchange with Joel Klein.
• Nationwide, half of all teachers will reach retirement age in the next decade. (Times, USA Today)
• D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee is designing a way to evaluate her teachers. (Washington Post)
• Charter schools upstate are struggling with the freeze on their budgets for next year. (Buffalo News)

• The Voice says it’s not clear yet whether Thompson was grandstanding or correct about contracts.
• Maybe teachers unions aren’t the only ones to blame for the backwardness of teacher evaluation.
• Advice from New Jersey about how to spend wisely on reducing the achievement gap.
• A new book puts educational philanthropy to charter schools in historical context.
• A conservative and liberal writer agree on one education fix: national curriculum standards.

In her first appearance before the City Council committee that she used to chair, controversial charter school operator Eva Moskowitz today warned members of the council about the dangers of what she called the “union-political-educational complex.”

Moskowitz was referring to what she has said is interference by the teachers union in the Department of Education’s bid to close low-performing schools and replace them with charter schools. Her Harlem Success Network of charter schools was set to replace two zoned schools in Harlem, PS 194 and PS 241, but the DOE said last week it would keep those schools open because of a lawsuit filed by the United Federation of Teachers and others that alleges that the school swap is illegal. Moskowitz said today the lawsuit shows that “the union wants to shut down the the competition rather than compete on the merits of what it offers.”

But her former colleagues on the council’s education committee weren’t quick to accept Moskowitz’s rhetoric. Several of them took used her appearance as an opportunity to lecture her about the divisive tactics employed by Harlem Success and the parent organization it operates, Harlem Parents United. In a withering press release, the organizations last week called for the neighborhood schools to be shut down. Elizabeth reported that a public hearing last month about using the PS 194 building to house a charter school was dominated by shouting and name-calling. Committee chairman Robert Jackson today said the hearing was “so volatile” that he feared it was more than the eight safety officers present could handle.

“Your arrogance about what the system should do and that charter schools are the answer is exactly what drives the conflict in the community,” said Maria del Carmen Arroyo of the Bronx. (more…)

Council Member Simcha Felder displays one of the cue cards a teachers union representative handed him.

At today’s education committee hearing, City Council members took turns questioning Department of Education officials on the rise of charters schools. Their questions were passionate, specific, and universally accusatory. They may have also been scripted.

Just before the hearing began, a representative of the city teachers union, which describes itself as in favor of charter schools, discreetly passed out a set of index cards to Council members, each printed with a pre-written question.

One batch of cards offered questions for the Department of Education, all of them challenging the proliferation of charter schools. “Doesn’t the Department have a clear legal and moral responsibility to provide every family in the city guaranteed seats for their children in a neighborhood elementary school?” one card suggested members ask school officials. “Isn’t the fundamental problem here the Department’s abdication of its most important responsibility to provide quality district public schools in all parts of the city?” another card said. (View more of the cards in a slideshow here.)

Several council members picked up on the line of thought. “Shouldn’t we aspire to have every school in the city good enough for parents to feel comfortable sending their children?” Melinda Katz, a Council member from Queens, said in questioning school officials. “I remember when Joel Klein became the chancellor,” the committee chair, Robert Jackson, said. “Back then, he used to talk about making every neighborhood school a good school where every parent would want to send their children. I don’t hear him talk about that anymore.”

Asked about the cards, union president Randi Weingarten provided a statement saying that she regretted the tactic. “We are often asked by the council for information and ideas about various issues. Additionally, when I am available, I often respond to what others testify to. In this instance, I was in Washington and couldn’t be at City Hall,” she said in the statement. “I am proud of the testimony we gave today, but I regret the manner in which our other concerns were shared.” (more…)

Elizabeth reported last week about Comptroller William Thompson’s claim that the Department of Education overspent on some of its contracts with external vendors. At the time, the department argued that Thompson’s analysis overstated the difference between projected and actual costs, sometimes “wildly.”

In a strongly worded letter of his own sent to Thompson this weekend, Klein elaborated on the department’s defense, saying that the comptroller disregarded information about how the department structures contracts and pays for services when he put together his report. One example of the “distortions and misrepresentations” in Thompson’s claims, Klein wrote, was that a contract with the Xerox Corporation had cost the city 6700 percent more than it was supposed to:

The Xerox contract was actually registered for $31 million. We originally registered the contract for $20 million in 2002, and later extended it twice, once by $10 million and a second time by $1 million. It appears that you cite the amount of this last extension as if it were the entire registration amount. 

Klein’s entire letter to Thompson is posted after the jump. (more…)