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Last month, I wrote a story for the Village Voice about the challenges facing early college schools, schools that partner with local universities to offer students a taste of college while they’re still in high school. One major challenge, I reported, is that the schools can’t always maintain space on or near the campus of their partner colleges, threatening the collaborations.

Last week, developments occurred at two of the schools I mentioned in the article that underscore the relationship between location and identity for early college schools. The Daily News reported that Middle College High School at LaGuardia Community College is likely to stay in its current home on the campus of the college because the Department of Education is moving to purchase the building. The real estate deal has not been finalized, but the department has come to an agreement with the owner, DOE spokesman Will Havemann told me on Friday.

Also on Friday, parents at an early college school in a different borough were responding to news about their school’s future location. A cadre of parents from Bronx Early College Academy traveled to City Hall Friday afternoon to protest a move planned for their school that would quadruple its distance from its partner college, Lehman College. The parents were protesting both the site, in the building of IS 166, a large middle school that is closing because of poor performance, and the process by which the DOE selected it, according to leader Annabel Wright, who estimated that about 20 parents made the trip to Lower Manhattan. (more…)

I suppose it was wishful thinking on skoolboy’s part to hope that we could escape a release of new scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) with just a soundbite from Margaret Spellings, who served as Secretary of Education from 2005 to 2009.  Today’s Washington Post features her op-ed piece arguing that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which she once referred to as “99.9% pure,” is the reason that test scores are rising.  A corollary is than any significant alteration to the NCLB reforms is a cowardly retreat from “the real accountability that is working in our elementary and middle schools.”

Key to Madame Secretary’s argument is that scores have risen more rapidly in the NCLB era in both reading and math than in the three decades before that.  “Consider,” she writes.  “In the 10 years since 1999, reading scores for 9-year-olds have risen eight points;  in the nearly three decades before that, scores rose only four points.  In the past 10 years, math scores have increased 11 points, while in the nearly three decades prior, scores rose only 13 points.”

I argued last week that the long-term trend NAEP data are a poor basis for evaluating the effectiveness of reforms such as NCLB, in part because the skills tested on them are not aligned with contemporary curricular standards.  (Math, for example, is weighted towards computation;  and although computation is important, we now expect students to engage in more challenging mathematical content in elementary, middle and high school.)  The main NAEP is a better indicator of trends in recent performance over time. (more…)

• In an advisory vote, a Manhattan community board called for major checks on mayoral control. (Post)
• A Brooklyn assistant principal was among several arrested for running a car theft ring. (Post, Daily News)
• Individual members of the city and state teachers unions can elect to turn their dues into donations. (Post)
• The Post describes the grad rate rise under Bloomberg, attributing it to his shutting down failing schools.
• At one small high school, Bronx Lab, students write 80-pages novellas before they graduate. (Post)
• A Post columnist says he hopes a state labor board soon decertifies the union at two charter schools.
• Citing GothamSchools, Jay Mathews says the AFT’s Innovation Fund is a good sign. (Washington Post)
• With its academic focus, kindergarten these days just isn’t fun, says writer Peggy Orenstein. (Times)
• In D.C. and elsewhere, the poorest kids are still taught by the greenest teachers. (Washington Post)
• Former Ed Sec Margaret Spellings says recent NAEP scores show NCLB is working. (Washington Post)
• British teachers are voting on whether to boycott upcoming standardized testing. (BBC)
• After an L.A. Times story, California officials are seeking a law to ease teacher firings. (L.A. Times)
• The Washington Post pans a move by the D.C. Council to take school power from the mayor.

• Two new-but-old subway cars recently came to East New York High School for Transit Technology.
• Liz Willen writes that the problem of oversubscribed kindergartens could push families out of the city.
• Ethics and financial disclosure documents for Education Secretary Arne Duncan are now online.
• Students at Staten Island’s McKee High School took care of fake babies, and they said it was no fun.
• I can’t listen to my appearance on Brian Lehrer, but you can. Just don’t tell me how my voice sounds!
• One set of kids did better on the NAEP exam: Those whose parents didn’t graduate from college.
• The DOE was supposed to release gifted and talented scores today, but it didn’t.
• School buildings aren’t just for educating kids. They can also help with urban regeneration.
• In Arizona, a consortium of high-performing charter schools is pushing for weaker ones to close.
• A teacher says her school’s new administration wants the school to live up to its technology theme.
• Norm Scott has a flyer produced by teachers who want to expose the truth behind the rubber rooms.
• Diane Ravitch isn’t the only one who’s distressed by Joel Klein’s response to NYC’s NAEP results.

Four major foundations that have for years poured resources into growing charter schools this week announced that they are also giving money to the American Federation of Teachers, the national teachers union. Their donations are paying for an “Innovation Fund” that would let teachers pilot reforms in their own schools.

Along with representatives of the Gates, Broad, Ford, and Mott foundations, Randi Weingarten announced the fund’s creation at an event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Weingarten is the head of the AFT as well as New York City’s local union.)  An informative video the AFT produced from the event is below the jump.

Contrary to what some critics have charged, unions are a natural engine for innovation because they can insulate their members from retribution if their risks don’t pan out, Weingarten said on Tuesday. ”Collective bargaining allows teachers to take well-considered risks,” she said. “If teachers are afraid to do something outside the norm because their evaluations or their jobs are on the line, they may be less inclined to give change a chance.”

Now, the AFT is asking local affiliates to suggest projects for the first round of Innovation Fund grants. Priority will go to projects that aim to develop new compensation and evaluation systems for teachers, or projects that extend learning time for students.

If I know nothing else, I know that GothamSchools readers are full of ideas about how to improve schools. What do you think the Innovation Fund should support? Leave a comment with your suggestions. (more…)

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten isn’t in a fighting mood. Last week, she made a splash when she first said charter schools can be incubators for good ideas in school reform. Yesterday, she offered an olive branch to one of her chief adversaries, the charter school operator Eva Moskowitz. And today, she issued a statement calling Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget “thoughtful and responsible.”

The proposed budget might still be harmful to schools, Weingarten implies in the statement:

Our schools have already absorbed cuts upwards of 10% over the last two years, and teachers are already doing more with less every day to provide a safe, nurturing environment for their students. Important after school programs such as tutoring and academic intervention services have already been affected. Additional cutbacks have the potential to dramatically alter the landscape, and attrition may mean jumps in class size.

Weingarten also argues against the creation of a new pension tier that would provide reduced benefits for employees hired in the future, something Bloomberg has been pushing to cut city costs. Earlier this spring, the UFT announced that it had identified ways for the city to save millions of dollars that would make a new pension tier unnecessary.

Weingarten’s complete statement is after the jump. (more…)

The city Department of Education is spared the worst of city agencies’ impending budget cuts, according to the executive budget proposal released by Mayor Bloomberg today for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Lots of city agencies are being asked to fire employees, and spending citywide on capital projects has been slashed by 27 percent, Bloomberg said at a briefing for reporters about the plan today. On the other hand, he said, “We have a school system that we are putting more money in than we did last year.” The budget proposed today includes $10,810,000 in city funds for public schools. By the end of the current fiscal year, according to budget documents distributed today, the DOE will have received $10,462,000 in city funds. 

The DOE is being asked merely not to replace teachers who leave, not outright fire teachers, Bloomberg said. Plus, he said, federal stabilization money will allow the DOE to escape the deep cuts in capital funds that other city agencies are experiencing. Although the new capital plan is smaller than the one that is now ending, the DOE is being spared the 27 percent capital budget reduction that other agencies are set to experience. Whether the DOE would be included in a citywide reduction in capital spending had been an open question.

Responding to a reporter’s question about cuts to other agencies that could impede their ability to help needy New Yorkers, Bloomberg cited the philosophy of his chancellor, Joel Klein. “You’re never going to fix poverty until you fix public education,” Bloomberg said.

“I’m always happy to hear the mayor adopt my philosophy,” Klein told me when I asked him what he thought about hearing the philosophy he has promoted as the founder of the Education Equality Project being used to explain cuts in city services that some have called “ruthless.”

Klein sounded less sanguine when discussing the school budget picture. (more…)

[This post has been updated to include a comment from Jon Schnur.]

WASHINGTON, D.C. —  Jon Schnur, the education policy expert who has been working as an advisor to President Barack Obama and played a pivotal role in writing the federal stimulus plan for schools, will not serve in the Obama administration. He will instead return to running the nonprofit principal-training program New Leaders for New Schools group that he co-founded, according to an e-mail he sent recently to members of New Leaders.

Schnur is one of the most high-profile members of the next-generation “reform” camp of Democrats, who push for dramatic changes in public schools, including strong accountability measures. He had been named as a likely chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and was serving as a senior adviser to Duncan, helping him craft the education part of the stimulus bill.

Schnur’s close role in the administration had been seen as a signal of its direction on education, suggesting that the president was siding with the camp of education advocates that includes Schnur (and for which we singled Schnur out as a spokesman), rather than with the camp that is more skeptical of recent accountability efforts.

As word of Schnur’s plans spread around Washington, D.C., the major question I’m hearing people ask is why he is not entering the administration — and what that says about the administration’s direction. (I am in D.C. for the annual meeting of the Education Writers Association, where I am becoming a board member.) (more…)

• Mayor Bloomberg plans to spare teachers from layoffs in the executive budget he proposes today. (NY1)
• Last’s nights Randi Weingarten-Eva Moskowitz debate wasn’t totally bitter. (GothamSchools, Post)
• Assemblyman James Brennan, a Bloomberg critic, has proposed a law altering mayoral control. (Post)
• Scott Stringer is proposing something called the Universal Parent Engagement Procedure. (The Villager)
• Manhattan’s CB 1 passed a resolution supporting big changes to mayoral control. (Downtown Express)
• All over Manhattan, parents are distressed by being waitlisted for their zoned schools. (Times)
• In an editorial, The Villager offers concrete suggestions about where to house crowded-out students.
• The DOE is buying a Queens building so a high school can stay when its lease ends. (Daily News)
• The Riverdale Press probes why two neighborhood principals are still there, despite parent complaints.
• Gov. Paterson has proposed a plan for the MTA that would also give money to school districts. (Times)
• A Park Slope teacher was sent to the rubber room after using a racial epithet in class. (Daily News)
• Francisco Garabitos says he plans to keep fighting against systemic abuse of teachers. (Riverdale Press)
• Jay Mathews says a new report is wrong: AP classes haven’t been dumbed down. (Washington Post)

• A teacher wonders how she could have missed a good student’s learning disability.
• The newly named U.S. deputy education secretary, Tony Miller, is an expert in school funding.
• Troublemaking teacher Francisco Garabitos got a standing ovation from his local parent council.
• Also, Garabitos’s Web site has been updated to include a defense of “the teacher from hell.“
• The UFT’s blog, Edwize, has gotten a colorful new facelift.
• Students who didn’t get a first-round high school acceptance found out today where they’ll enroll.
• High schooler Toni Bruno says her peers would benefit from senior-year internships.
• “Thank God for teachers unions, as weak as they are,” writes Debbie Meier on Bridging Differences.
• After a hundred days, President Obama still has a lot on his education to-do list.
• I remember not being sure when my senior skip day was. If only I’d had Twitter to help me!