GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Teach for America, the program that places new teachers in hard-to-staff public schools, is planning to send nearly a third of its new New York City teachers to charter schools this fall, up from just 3% in 2005, internal TFA projections show.

The shift to charter schools insulates the latest batch of Teach For America teachers from a new-teacher hiring freeze the city announced earlier this month. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated, so they aren’t subject to the freeze and can hire any certified teacher, whether she is already in the Department of Education system or not.

The move follows a downsizing in Teach For America’s pool to about 300 from 500 teachers last year. The city’s dismal budget picture led to the retraction. (more…)

In a reminder that only six months remain before the current city teachers contract expires, the teachers’ union is now telephone-polling members with questions like “How do you feel about seniority?” and “How do you feel about paying for health care?”

The teacher-blogger NYC Educator first reported the questions on his blog yesterday, relaying questions that were posed to an unnamed teacher in a phone call.

One of the most prescient questions on that list asks teachers when they’d like contract negotiations to end — before or after the 2009 mayoral election? The contract is set to expire in October, and the election is in November. Negotiating a contract before the election would mean working with Mayor Bloomberg for sure, rather than whoever wins the 2009 mayoral race. It could also offer a boost to the mayor’s re-election campaign, as happened in 2005.

Nailing down a contract before the 2009 election could also have an impact on the debate on mayoral control. Some have suggested that the union could, for instance, make a concession on its demanded checks and balances to the mayor’s power over schools now in exchange for help in the contract later. (more…)

MAYORAL CONTROL:

• Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says mayoral control talks in Albany are “evolving.” (NY1)
• Mayor Bloomberg praised Shelly Silver’s school plan and the effort in Albany. (Post)
• The Daily News says Silver is on the right track; the Post wants more details about what his position. 
• State lawmakers say Bloomberg’s leadership is making them think twice about mayoral control. (NY1)
• Jacob Gershman analyzes the politics around Silver’s moderate mayoral control position. (Post)
• The Queens school board appointee says the PEP should have more power. (Queens Tribune)

OTHER NEWS:

• Some principals say their budgets are dropping by even more than the amount the DOE warned. (Post)
• A teacher’s 5-year fight over an abuse charge shows problems in the teacher justice system.  (Times)
• ARIS for parents is now online. (GothamSchools, Post)
• Since the arrival of swine flu, school nurses have been busier than ever. (NY1)
• Some city kids are changing their college plans after getting too little financial aid. (Riverdale Press)
• About a dozen Los Angeles teachers have launched a hunger strike against layoffs. (L.A. Times)
• States are working on plans to keep high school graduates out of remedial college classes. (Times)
• Kids these days really like hugging each other; parents and teachers are baffled. (Times)
• The Green Dot-takeover school in Los Angeles, Locke High, is still lagging academically. (L.A. Times)

• Shelly Silver says his plan, proposed last night, is not final and he’s in no rush.
• A satire on the public school parents blog: “Mike to voters: drop dead.
• Twenty-two days till the end of school! Yup that’s 22. 22. 22.
• A teacher explains what “teacher leader” means and why leaders should get performance pay.
• A study finds that desegregation policies led teachers to transfer away from changing schools.
• John Merrow describes a frank family conversation about cheating at school.
• Sesame Street’s parent nonprofit is making budget cuts, and the show’s ranking is falling.
• The federal DOE is getting frustrated that states aren’t submitting stimulus plans.
• Rotherham offers three rules for how to talk about teachers unions.
• Here’s why New York is being hit harder by swine flu than other cities.
• Some progressive education ideas coming out of… Utah!

The city should be prepared to see the average class size continue to increase this fall, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told members of the City Council today.

During a hearing this morning about the Department of Education’s proposed budget, finance committee chair David Weprin asked Klein what might happen to class sizes next year, when school budgets are cut by more than 5 percent, especially given that schools used $84 million to reduce class sizes this year yet the average class size went up for the first time in several years.

“I think they will increase, not dramatically,” Klein said, explaining that the expected decline in the size of the teaching force through attrition would likely cause class sizes to inch up. 

Education committee chair Robert Jackson asked Klein how watchdogs can make sure that state class size reduction money is being spent on its intended purpose if class sizes continue to increase. (more…)

Image from the DOE's Parent Link Web site

First it was principals, then it was teachers, and now parents are next in line to gain access to ARIS, the Department of Education’s data warehouse.

Each school will give parents passwords to log into the Parent Link section of ARIS sometime “between now and the end of the school year,” according to DOE spokesman Andy Jacob. Once logged in, parents will be able to monitor their child’s test scores.

The department is planning to hold a press conference tomorrow to debut Parent Link, ARIS’s previously missing puzzle piece, Jacob said. But the site is already up and running, and it appears that at least one school has given parents their usernames and temporary passwords: A commenter on Insideschools reports having received a password to access Parent Link — and finding that some of the information there was incorrect. (more…)

When City Council Member Bill de Blasio criticized the Department of Education’s bill of rights for parents as being too limited last week, it was the first many of us had ever heard of such a document. Now, just a week later, the document has expanded, ballooning to an eight-page list of 57 enumerated rights divided into four sections. That’s up from five one-sentence rights published on a single Web page.

A spokesman for de Blasio said school officials alerted his office to the new bill of rights yesterday, the same day the document appeared on the department’s Web site. In a statement, de Blasio said he is encouraged by the expansion, but not satisfied.

The new version outlines a litany of specific rights for parents, including the right to receive their children’s full instructional schedule, the right to have meetings about their children’s educational record, and the right to communicate with teachers. The original bill of rights, which is also still published online, in English and a slate of other languages, was more vague, affording parents the right to things like “a free public school education” for their children and to “be actively involved in the education of their children.”

The new version does not include one of de Blasio’s recommendations, though: the right to attend a zoned school in their neighborhood. De Blasio called that omission “troubling.” His full statement is below the jump.

UPDATE: A spokeswoman for the department, Nicole Duignan, said school officials have actually been working on the expanded document for two years. She said the family engagement and advocacy office built it “based on input and experience from parents who wish to play an active role in their children’s education.”

“We always welcome ideas and suggestions from elected officials to promote and improve parent involvement in our schools,” Duignan said.
(more…)

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has for years been a proponent of paying some teachers more based on their performance, and he has made some headway in introducing merit pay in the city schools. But the policy has plenty of critics, from teachers who say merit pay divides them to statisticians who point simply to flaws in the measures on which pay calculations are based.

In the video above, University of Virginia psychology professor Dan Willingham gives six reasons in three minutes why paying teachers based on their students’ test scores isn’t statistically sound. But Willingham doesn’t totally rule out the prospect of paying better teachers more: “Merit pay can’t work until there’s a way to measure teacher performance that’s fair,” he concludes.

• Sheldon Silver’s mayoral control plan keeps a mayoral majority on the PEP. (Daily News, Post)
• About 20 schools closed because of swine flu reopened; five more closed yesterday. (NY1, Daily News)
• A CUNY trustee says major changes to mayoral control would be devastating to CUNY. (Daily News)
• Parents and teachers are still saying the DOE hasn’t given enough swine flu information. (Daily News)
• Anthony Weiner explains why he has decided not to run against Mayor Bloomberg. (Times)
• Conflicting enrollment projections are dividing Michelle Rhee and the D.C. Council. (Washington Post)
• In Boston, budget cuts could bring an end to busing for charter school students. (Boston Globe)

• Diane Ravitch: Contrary to what Joel Klein thinks, education is not the civil rights issue of our time.
• Information is trickling out about G&T admissions, but it’s not fast enough for some families.
• Everyone’s looking for the education angle on Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor.
• A teacher at an overcrowded school has some unorthodox proposals for where new schools should go.
• Read the guide to the rubber room, thanks to a reassigned teacher who scanned it in.
• Pondering those subway ads that promote the city’s public schools.
• A teacher who started the year with high hopes is counting down the days until summer vacation.
• Did incoming interim deputy chancellor Santi Taveras struggle in a teaching position long ago?
• At least one school nurse might not have provided the best defense against swine flu.
• Analysis of the mayoral control fight that invokes the words of disgraced Providence mayor Buddy Cianci.
• Diagnoses of teaching disabilities are on the rise. (It’s the Onion, people! A joke!)
• Slate reports that the College Board isn’t trying to help students; it’s trying to make money.
• Baltimore is trying to double the number of Teach For America corps members there.
• Leo Casey explains why it’s a mistake to associate teacher unionism with student performance.
• In a Brooklyn district, a fight over charter school siting, with a dispatch from a parent leader.
• A call for more detailed school budget data, posted in more transparent ways.