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Chancellor Joel Klein is making good on his word that, regardless of mayoral control’s expiration, he would continue to appoint superintendents.

The Department of Education has named three new interim acting superintendents to fill vacancies, according to the city’s chief schools officer, Eric Nadelstern. Why “interim acting”?

“Right now everything’s up in the air,” Nadelstern said. “Until the governance matters are resolved,” he said, the DOE is erring on the side of caution.

There are legal ambiguities surrounding the chancellor’s ability to appoint superintendents. With the reversion to pre-2002 education law, the chancellor can select superintendents, but they can only make contracts with community school boards. Klein has not revived these boards, leading some to question whether existing and incoming superintendents have the legal authority do their jobs.

The new hires will replace the outgoing superintendents in districts 8, 15, and 21. (more…)

Principal William Jusino of Progress High School at the NYCLU press conference. (GothamSchools)

Many city schools rely on metal detectors, security guards, and zero-tolerance policies to keep discipline under control. They don’t have to, according to a new report about alternate strategies to keep schools safe.

The report, produced by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, highlights six city high schools that stop problems before they start, help students resolve their own disputes, and keep police out of all but the most serious incidents. The schools range in size and how students are admitted, but they all post higher-than-average graduation rates, the report says.

“There is no cookie-cutter solution” to replicating the gentler approach to discipline, said NYCLU policy director Udi Ofer at a press conference today. But he said getting rid of metal detectors, currently in place at about 130 city schools, is a good place to start. (more…)

Protestors at P.S. 123 yesterday applauded lawmakers pushing for limits on charter schools in Harlem. Eva Moskowitz, the C.E.O. of the Success Charter Network, was a particular target. (Photo screenshot from video below.)

The next front for the Harlem school wars could be Albany.

City Council member Inez Dickens yesterday proposed changing the state law to cap the number of charter schools that a single operator can open in a given school district.

She was speaking at a protest against the Success charter school network’s expansion into a traditional Harlem public school, P.S. 123.

Dickens said she had the support of state Sen. Bill Perkins, and Keith Wright, an Assemblyman representing Harlem, said he would introduce legislation to make that change on his side of the legislature.

A neighborhood- and operator-specific cap would add to what exists now, a cap on the number of charter schools across New York state at 200. There are 1,500 public schools in the city.

Such a cap would also squarely challenge the strategy the Success Charter Network has pursued of opening a large number of charter schools in a designated area; Eva Moskowitz, the network’s CEO, has said her goal is to open 40 Harlem charter schools in the next 10 years. (more…)

James Liebman. (Photo courtesy of NYC Department of Education)

James Liebman, the law professor mastermind behind the Bloomberg administration’s school accountability system, is resigning, Chancellor Joel Klein just announced.

A former principal, Shael Polakow-Suransky, will replace Liebman on an “interim acting” basis. The swap transitions the Office of Accountability to the hands of a longtime educator from those of a outsider criticized for having no teaching experience.

The accountability system constructed by Liebman, a law professor at Columbia University, changed the tone of many schools in the city, sometimes dramatically. The new focus on improving students’ test scores drew both sharp criticism from some city educators who said it narrowed curriculum and created incentives to cheat — and a carnival of visitors from around the country and abroad hoping to model the system in their schools.

The matrix of tools built by Liebman includes report cards that assign each school a letter grade; quality reviews that evaluate schools’ use of test score data to inform teaching; a data warehouse searchable by teachers and, now, parents; so-called “formative assessments” that help teachers diagnose students’ strengths and weaknesses before state test time; and a “data inquiry team” system that encourages teachers to make curriculum decisions by referring to students’ test scores.

Liebman will return to teaching at Columbia full-time, but will continue to work on special projects for the Department of Education, Klein’s press release said. Neither Liebman nor Klein could be reached for an immediate comment.

Updates to come. Here’s the full press release: (more…)

The Senate may be nearing an agreement on mayoral control, but now there’s a new debate — over how to increase parental involvement, and what involvement means.

At the center of the debate are the two parent groups most actively lobbying Albany, and each has its own slightly different vision.

The Parent Commission on School Governance is pushing for a kind of parent union, which it calls an Independent Parent Organization and Training Academy.

According to Patricia Connelly, a member of the Parent Commission, the organization would act like a think tank-cum-lobbying force for parent advocate groups and would be modeled on the now-defunct United Parent Association.

“It can be a place where people come together and learn from one another,” Connelly said, adding that the group would also do research and train less experienced parents.

“Right now we don’t have an institutionalized role and people say well there’s OFEA [Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy], but that’s just an arm of the Department of Education and it’s more about delivering PowerPoint presentations rather than what we really need to know to be effective advocates,” she said. (more…)

• Parents remain worried after kindergarten wait lists shrink to less than 500 kids. (Times, Daily News)
• Parents from Harlem’s PS 123 protested against the expansion of the building’s charter school. (NY1)
• The mayor’s refusal to close schools on Muslim holidays could become a political liability. (Jewish Week)
• Senate Dem leader John Sampson said he wants to “enhance” mayoral control. (Daily News, WNYC)
• Newark is offering a citywide Advanced Placement summer school for kids to get ahead. (Times)
• Sharing a dorm room with someone from another race can cut down on prejudice, a study found. (Times)

• A retiring NEA official offers a lively history of modern teachers unions. Commentary here.
• Teacher unions “must decide whether they will participate, or continue to be further marginalized.”
• Norm Scott finds UFT’s financial reports, including $4m to Glover Park Group consultants.
• Mayor Bloomberg is recruiting Adrian Fenty and Cory Booker to woo hip young professionals.
• Jonathan says his “do not apply” list worked, but now it’s more like “apply with caution.”
• In Philadelphia, small school advocates feel beaten down by opposition from Ackerman.
• And don’t forget Philly’s talking about pressure to promote students, too. (Via Thompson.)
• The UFT’s special education department is chronicling violations around the city.
• Education sousveyor is among the jobs that a chief learning officer would hire, were she to exist.
• Maybe we can extend the instructional year without eliminating summer vacation.
• The renegade lunch lady working to make school lunches more nutritious goes on film.
• And Bill Gates should create a university, Gates University, says Kevin Carey.

New rules for how students who don’t complete classes can earn make-up credit are open for public comment.

I wrote about the push to regulate so-called “credit recovery” programs, which critics say are less rigorous than regular high school classes, in April:

The proposed policy appears for the most part to codify practices that are already taking place in many city schools, said Stephen Phillips, a professor in Brooklyn College’s school of education who worked as a principal and superintendent in the city. The policy shows that [the State Education Department] is “trying to catch up some standards to what was going on” inside schools, he said.

SED is now asking teachers, administrators, parents, students and others to fill out a four-question “Make-up Course Credit Survey.“ 

Interim Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Santiago Taveras told the City Council’s education committee last month that the city does not track schools’ use of credit recovery programs. (more…)

The same day the city announced a total hiring freeze, the Department of Education began lifting one of its own.

Last night, the department e-mailed new Teaching Fellows assigned to District 75, the city’s school district for the most disabled students, to let them know that they can now be hired for open positions in the district. For months, Teaching Fellows and all other teachers not already working in the system have been shut out of consideration for all positions at the department, the result of a cost-saving hiring freeze enacted in early May. 

The change means that about 10 percent of the city’s new Teaching Fellows are now eligible for positions, because about 70 of the 700 fellows currently in training have been assigned to District 75, according to a department spokeswoman, Ann Forte. (Another 330 of the 700 are being trained as special education teachers to work in general education schools, she said.) Previously, those teachers and others not already in the system could be hired only by new schools, and only in small numbers.

Another set of novice teachers so far shut out of most positions, those hired by Teach for America, will not be affected by the change, because TFA does not assign teachers to District 75, Forte said. Paraprofessionals, aides who work with needy students, are still barred from hiring and remain at risk of being laid off, even from District 75 schools, she said. (more…)

City Council member Charles Barron outside Tweed Courthouse yesterday. (GothamSchools Flickr)

City Councilman Charles Barron tried to haul Schools Chancellor Joel Klein off to jail yesterday but left Tweed Courthouse empty-handed.

His attempted citizen’s arrest came during a rally yesterday to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s continued school control even after mayoral control legally expired last week. Midway through event, Barron took the microphone and ascended Tweed’s steps, some of the crowd following him.

“They are in there illegally,” he said when he got to the doors, which were closed. “They should have to leave. This is the people’s building now.” The doors had been open earlier during the event.

“This is a citizen’s arrest,” he declared, ostensibly because Klein did not vacate his offices after mayoral control technically ended. (In fact, the newly convened Board of Education voted the next day to rehire Klein as chancellor and give him the same authority he had before the mayoral control law expired.)

“Is the chancellor in there?” he asked the security guards on the other side of the glass doors. “No? Tell him I’m looking for him.”

Barron, who has called for Klein to be fired before, said a longtime community activist, Jitu Weusi, should be the chancellor. Weusi was a lead organizer of yesterday’s event, which attracted about 100 people from across the city. (View more pictures from the rally.) (more…)