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The view outside our newsroom window. The rain sounded like hail (plague no. 7).

A screenshot from DFER's web site advertises four new branches. (The Florida branch is yet to be official, according to executive director Joe Williams.)

The lobbying group whose H.R. recommendations virtually staffed President Obama’s Education Department is spreading its “reform” tentacles.

Democrats for Education Reform now has branches in Missouri, Colorado, and Wisconsin, in addition to its hometown, New York, and the organization plans to be in 10 states by 2011, executive director Joe Williams told me earlier this week.

“We have very good conditions at the federal level right now for at least talking about reform, but we’re really talking about what at the end of the day is a local issue,” Williams said. “So the strength of any national organization like ours is really going to come down to how strong its local units are.”

The new branches are mostly self-sustaining, relying on leadership from volunteer boards and local residents already active in education. “It’s a lot of people who were doing a lot of work on reform, but there was no political arm to engage at the political level,” Williams said.

What Williams calls DFER’s “outpost” in Colorado is a case study for its plans elsewhere. Rather than generate policy ideas, the organization focuses on raising money for candidates who support its favored brand of changes to education — policies like charter schools, merit pay, and higher teaching standards. Among the Colorado officials DFER supports is Mike Johnston, who advised candidate Obama’s presidential campaign and replaced the president of Colorado’s state senate, Peter Groff, after he joined President Obama’s education department. (more…)

Believe it or not, there are just four months before the city’s mayoral election, and tonight the three declared candidates will take questions from a group whose endorsement is still outstanding.

Tonight’s Working Families Party forum isn’t a debate, per Mayor Bloomberg’s refusal to debate his two challengers, Democrats William Thompson Jr., the comptroller, and City Councilman Tony Avella. Instead, the candidates will each answer the same seven questions, of which one is about the city schools:

The question alludes to the recent Center for New York City Affairs report that showed that some large high schools suffered as the city opened more small schools.

The Working Families Party hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate, which Elizabeth Benjamin at the Daily News says doesn’t bode well for Thompson. (The teachers’ union is a major financial backer of WFP; in a recent gift, the union sent $20,000 to the party in February 2008.) Tonight’s forum could be a deciding factor in whom the party endorses. Watch the forum online here starting at 5:30 p.m.

Joel Klein is wasting no time: A day after being rehired as chancellor, he is announcing the creation of a new position to supervise education for some of the city’s neediest students.

The new administrator will focus on two groups of students whose performance has barely budged in recent years: students with special needs and those who are just learning English. The city’s most recent top special education official, Linda Wernikoff, retired at the end of June, and her replacement has been the source of considerable anxiety among advocates.

Also today, the education department is releasing the findings of a months-long evaluation of the city’s special education offerings. The big reveal is coming just in time: The person who headed the study, Garth Harries, is set to start a new job in New Haven on Monday.

When I last checked in on the process, just before the school governance madness entered its final surprising weeks, officials were signaling that the department would not dismantle District 75, the school district that serves the city’s most disabled students, as many advocates feared. Instead, the officials suggested, the department would work to encourage teachers from that district to share their expertise with teachers at other schools.

Things are looking up and I should have a job locked up by next week! Now the question is: Is it the right job for me?

I’ve spoken to enough teachers to realize that change is a part of any young teacher’s career. Switching classrooms, switching grades or switching schools seems to come with the territory. Still, after two years I’ve gotten pretty comfortable teaching in a 4th grade general ed classroom. I’d hoped that whatever changes my new school will bring come September, my teaching position would remain a constant.

When hunting for a job, is this attitude too stubborn? Should I take whatever I can get? If I hadn’t been excessed, I’d likely still be facing some sort of change in teaching position next year anyway. (more…)

• The Board of Education met for the first time yesterday in seven years. (GothamSchools, NY1, Times)
• After the board’s vote, Joel Klein is still chancellor. (Daily News, WNYC, Wall Street Journal)
• Klein has more power now than if the Senate had passed the Assembly’s mayoral control bill. (Post)
• The Bronx board member explains her abstentions at the meeting. (Daily News)
• The Senate Dem who held up the vote is in the middle of suing the DOE over a fired administrator. (Post)
• The Post calls Sampson’s possible conflict of interest in the mayoral control fight “disgusting.”
• The Post also says the mayor needs to exact revenge against Albany lawmakers.
• “Have they no conscience?” the Daily News asks about state legislators from New York City.
• Summer school started without issues, but some parents said they were annoyed. (Daily News, Post)
• Cash-strapped states have cut their summer school programs. (Times)
• Green Dot is in talks to open charter schools in D.C. (Washington Post)

• Arne Duncan declined a last-minute plea from Joel Klein to push for mayoral control.
• The Brooklyn appointee to the Board of Ed is a former community school board member.
• What do the borough presidents have in common with the Honduran military?
• Blogger Accountable Talk, no fan of the chancellor, mocked up a resume for his then-possible job hunt.
• The Parent Commission on School Governance responds to the sunset of mayoral control.
• The Senate Democrats say they’re ready to start talking school governance now, maybe.
• Norm Scott proposes an entirely different governance system: One by the people at each school.
• A state charter schools blog disputes suggestions that Arne Duncan is softening on charter school caps.
• On the age-old question of why parents usually like their low-performing schools.
• A teacher asks why a no-fault ATR didn’t get first shot at a vacant teaching spot in her area.
• A call for change in what city schools serve students at breakfast and lunch.
• Women are as likely to become principals as men, according to a new database.
• Maybe Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee are not that different after all, says Andy Rotherham.
• That’s food for thought during Duncan’s speech to the NEA tomorrow. (Will they boo merit pay?)
• In Chicago, 1,000 central office employees will be fired from the city’s school system.
• A committee is forming to figure out how to create national standards. Forward march!

A day after mayoral control’s expiration, the Board of Education has been resurrected, but there are no signs of life for community school boards.

Instead, the Department of Education is planning to continue the Community Education Councils — despite the fact that they no longer legally exist. These parent councils replaced school boards in 2003 and, with the law’s expiration, have been legally stripped of their authority and responsibilities.

Chancellor Joel Klein, who was voted back into office unanimously today by the new Board of Education, sent a memo to principals today outlining his plans for the CECs. He said he is urging the CECs to continue meeting “at least until September when we hope to have more clarity.”

“If the Councils decide not to continue their work, we’ve asked them to notify us immediately,” Klein wrote.

The decision to create of a Board of Education and vote in a chancellor while leaving the rest of the power structure as it was under mayoral control has divided the system into old and new. The school system’s top half is in compliance with pre-2002 law, while its lower quarters legally don’t exist. (more…)

A screenshot from the Insideschools homepage.

Mayoral control is not the only city education institution that lapsed yesterday. The Web site Insideschools.org, which for years has provided independent information about schools for parents and teachers, has dramatically scaled down its operations beginning today.

The site launched in 2002 with funding that was always set to run out now. Unfortunately, in a year when advertisers, philanthropists, and foundations alike are keeping their pocketbooks close, Insideschools hasn’t been able to raise the capital to keep going. The site’s downsizing comes at a time when both critics and supporters of the Bloomberg administration say parents need more good information about their schools. 

I worked at Insideschools for three years, from 2005 until I helped launch GothamSchools last year. Yesterday was the last day of work for many of my former colleagues and this morning, Helen Zelon, the site’s lead blogger, posted for the last time. Insideschools’ few remaining staff members and volunteers will continue to collect basic information about each school and monitor admissions news, a sometimes-herculean task in itself. But they won’t be able to visit and review schools or provide many of the services that their readers, tens of thousands of city parents, desperately seek.

Here at GothamSchools we eschew editorializing. But when it comes to getting school news to New Yorkers, we don’t mind saying more is better.

The speedy pace and the unnervingly scripted feeling of today’s Board of Education meeting is captured in this video I took, which at four minutes documents almost half of the meeting.

The video starts just as board members are voting for Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott as president. Walcott leads the rest of the meeting. After he takes over, you’ll see the group vote to elect the Department of Education’s chief lawyer, Michael Best, as its secretary and hear the resolution proposed that would make Joel Klein chancellor. We all know how that vote turned out: 7-0 in support of extending to Klein “all powers under law … that may lawfully be delegated to the chancellor.”

The board members, from left to right: Jimmy Yan, Patricia Harris, Carlo Scissura, Walcott, Edward Burke, Edward Skyler, and Fernandez. Sitting just behind the board on their left (our right) was Klein, who looked on but never said a word during the proceedings or the press conference that followed.

The full text of the resolution to rehire Klein is below: (more…)