GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

After all that hand-wringing about “checks and balances” and “mayoral accountability,” the school year has arrived, and the way the system is run is completely unchanged.

A revised law has been on the books for nearly a month, but the new system is still a mystery. Though the law calls for a new parent center, greater oversight of the Department of Education’s contracts, and an independent auditor of the department’s education data, all of these alterations are in their infancy, and none have been put in place.

Won as part of a deal between a group of runaway senators and Mayor Bloomberg, the parent center is perhaps the most concrete change with the least clear future. It will be housed at CUNY and will cost the city and state $1.6 million, but education officials have yet to define its role or how it will differ from the DOE’s current parent outreach, the Office for Family Engagement and Advocacy. Asked how far along the center’s development is, a DOE spokesperson had no comment. (more…)

News from New York City: 

• Experts say the state Regents exams for high school students have gotten easier over time. (Daily News)
• Geoffrey Canada says the start of school should spark an appreciation of mayoral control. (Daily News)
• Occupants say a new rubber room space in Manhattan looks and feels like a prison. (Post)
• City data reports about each teacher’s impact on student test scores aren’t being used often. (Times)
• A new transfer school is opening in Brooklyn despite some objections from the community. (Post)
• John Liu says if he’s elected comptroller, he’d prefer if Joel Klein weren’t the chancellor. (WNYC)
• A high school opening today will let students get an associate’s degree in 5 years. (Daily News)
• The widow of the Queens AP who died from swine flu is going back to school this week. (Daily News)
• School-based health clinics are also opening today after getting last-minute funding. (Brooklyn Paper)
• Some parents affected by failing economy chose to scrimp on school supplies. (Daily News)
• A Bronx mom is suing the city over toxic chemicals present at her kids’ school. (Daily News)
• Students trying to save money on college have swelled the CUNY system to its largest since 1974. (Post)
• Diane Ravitch says the progress reports are “bogus” and should be (revised or) scrapped. (Daily News)
• New York City schools are among those piloting a new curriculum about the 9/11 attacks. (USA Today)

And beyond:

• Public opinion of public schools is declining, Paul Peterson reminds us. (Wall Street Journal)
• Therapy is on the rise to help preschoolers manage their feelings and behavior. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Gates Foundation is producing a stay-in-school awareness campaign for MTV. (AP)
• Six national education leaders protested the end of D.C.’s voucher program at USDOE. (Reuters)
• British private schools are struggling and even closing because of the recession. (Times)
• A California charter school principal, Ben Chavis, describes his leadership style as “crazy.” (NPR)
• Students across the country review Obama’s speech, both its existence and content. (Times, USA Today)
• The Post and Daily News rue opposition to the speech. (The Post: It also shows Democrats’ hyprocrisy.)
• Students at Manhattan’s Democracy Prep reviewed the speech favorably. (GothamSchools, Post)

• Want to share your first-day-of-school photographs? E-mail them to us, or add them to our Flickr group.
• A city high school college counselor, whom we wrote about here, is answering questions online.
• A 27-year-old charter school principal says youth is an advantage in school leadership.
• How to stay relevant: If you’re the New York Times, print a how-to guide to penmanship.
• Australian observers have picked up on the news about NYC’s oh-so-generous progress reports.
• NYC Educator’s Miss Eyre proposes better time management for today’s extra teacher planning day.
• Has kindergarten become too much work and not enough play? EarlyStories wonders.
• Pedro Noguera thinks Obama is playing with fire by pushing merit pay and charter schools.
• Quick and the Ed looks at the economics of New York and Boston’s student-school matching systems.
• Almost $40 billion in education stimulus money still lies idle in federal coffers.
• The UFT will make the video of Obama’s speech available for teachers to use year-round, Mulgrew says.
• While Obama spoke, school voucher supporters faced off with police to block the entrance to the USDOE.

Thousands of students are preparing for their first day of school tomorrow with placements so freshly in hand that they may not yet have worked out their commutes.

Rising ninth-grader Shomari Sutton, 13, left the enrollment registration center at Brooklyn Technical High School with an assignment at a school so new that he and his mother Anisa barely knew where it was located.

“It’s still supposed to be a good school, though,” Shomari said.

The Department of Education’s twelve enrollment centers have seen just shy of 11,300 visitors since they opened this year on August 31, said department spokesman Andrew Jacob. That’s about 300 fewer families than had used the centers at this time last year.

Families rushing to find a last-minute spot in a school at the city’s enrollment registration centers might have expected to be harried by long lines and complicated bureaucracy. But although frustrations with the complex system haven’t disappeared, lines seemed to have gone more smoothly this year than in years past. (more…)

Sixth-graders at Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem discussed Obama’s speech after watching it via WH.gov. 

Harlem students who watched President Obama’s back-to-school speech today in their school auditorium could not detect anything to disagree with — except for one point.

“I disagree with Obama’s mom about waking him up at 4:30,” Klara Arnold, a 10-year-old sixth-grader at Democracy Prep Charter School, told her principal, who had explained that the speech initially sparked controversy and asked if students had any differences of opinion with the president.

The speech referred to Obama’s mother’s habit of giving him extra lessons to supplement his schooling while he lived in Indonesia.

Since district public schools won’t open until tomorrow, few New York City schools had to tackle the question of whether and how to air the president’s speech today. Democracy Prep Charter School, which opened for full-day sessions today after half-day preparation last week, did, along with other charter schools around the city. (more…)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took questions from Manhattan Charter School schools before watching President Obama's speech.(Image via GS)

Students at Manhattan Charter School peppered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with questions this morning during her visit to introduce the president’s education speech.

Clinton is one of several Cabinet members dispersed at schools across the country today to remind students to work hard in the upcoming year, no matter the personal and economic obstacles they face. She exhorted the audience of rapt elementary school students to draw inspiration from President Barack Obama’s life story.

“Ultimately, how much you learn, how you feel about yourself, is really up to you,” she said.

For the bulk of her hour-long visit, Clinton fielded questions from the students, who had come prepared with handwritten notecards they waved in the air, sat on, or curled in nervous palms.

“If you had become president, what changes would you have made?” asked one student, while another wondered if the Secretary has ever walked her dogs in Central Park (she hasn’t). (more…)

Teachers and students are returning this week to schools changed by deep budget cuts over the summer.

Because of the city’s shrinking coffers, principals were told last spring to cut nearly 5 percent of their budgets for this year. Some schools lost closer to 10 percent of what they had to spend last year.

For months, we’ve been trying to document how the cuts are affecting individual schools. In June, we launched an interactive comment map where principals, teachers, and parents placed flags to show cuts to teaching staffs, arts programs, and after school offerings. One principal, from PS/MS 179 in the Bronx, reported “devastating” cuts at his school.

Now, we’re asking our readers to add to the map with the latest information about how schools have changed because of the budget cuts. Teachers, are you juggling more responsibilities than in the past? Do you have fewer colleagues than you used to have? Parents, is your school offering fewer after-school activities than it did last year? Is your child’s class larger than you expected? What else have you noticed? Visit the comment map here to add details about your school.

News from New York City:

• The city is paying DOE tech consultants $1,000 a day even though less costly options exist. (Daily News)
• Parents are laboring to get to a new gifted school in Brooklyn, but not more than the principal did. (Times)
• The city’s 66 new schools have mature themes like video games and environmental awareness. (Post)
• With more than 4,700 students this year, Francis Lewis HS must run five sessions over 11 hours. (Post)
• The “temporary” trailers used as classrooms are also overcrowded at many city schools. (Daily News)
• The DOE gave out $33 million in performance bonuses. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post, Times)
• The nurse who IDed swine flu in NYC students is lobbying for paid sick leave for parents. (Daily News)
• The Bronx’s 18 new schools include a number of replicas of other popular schools. (Daily News)
• A change in the girl’s soccer schedule could cause 50 high school teams to fold. (Daily News, Post)
• Queens schools are better than ever this year, at least according to the state’s metrics. (Daily News)
• A school that closed this summer apparently dumped old student records onto the street. (Daily News)

And beyond:

• President Obama’s education speech today is mostly a collection of commonsense advice. (Times)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan said the flap over the speech from the president’s detractors is “just silly.” (Times)
• Even after federal stimulus aid, many school districts are still making deep budget cuts. (Times)
• Former NYC chancellor Cortines, now in L.A., says his district’s troubles have a silver lining. (L.A. Times)
• A think tank is launching a PR and lobbying campaign against schools’ overuse of testing. (USA Today)
• Schools are putting more information online and sending less home in students’ backpacks. (Times)
• Companies that usually manage properties for businesses are getting into the charter school game. (AP)
• Leading conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg says teacher tenure should be abolished. (L.A. Times)
• A private test maker is trying to break into the English-as-a-Foreign -Language exam market. (Times)
• School districts are dealing with more homeless students than ever before. (Times)
• Many Windy City schools are dispatching with gym classes that the city requires. (Chicago Tribune)
• Teachers describe the arbitrary intricacies of state certification requirements. (Washington Post)
• D.C. schools with suspiciously large test score jumps were not investigated fully. (Washington Post)
• Boston’s principals are growing younger (but not as young as New York City’s). (Boston Globe)

• Richard Kessler asks why so many schools got A’s when they don’t meet basic arts requirements.
• Accountable Talk wonders if higher standards will backfire on teachers, especially ATRs.
• The Jews, the Chinese, and the NY Times find the first day of school (9/9/09) is an auspicious one.
• Chicago is assigning social workers to students in an effort to prevent shooting deaths.
• Over 100 Philly teachers have quit just days before school starts.
• Ohio is facing some of the same criticism of school progress reports that New York is.
• Four states are still sitting on their education stimulus money.
• Gibbs says we’re in a “silly season,” when people refuse to hear the president’s back-to-school speech.
• Tom Vander Ark writes about the barriers to for-profit companies in education.
• Peter Murphys says the two charters opening in Hempstead are a good sign for the movement.
• The Brits can no longer be trusted to tie their own school uniform ties.
• And the Onion offers its own version of back-to-school coverage.

As the country gears up for President Obama’s surprisingly controversial back-to-school speech on Tuesday, here’s a blast from the past: Ronald Reagan’s November 1988 speech to students, in which the outgoing president encouraged students to “ground yourself in the ideas and values of the American Revolution.” The speech was broadcast on C-Span and shown in classrooms across the country.

Dakarai Aarons at Education Week dug up Reagan’s speech and one given to schoolchildren in 1991 by then-President George H.W. Bush, who sounded the same theme of personal responsibility that Obama has said his speech will cover.