GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Common standards for science and social studies may be coming soon to a planning committee near you.
• A group is rallying support for New York City’s first “recovery high school” for newly-sober teens.
• The Times’ Room for Debate blog asks how we can boost students’ math scores.
• Another deadly school fight, this one between a student and a school resource officer in South Carolina.
• Pissed Off Teacher describes how talking to her students helped her find mistakes in the ARIS system.
• The CDC reported 11 more child swine flu deaths this week.
• High school students aren’t interested in the few fields experiencing job growth, says a new report.
• The Daily Howler wants education writers to tell a more complete story about test scores.
• President Obama explains the politics of negative attacks to a fourth grader in New Orleans.
• Ron Isaac at Edwize calls Bloomberg’s plan to open more charters “disturbing.”
• Brian D’Agostino takes a close look at the education claims in Bloomberg’s mailers.
• Early Ed Watch says that preschool educators should be better trained as well.
• Richard Kessler pays tribute to Bill Safire, arts education supporter.
• And Online Schools lists 50 excellent ed reform blogs. (Not to brag or anything, but it includes this one.)

Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch addressed members of the New York State School Board Association this morning.

New York State education commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch declared this morning that the state education department is entering a new era.

Speaking to a packed room at the annual meeting of the New York State School Board Members Association, they said that after years of acting as a regulatory body following an outdated curriculum, the department would now focus on innovation.

“We spend an enormous amount of effort regulating districts that frankly would do very well without us,” Tisch said. She said that her goal was to remove as much unnecessary regulations from school districts as possible.

“I would like people to say that we re-invigorated the concept of the state education department, that we re-invented what a state education should be across this state,” Tisch said. “The only way to do that is to restore our integrity. Every chit that takes away from our credibility needs to be addressed.” (more…)

Here’s a photo sent to us by the folks at Future Leaders Institute Charter School in Harlem, where Thomson Reuters recently delivered more than 700 new books collected in a company book drive. Peter Anderson, FLI’s head of school, is at the center of the picture. And the tall boy in the striped shirt: is he holding an illustrated Kafka? A bigger question: who’s as inspired as I am by the art in the background to see the “Where the Wild Things Are” movie this weekend?

Send us a picture from your school and we might feature it as an “A Thousand Words” post.

Mayor Bloomberg's senior education adviser Chris Cerf (left) and former Congressman Herman Badillo touted the mayor's promotion and retention policies on the steps of City Hall this afternoon.

Chris Cerf, the former Department of Education deputy chancellor turned senior education adviser to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s re-election campaign, said today that the RAND report released this week on the mayor’s promotion policies “completely vindicates” those policies.

Flanked by former Congressman Herman Badillo, Cerf said that the mayor’s rival, Comptroller Bill Thompson, showed a lack of leadership for failing to support stricter retention policies during his tenure as president of the city’s Board of Education.

Badillo, who has also served as the chairman of the City College of New York and who endorsed Bloomberg in July, said that he urged the Board of Education to end social promotion throughout Thompson’s term to no avail.

“I have been against social promotion for decades,” he said.”In Puerto Rico, where I come from, if you do your work, you pass, and if you don’t, you don’t pass.”

Thompson’s campaign has pointed out that he voted for a measure in 1999 that required low-performing third through eighth grade students to repeat a grade of attend summer school. Cerf called that opposition to social promotion “halfhearted,” and countered that Thompson opposed Bloomberg’s efforts to introduce new promotion and retention standards in 2004. (more…)

Twice in my teaching career, I’ve lived the cliché “familiarity breeds contempt.” In edu-speak terms, I’ve “looped” two times, spending three years teaching many of the same kids through sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Both times, I greatly enjoyed sixth and seventh grade, but a few months into eighth grade, well, to use another cliché, the bloom was off the rose. I can’t pinpoint exact reasons, but I think that they were tired of me, and I hate to admit that the feeling might have been mutual, just a little.

The last time I finished with eighth grade, I swore that I’d never loop again. The challenges with the students themselves were emotionally draining, but I also found that my teaching wasn’t improving as much as I wanted. (more…)

• A judge stopped the city from firing 500 school aides; the city is appealing the decision. (GothamSchools)
• The city offered to rehire the aides without benefits to help with swine flu, the filing reports. (Daily News)
• The DOE rolled out a new curriculum for the study of film yesterday. (Hollywood Reporter)
• Midyear budget cuts like the ones Paterson proposed are especially hard for schools to handle. (Times)
• It looks like the UFT will not be endorsing Democrat Bill Thompson for mayor. (Post)
• The study of the city’s promotion policy touts extra help for failing students. (GothamSchools, Times)
• The planning process for a new building in DUMBO that would house a school is under fire. (Daily News)
• The president of LaGuardia Community College writes that she had to close enrollment this year. (Times)
• More city students are attending after-school programs, a study has found. (NY1)
• The city’s first Middle School Film Festival was like an Oscars ceremony for city students. (Daily News)
• This year, 38 percent of D.C. students attend charter schools. (Washington Post)
• More than 50 House Republicans want an Obama schools official who promoted tolerance fired. (Times)
• The Christian Science Monitor says it’s significant that Obama visited a charter school in New Orleans.