GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Leonie Haimson asks where the parents Bloomberg says will flock to the city will find classroom space.
• Peter Murphy thinks Paterson’s reluctance to lift the charter cap is a jab at Obama.
• Chicago Public Schools plans to re-train security guards to curb school violence.
• The federal education department will require districts to report stimulus spending at the school level.
• Pissed Off Teacher wonders why her students who think they failed last year officially passed.
• The state teachers union is launching an ad campaign against mid-year budget cuts.
• If your child attends an out-of-district charter, what middle school do you apply to? Ask Judy answers.
• WNYC’s Beth Fertig takes a closer look at what the achievement gap in math really means.
• Teachers: what’s the view from your classroom? The Quick and the Ed wants you to send photos.
• Diane Ravitch says the best and wisest parents probably aren’t too happy with the federal ed agenda.
• And just in time for Halloween, all of your favorite ed reformers do the monster mash.

The roughly 500 school aides the city has targeted for layoffs will keep their positions for another week under an extension of a temporary restraining order first issued last week.

State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead ruled today that officials from D.C. 37, the union that represents the school aides and plaintiffs in the case, made a convincing argument that the layoffs violate parts of the state constitution and education law.

Edmead focused on D.C. 37′s argument that the city is illegally replacing unionized school aides with less expensive temporary workers who will not receive benefits. The judge found that the Department of Education’s contract for temporary workers to perform many of the same duties of the laid-off school aides may violate the state constitution and a chancellor’s regulation that requires school workers to report to the education department. (more…)

As promised, here are my top 10 suggestions for the Department of Education’s future gifted and talented information sessions:

1. There should be a “first come, first seated” policy on seating. When it’s full don’t allow anyone else into the session.
2. Make sure the facility doesn’t get too hot. Parents are already on edge to begin with so the heat during the Manhattan session last week just added to anxiety levels.
3. Start the gifted and talented information sessions later than 6:30 p.m. Many people work until 6 or 7 p.m. so getting to the school in time for the G&T information session by 6:30 p.m. could be difficult for some.
4. Present additional information about the gifted and talented program that people wouldn’t be able to get online.
5. Distribute FAQs at the beginning of the meeting so parents can review those questions and answers during the presentation.
6. Hold audience Q&A at the end and have people line up on the side for their questions. There should be a microphone to speak into so everyone can hear the questions instead of the presenter shouting and repeating the question to the audience.
7. For any answers available online refer parents to online instead of addressing those questions.
8. Conduct more gifted and talented information sessions in Manhattan and other boroughs.
9. Allow parents who have gone through the gifted and talented testing process with their children give a presentation to the audience.
10. Have the information session as a live webcast or taped webinar. Many people have small children at home and can’t find babysitters during weekdays.

If you attended one of these sessions (or even if you did not), I am interested to know what you think: How could these sessions be improved?

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — up by 18 points over his opponent in the latest polls and with Election Day next week — apparently is not willing to use his position to forge new ground with the teacher contract he is negotiating with the United Federation of Teachers. The current contract expires Saturday.

In the first apparent “leak” from the tight-lipped Bloomberg camp, Chris Cerf, now a Bloomberg campaign education advisor and until recently Joel Klein’s deputy chancellor, announced in a WNYC interview yesterday that the Mayor agreed with Bill Thompson that performance bonuses should be handed out to teachers on a school-wide basis, rather than based on the individual merit of teachers. This disclosure, first covered by GothamSchools, likely was a calculated move to dampen expectations before a contract agreement is announced.

If true, the Mayor is sacrificing the straightforward principle that good teachers should get paid more than bad teachers. (more…)

• The city won’t be giving special H1N1 vaccine priority to middle and high school students. (Daily News)
• Gov. Paterson said he won’t back a proposed law that would eliminate the charter school cap. (Post)
• The 100 school support workers who lost their jobs are now suffering without salaries. (Daily News)
• The Post says Paterson’s unwillingness to back lifting the charter cap is fiscally foolish and bad for kids. 
• Chancellor Klein was in Denver yesterday, where leaders are pushing a host of reforms. (Denver Post)
• Parents and school funding advocates testified yesterday against Gov. Paterson’s proposed cuts. (NY1)
• A Brooklyn student was shot and killed outside Metropolitan Diploma Plus High School. (NY1)
• A 66-year-old Catholic school for girls in Queens will close at the end of the school year. (Daily News)
• Forest Hills families are looking forward to a three-school campus due to open next fall. (Daily News)
• A Boston Globe writer asks what Gerald Bracey and Ted Sizer would say about the state’s dropout plan.
• IS 89 students had good things to say about Rachel Ray’s deconstructed chicken taco dish. (Daily News)

• A veteran teacher believes Race to the Top is built on ten flawed assumptions.
• Michelle Rhee said people should not assume that laid-off teachers are bad teachers.
• There are still more than 5,000 open pre-k spots, but many are in half-day sessions.
• Pissed Off Teacher finds out that one of her freshman students did not pass a single eighth grade class.
• About 600,000 students will be eating Rachel Ray’s chicken taco recipe at school on Thursday.
• School nurses will be giving swine flu vaccinations at 125 elementary schools on Wednesday.
• Jonathan Gyurko remembers when Ted Sizer visited his school in South Africa.
• Columbia Teachers College’s Susan Fuhrman is the new head of the National Academy of Education.
• Teacher Beat wonders if seniority in hiring is on its way out.
• Data systems linking students to teacher prep should be experiments, not policy, writes Aaron Pallas.
• Parents were sweating bullets at last week’s gifted and talented info sessions, reports Michael McCurdy.
• And Jay Mathews wonders what it’s like to be suspended. (He wouldn’t know; he was a goody-goody.)

With little more than a week before the mayoral election, candidate Bill Thompson and Christopher Cerf, an adviser to Mayor Bloomberg’s reelection campaign, touted their future plans for the city’s schools on WNYC today.

Given half an hour each on the Brian Lehrer Show, Thompson and Cerf took questions on school safety, the accountability structure, and what major changes they (or their candidate — Cerf hasn’t said whether he’ll return to the Department of Education after the election) would put in place over the next four years. Throughout the interview, Thompson emphasized his interest in lowering class sizes and shifting school administrators’ focus away from standardized tests. Cerf spoke at length about the importance of using technology to cater to students’ different learning styles. Neither offered clues to how the city would pay for these changes.

Asked by host Brian Lehrer to name the greatest innovation he’d bring to the city’s schools, Thompson had one word: curriculum. (more…)

I attended the NYC DOE gifted and talented program session this past Thursday night on the Upper West Side at Brandeis High School (84th and Amsterdam) where hundreds of prospective G&T parents convened. I arrived a bit late due to delays on the 2 train but finally showed up around 7:15 p.m. (the session started at 6:30 p.m.). As I walked into the front entrance droves of people sweating bullets were streaming out the door. At first I thought the information session must be over or maybe the parents suddenly discovered their child wasn’t G&T material after all. To my surprise the mass exodus was due to the amount of people packed like sardines in the auditorium with temperatures that seemed in excess of 80 degrees.

Parents leaving in masses during the middle of the presentation due to the heat and crowding.

As I trotted into the auditorium with my camera swaying around my neck the presenter from the DOE gave a PowerPoint presentation to the audience. I didn’t catch her name since I showed up late for the session. The flow of the presentation seemed a bit choppy as audience members randomly shouted out questions with really no crowd control in place for the questions. Finally the presenter told everyone to keep their questions to the end of the presentation and the crowd gave a small ovation to the request. (more…)