GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

A lot of people think teaching is somehow a job for life — that no teachers can be fired for any reason, no matter what they do, who they kill, or whether or not they sleep in garbage cans. It’s not true. In fact, the Department of Education tries to take away teacher jobs all the time. I recently read about one teacher who’s up on charges for giving watches to kids who scored 90 or above in his class. Clearly, dangerous individuals like that must be dealt with severely.

Those of us who aren’t up on charges have other worries. For example, we can become “ATRs.” ATR is an acronym for “Absent Teacher Reserve.” When Chancellor Klein closes a school, he’s required to retain 50% of “qualified” teachers. This translates to fewer than 50% of actual teachers. If the “reorganized” school doesn’t offer French, for example, 100% of working French teachers say adieu, teaching schedule and bonjour, Absent Teacher Reserve.

The ATR situation started in 2005. Tabloid editorial writers were jumping up and down about the new UFT contract. God bless teachers, they declared. Finally, they said, principals could decide who they wanted to hire. It was morning in America again. Several weeks passed before they went back to vilifying us, as tradition dictates.

In any case, teachers would no longer be sent to schools simply because there were open positions. Instead, they’d become ATRs, teaching whatever, wherever, to whomever. From there, we were assured, they’d easily find jobs. Unless, of course, they didn’t. Personally, I’m very glad I transferred when I could. For all I know, they could be closing my former school this very moment. I’d be very unhappy as an ATR teacher, and I’ve met many ATR teachers who feel precisely the same way. (more…)

I missed Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s speech at Teachers College on Thursday because I was working on his behalf in Washington.  I was one of about 17 researchers on a panel evaluating a batch of research proposals on school reform for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the research arm of the federal Department of Education.  IES seeks to identify malleable factors (e.g., education programs, policies and practices) that can improve education outcomes.  To do so, IES has developed a progressive goal structure for research projects.  Goal One projects are exploratory, and intended to inform the development of interventions by examining existing relationships between policies and practices and educational outcomes.  Goal Two projects are intended to develop innovative educational interventions that can be implemented in school settings, and to collect some preliminary data on the educational outcomes observed in a pilot implementation of the intervention.  Goal Three projects use rigorous methods to examine the efficacy of fully-developed interventions, as well as the feasibility of implementation, in at least one local site.  And finally, Goal Four projects attempt to evaluate whether interventions proven to be successful in a local site, with help from the program developers, can be scaled up to be effective under different conditions, and without the direct involvement of the program developers.  (There’s also a Goal Five, for research on measurement, but that’s a different animal.)  Over the years that IES has had this a goal structure, more than 70%  of the projects funded under Goals One through Four have been Goal One or Goal Two projects;  about one-quarter have been Goal Three projects, and only 3% have been Goal Four projects. 

The reasons for this are pretty clear.  To be a good prospect for scaling up in a Goal Four project, an intervention must previously have been shown to be effective in at least one site, using rigorous methods for assessing cause-and-effect relationships.  Relatively few interventions meet this threshold, because most policies and programs don’t have educationally meaningful effects, even if it seems like they ought to.  Similarly, projects that are good candidates for Goal Three funding must previously have shown at least some evidence of effects on student outcomes in pilot studies in which the intervention received a tentative tryout, but not a full-blown test using rigorous experimental or quasi-experimental research methods.

I was struck by a thought experiment:  what if my panel of distinguished researchers (the other members, at least) had been presented with a proposal based on the Race to the Top criteria that Secretary Duncan talked about at Teachers College, and which have been acclaimed by opinion writers such as Nick Kristof and David Brooks, as well as the editorial page writers for major newspapers in New York City and around the country?  The draft Race to the Top criteria for funding state proposals provide incentives for linking teachers to their students’ standardized test scores, and in his remarks on Thursday, Secretary Duncan drew attention to Race to the Top incentives for states and districts to link student performance to the teacher preparation programs from which students’ teachers had emerged.  Only Louisiana currently does this, the Secretary said.  What if a scale-up proposal for this intervention had been presented to a panel charged with applying the IES criteria to evaluate its fundability? (more…)

• Celebrity chef Rachel Ray has created lunch recipes for the city schools. (Post, Daily News)
• Joel Klein recently participated in a Wall Street Journal discussion about how to improve schools. 
• Klein celebrated his 63rd birthday yesterday by attending the Kushner-Trump nuptials. (Cityfile, Post)
• Tom Carroll lists his priorities for the new UFT contract, and they aren’t straight from New Haven. (Post)
• The state’s first charter school, 10-year-old Sisulu-Walker, had to figure things out on its own. (Post)
• One of Sisulu-Walker’s students appeared for 14 months in “The Lion King” on Broadway. (Post)
• School nurses say overcrowding could make it hard to isolate students with H1N1 flu. (Daily News)
• The Gates Foundation spent about $200 million last year driving its education policies to the top. (AP)
• Scott Stringer is trying to bring healthy eating and green living to East Harlem schools. (NY1)
• In a letter, a city high school teacher says schools are the best place to start teaching creativity. (Times)
• Jay Mathews visits two D.C. schools that are now run by New York City educators. (Washington Post)
• Arne Duncan isn’t happy about Hawaii saving money by reducing school time. (Wall Street Journal)
• Denver is pushing its charter schools to enroll more students with disabilities. (Denver Post)

• Hoping to draw parents to the city’s pre-k programs, the DOE has turned to Craigslist.
• The city is hosting borough information fairs for soon-to-be high school applicants.
• The UFT has given Bill Thompson no reason to back four percent raises, writes NYC Educator.
• Jay Matthews writes that the Partnership for 21st Century Skills still can’t define what those skills are.
• He also profiles Gerald Bracey, a critic of national education policy who died last Tuesday.
• Arne Duncan called today for better science tests and more science curricula.
• His press office is apparently overstaffed.
• In Virginia, neither candidate for governor has offered much on how to improve education.
• A new survey shows that parents would rather talk to their kids about drugs than science.
• Del Stover looks at the evolution of the school choice movement in the U.S.
• Parents in England are pushing to open and manage their own schools.
• Eduflack: if Schwarzenegger wanted to repair CA’s economy, he should have given money to schools.
• And a high school in suburban Chicago has shut down because of swine flu.

Sheanica Davis is set to lose her job at Mosaic Preparatory Academy.

Parents and staff at an East Harlem elementary school are protesting the city’s plan to lay off all of their school aides.

Rallying outside of the entrance of Mosaic Preparatory Academy as school let out this afternoon, parents, students and staff called for the city to save their five school aides’ jobs. The school is slated to lose the five people who currently hold the positions, not the positions themselves.

Parent coordinator Maria Torres said that Mosaic’s principal, Lisette Caesar, has money in the school’s budget to preserve the aide jobs. But because the aides were all hired just a year ago when the school opened, they are among the most junior aides in the district, and thus the first to receive pink slips.

“Our principal has been trying to keep them, and the parents have been doing everything they can,” said Rose Jimenez, the president of Mosaic’s parent association. “If we can afford to keep them, it sounds unfair.”

One of Mosaic’s aides, Sheanica Davis, said that her main job is to keep students safe. She scrolled through a list of parents in her cell phone’s contact list, saying that she keeps in regular touch with many of them, assuring them that their children have arrived to school on time and are eating healthy meals. (more…)

Ted Sizer was a critic and trouble maker. He looked at our schools, all of our schools, and said in essence, not good enough and we are doing it wrong.

He didn’t mean the bad schools. And he didn’t mean achievement gaps. He meant all schools. He meant the good schools too, even the best schools.

So, who the hell was Ted Sizer? He was a visionary educator and critic of our schools, a real giant who was influential enough to get a 1000+ word obituary in yesterday’s New York Times and numerous other tributes and articles this week.

His doctorate was in the history of education, and I believe his disseration was about how the high school credits thing evolved. Forty years ago he was the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. After that he was the Headmaster at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachuetts. Then a professor of education at Brown. He also helped found a charter school in the middle of Massachusetts, and late in his life was co-principal of it with his wife Nancy. He had credibility in the most powerful of circles. (more…)