GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Responding to protests that it was breaking the new mayoral control law, the Department of Education will hold a public hearing before extending PAVE Academy Charter School’s stay inside a district-owned building.

The law passed this summer requires the DOE to issue an “educational impact statement” and hold a public hearing on any proposed changes to the way school building space is used, and then to put changes to a vote before the city-wide Panel for Educational Policy.

Last month, DOE officials notified the principals of Red Hook’s PAVE Academy and P.S. 15 that the charter school would remain in the P.S. 15 building, even though PAVE originally agreed to leave the building at the end of this school year. At the time, DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte said that there was no need to follow the new rules since a hearing had been held before the charter school moved into the building two years ago.

But after protests from the district’s Community Education Council members, DOE officials said this week they will follow the new procedure after all. (more…)

Parents and students rallied outside P.S. 20 to protest plans that would require them to share space with a growing charter school.

Parents at Lower East Side schools that may soon be asked to share building space told DOE officials last night that a charter school expansion could not come at the expense of successful district schools.

Hundreds of parents packed into the auditorium of P.S. 20 last night to protest three proposed scenarios that would allow Girls Prep Charter School to grow its middle school program by re-arranging building space at neighboring district schools.

All of the proposals would require district school students to give up resource rooms like art and music rooms or science and computer labs, parents told DOE officials and members of the District 1 Community Education Council.

Parents speaking at the meeting repeatedly characterized that loss as a civil rights issue, charging the DOE with removing resources from predominantly poor and immigrant students. (more…)

• Joel DiBartolomeo, the city’s high schools superintendent, will take over a Penn. school district. (AP)
• Barbara Byrd-Bennett, a former DOE official, is struggling as Detroit’s academic czar. (Detroit News)
• Arne Duncan says the battle over D.C.’s teacher contract “has gone on too long.” (Wall Street Journal)
• Girls Prep Charter School needs to expand, but Lower East Side schools don’t want to take it in. (NY1)
• PS 184, the Shuang Wen School, held a rally against Girls Prep or other schools moving in. (Post)
• Bronx Preparatory Charter School held its annual college application-sendoff yesterday. (NY1)
• Most high schools in Riverdale didn’t fare too well on the latest progress reports. (Riverdale Press)
• Seattle is reinstating the same admissions system it ditched when it tried to integrate. (Seattle Times)
• Los Angeles declined to ban sugary drinks in city schools. (L.A. Times)
• Chicago nonprofits will offer sports and counseling to stem youth violence. (Christian Science Monitor)

I’m not sure how much credibility the Progress Reports at the heart of the NYC Department of Education’s accountability system have left.  The elementary and middle school Reports issued earlier this fall were ridiculed for their inability to distinguish one school from another, since 97% of the school’s received A’s or B’s (and 84% received A’s).  Moreover, I showed that the student progress measures that make up 60% of a school’s overall score were highly unreliable from one year to the next.  As long as these reports are tied to year-to-year changes in state test scores, they’re likely to be fatally flawed.

On Monday, the Department released the 2008-09 Progress Reports for high schools.  Anna Phillips reported that Chancellor Joel Klein said that the high school Progress Reports were more stable and accurate than those for elementary and middle schools because they’re based on multiple measures.  Huh?  Welcome to the party, Chancellor Klein.  I hate to tell you that measures such as credit accumulation are not necessarily accurate measures of a school’s contribution to student learning and development. 

But the high school Progress Reports have a bigger problem.  Three-quarters of a school’s score comes from a school’s location in relation to a group of 40 peer schools.  The idea of comparing a school to peer schools is to create an “apples to apples” comparison.  It’s actually a good feature of the Progress Reports that they seek to compare a given school to how schools across the city are doing as well as to how schools that serve similar students are performing. (more…)

• A proposal in the NYS Senate includes education cuts, but not direct cuts to school aid.
• “I was never a great standardized test taker,” Michelle Obama told Denver HS students.
• Education Sector hosts an online discussion about teachers’ work environments.
• A blogger sees justification for keeping the charter cap in the Arizona charter study.
• Accountable Talks says contract talks are looking like a throwback to 2005.
• Steve Koss says falling envir. survey grades signal discontented teachers and parents.
• Alexander Hoffman questions whether HS report cards tell us anything about student learning.
• David Bloomfield writes that Bloomberg can still redeem himself, if he focuses on instruction.
• RttT’s allocation amounts may have killed some of the interest among smaller states.
• Andy Smarick wishes Duncan hadn’t stayed out of the KIPP Ujima v. union fray.
• A software program may help convince students that effort will get them somewhere.
• And rural school leaders say Duncan turnaround plans won’t work outside of cities.

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew is calling for the power to declare a deadlock in the union’s contract negotiations with the city.

At a meeting of the United Federation of Teachers’ delegate assembly, Mulgrew asked members to vote and grant him the authority to call an impasse in negotiations, setting things in motion for contract talks to proceed toward the complicated and lengthy fact-finding process. A spokesman for the UFT said that Mulgrew was not declaring an actual deadlock, but was signaling that if talks do not improve, he will do so.

(Update: At 5:41 p.m., by UFT spokesman Dick Riley’s watch, the delegate assembly passed the resolution)

Declaring an impasse would mean calling in the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to verify that contract talks have stalled and then bringing in a mediator to restart negotiations. If the mediation fails, then the fact-finding process would begin — something that the union isn’t exactly looking to avoid, as fact-finding commissions in years past have recommended wage increases and prevented the city from laying off teachers who are excessed and can’t find new positions.

“There’s no downside and it shows his members that he’s doing something,” said Peter Goodman, a long-time UFT member, of Mulgrew’s request for the authority to call an impasse. (more…)

Days after the deadline for the city’s Department of Education to send class size data to the City Council, the department is giving itself a new deadline for the numbers’ release.

A spokesman for the DOE, Will Havemann, said department officials met with staff members of the City Council’s Education Committee this morning and showed them preliminary class size numbers. When the meeting ended, department officials took the data back with them.

“The numbers were shown to the Council this morning but not given to them,” Havemann said, adding that the department plans to release final numbers to the Council on November 23.

City Council spokesman Anthony Hogrebe said giving council members a brief look at a small amount of data did not qualify as meeting the department’s legal obligation to release class size information. (more…)