GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A 14-year old student in the Bronx was shot on her way home from high school.
• The city’s Department of Education will have to cut 5.5 percent from its budget.
• The death of Chicago School Board President Michael Scott has been ruled a suicide.
• Announcing HS report cards today, Klein said new schools are outperforming older ones.
• More high schools got D grades than they did last year.
• The Regents rejected Excellence Charter School’s renewal app, but that’s not the final word.
• Mid-year cuts to schools could make teacher raises look really bad, writes a UFT blogger.
• Now you can search how school districts in New York spend their money, except for NYC.
• Jamaica HS’s chapter leader says that 10 of the school’s classes do not have a regular teacher.
• Today’s private high school students can look forward to endless curiosity from the news media.
• America’s “next great pundit” could be a TFA exec., oh, and Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband.
• Danver, MA schools now have a zero-tolerance policy for the word “meep.”
• And a curriculum based on the Rubik’s cube is suddenly popping up everywhere.

The New York State Board of Regents wants to certify new teachers based on their students’ academic achievement in their first two years of teaching, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner David Steiner announced today.

The proposal came as part of a plan to overhaul the way teachers are trained and placed in classrooms that state officials hope will help them win competitive federal Race to the Top grant money.

Under the plan, a new teacher would also face a tougher set of tests and must prove to the state that he or she is ready to enter the classroom before receiving their initial certification, possibly through portfolios of lesson plans and videotaped teaching sessions.

“Instead of just a paper and pencil test, instead of looking simply at course credits, instead of waiting until the last semester for a  formal experience of student teaching that has a different caliber of qualities associated with it, we want to use these performance assessments to ensure that our candidates for teaching have the skills that matter,” Steiner said in a press conference today. (more…)

Last week our child’s G&T kindergarten class at PS 33 Chelsea Prep held parent-teacher conferences. Our conference went well though it was short — just 10 minutes — so the teacher could meet with every child’s parents. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a detailed report card for our child.

Below is a copy of the actual report card we received for our child (sorry for the poor quality!). I whited out the grades for obvious reasons and I’m not sure if all schools use the same report card, but this will give you an idea of how children in a G&T kindergarten class are evaluated. The grading scale is 1 to 4, with 4 being “exceeds grade-level standards” and 1 being “far below grade-level standards.”

(more…)

Debuting the latest round of progress reports for the city’s high schools, the Department of Education awarded 75 percent of schools A’s and B’s, a slight decrease from last year.

That number reflects a rise in the percentage of high schools that were given A grades this year, and a decrease in the percentage with B’s. Of the more than 300 high schools that were given grades this year, 45 percent received A’s and 30 percent were given B’s.

In 2008, 40 percent of high schools were given A’s and 43 percent were given B’s.

Following criticism that the overwhelming number of high marks given to the city’s elementary and middle schools over the summer rendered the report cards meaningless, DOE officials said grades for the high schools would be more evenly distributed. (more…)

• The state is unveiling teacher training proposals that could make ed schools unnecessary. (Times, AP)
• A high school principal who resigned while being investigated was given another school to lead. (Post)
• High school progress report grades out today won’t be as high as those for other schools. (Daily News)
• A coalition of state senators has sworn to block Gov. Paterson’s midyear school budget cuts. (AP)
• A Staten Island student was seriously injured in dangerous traffic outside Tottenville HS. (Post)
• A nonprofit group that builds gyms in Africa is helping a Brooklyn school build one. (Brooklyn Paper)
• The school-based H1N1-vaccine clinics were much busier this weekend than last week. (Times)
• The Academy for Young Writers is looking for internships for its soon-to-graduate seniors. (Daily News)
• The Daily News says New York State needs to step up and change laws to win Race to the Top funds.
• The 500 school aides at risk of firing finally lost their jobs on Friday. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• A new look at the Posse Foundation, which sends city kids to top colleges in groups. (AP)
• The Washington Post wants D.C. to turn over closed school buildings to charter schools. 
• Arizona’s charter schools, the most anywhere, aren’t outperforming district schools. (Washington Post)
• Nationwide, as in New York City, a teacher shortage has become a teacher surplus. (AP)
• Some teachers sell their lesson plans online, raising questions of property rights and propriety. (Times)
• A movement is underfoot to replace “at-risk” with “at-promise,” Jay Mathews writes. (Washington Post)
• Los Angeles’s superintendent is asking teachers to accept a 12 percent pay cut. (L.A. Times)

• A fire in a Stuyvesant HS bathroom caused the whole school to be evacuated today.
• Tom Carroll says Schumer is the reason NYS officials think the data firewall won’t do them harm.
• When tragedy hits, it’s a reminder that teaching is more than giving tests, Mulgrew writes.
• The case of a gym teacher in the rubber room is an example of why teachers want so much protection.
• Arthur Goldstein asks why teachers donating sick days to colleagues are in a buy one, pay for two system.
• Alexander Hoffman looks at what makes a “good student.”
• Here’s one way to boost the state’s GED passing rate: having the brightest kids drop out.
• A blogger looks at Chicago data and questions whether experience and pay have much of an effect.
• Jay Mathews dissects the Bracey report, calls it the “best memorial” to its author.
• Could Gingrich be the one to shepherd NCLB to renewal with bipartisan support?
• Ohio will adopt the Common Core standards and the Fordham edu team is happy about that.
• Kevin Carey says saving teachers’ jobs is not Stalinist-style job creation.
• And Duncan, Gingrich, and Sharpton will be on Meet the Press this Sunday.

Hoping to bring a diverse mix of students to a new Upper West Side high school, parents and neighborhood activists are jumping at the chance to write rewrite its admissions rules.

Frank McCourt High School, which will have a writing and communications focus, is highly anticipated by middle and upper-middle class families on the Upper West Side who want a selective school close to home. But McCourt is also one of the small schools replacing Brandeis High School, a large school that has served needy students from Harlem. Some advocates fear these students will be displaced as the school phases out.

The challenge, those who’ve been involved in the school’s development say, is building a school that attracts both sets of students. (more…)

Students from several high schools were joined by City Councilman Robert Jackson for a protest of the city’s recent ban on bake sales during the school day. Jackson, who chairs the Council’s education committee, signed the students’ petition and then partook of a few chocolate chip cookies. (more…)

In Horace’s Compromise, Ted Sizer problematizes* our understanding of what constitutes a good high school. He questions how much learning is really going on in our good schools (i.e. our suburban schools that send kids to fancy colleges). The compromise the title refers to is the deal between students and teachers, in which the students agree not to give the teachers any real trouble, so long as the teachers don’t give them any real trouble – or maybe it is the other way around. Schools don’t really challenge students with truly difficult lessons, and students agree to jump through the hoops that have replaced real and deep learning. In Doing School, Denise Pope makes clear what this looks like from students’ perspectives. She shows different strategies that teenagers might take to be a good student.

* Sorry. I really like that word.

But what really makes for a good student? Sizer and Pope make clear what our current system has worked so hard to teach kids about what it means to be a good student. But what if we could start from scratch? What if we considered the kinds of goals we really want our schools to aim for? Principally, what if we made learning – rather than achievement or attainment – the center of schooling? (more…)

At Francis Lewis High School, we want to help our sick friend and the Department of Education has offered us a deal. They’ll let us give him our sick days under these terms — buy one, pay for two.

Our colleague is suffering from a nasty reoccurrence of cancer that requires a very aggressive treatment. His doctor has had good results with this treatment, but it entails weeks of hospitalization, and our friend will be out of commission for six months at the very least. During his first bout with this cancer, he exhausted his sick days, and ended up owing the DOE one sick day.

It’s true we have the option of donating our sick days so as to keep our friend on payroll and covered by health insurance. It’s good karma, help thy neighbor, the golden rule, or whatever you wish to call it. It’s as American as mom and apple pie. But a quirk in the city’s pay rules for teachers means our sick-day donations are seriously limited. It’s almost like the city opposes mom and apple pie. (more…)