GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The reauthorization of NCLB should require states that accept Title I money (i.e. all of them) to require all public school teachers to get buzz cuts. Seriously*. This would benefit our schools and our students.

Think about it. With buzz cuts, teachers could get ready for work faster in the morning, and spend less time touching up their hair each day. That might give them an extra 10-30 minutes each day (fact**), time they could spend meeting with students, giving students better written feedback or creating better lesson plans. Not only that, but it would actually be like giving them a pay raise!!

Think about it. Our nation’s most efficient public service is the military (fact***). It requires all recruits to get a buzz cut (fact***). It is the strongest military in the world (fact). We want our schools to be the best and most efficient in the world, right? Why not follow the military’s model? This also returns us to traditional values for teachers, in this case discouraging their dating (fact). The time they are not spending on dating, preparing for dates and thinking about dates could then be poured into their teaching, as it should have been in the first place (fact***). (more…)

• Paterson plans to repay school districts the money he’s withheld if revenues improve next month.
• But says he won’t be pushed by edu groups’ lawsuit to return the money before he’s ready.
• “Whose kids should go there?” Joel Klein asks, defending the decision to close Jamaica HS.
• Last school year, NYC charter schools took in over $31 million in philanthropic donations.
• Andrew Rotherham says students in prison need better school options if they’re to succeed.
• Ben Wildavsky reviews a book that calls for more merit-based aid and fewer unprepared college students.
• Arthur Goldstein delights his student by accusing another teacher of assaulting the principal.
• Asked to write 6,000-word novels in a month, a class of sixth graders more than meets the challenge.
• Learning to ask students the right questions can produce difficult answers, one teacher learns.
• City Corps members tell stories of how they’re making a difference in the schools.
• Leo Casey and Peter Murphy’s battle over NYSCA’s politics continues at Edwize.
• Norm Scott reminds readers that in the midst of school closing fights, the UFT has an elections coming up.
• If the UFT hadn’t lobbied to cut charter funding, Merrick Academy could raise pay, Peter Murphy writes.
• Maryland officials are having a very public dispute over whether to aim for round 1 or 2 of RttT.
• And happy holidays! We’re on break but will be back in full force on Jan. 4.

As a teacher you always have to be prepared for an answer you weren’t expecting. This may be due to the unpredictability of a kid’s brain, but sometimes it’s the result of other circumstances. “You’re a really bright kid. Why haven’t you been doing your homework?” I asked Motormouth the other day, my voice thick with exasperation.

“I’m having a hard time concentrating.”

“Why is that?”

“My mom and dad are arguing a lot.” (more…)

Even though it was just last month, I find myself feeling a little nostalgic for November. December features a much-needed vacation and one of my favorite holidays, but the students and I had an unexpected experience in November that taught me something important: Sometimes the best instruction is no instruction.

A few years ago I stumbled across NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month, a contest which challenges participants to crank out a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. Whenever that month approaches, I think about making an attempt myself but can never bring myself to commit. This year, looking at the site, I noticed that there was a branch of the contest for students. Although the goal for adults is 50,000 words, the goals for kids are more flexible. Specifically, kids were expected to write approximately a thousand words per grade, making my sixth graders’ goal 6,000 words. I ordered the free materials on the spot.

But then I began growing skeptical that my students would want to get involved. Getting my kids to write anything is usually a challenge. Sometimes I joked to my colleagues that “dentist” was a more accurate title for what I do, because getting the kids to write more than a couple paragraphs is often like pulling teeth. (more…)

That was the topic of a recent lesson I taught my level 2 ESL class. Actually, I was teaching them to use past progressive, e.g., “What were you doing at 9:18 p.m. last night?” But if I’d told them what they were really doing, they’d have risen up en masse and tossed me out a window.

I was using a book called American Streamlines, which offers illustrations of an unfortunate high school principal being hit over the head with a blackjack or something. At first blush, the kids enjoyed it. But the story specifically stated that the police thought the attacker was a student, and that all students would be questioned, be they male or female.

The male/ female distinction is an important one, particularly when you’ve got a large group of Chinese speakers. In Chinese, they tell me, they do not distinguish between male and female in third person pronouns, so many of my kids call everyone “he.” I’m forever drawing stick figures and explaining how dangerous it can be to refer to women as “he.”

As far as dangerous women go, I have one right next door, in the adjacent trailer. That would be Ms. Rena Sum, Chinese teacher extraordinaire. (more…)

• Schools statewide are facing a $2 billion budget shortfall. (NY1)
• Opponents of proposed school closures hope to convince the PEP to vote the proposals down. (NY1)
• The city is paying for all high school juniors to be able to take online SAT prep classes. (Post)
• The choir that had been connected to the troubled Choir Academy of Harlem is no more. (Times)
• The city’s bid to give private schools sole use of public ballfields was rejected again. (Daily News, Times) 
• The principal of Brooklyn’s JHS 234 claimed handicapped teacher parking spots for herself. (Daily News)
• A D.C. charter school with low enrollment and shaky finances is closing in June. (Washington Post)
• A Detroiter suggests that the city schools could be fixed if parents had to participate. (Detroit Free Press)

• For the second time in two years, the city’s land-use deal with private schools was deemed illegal.
• Tom Carroll: the real obstacle for NY’s RttT hopes isn’t the teachers union, it’s Albany’s inertia.
• Students’ poor grammar is cute when they’re little, but years later it’s a real problem.
• A gift for Miss Brave: a tote bag, decorated with her name and plastic slots for photos of her class.
• Attorney Gen. Andrew Cuomo’s office is representing Paterson in a lawsuit filed by education groups.
• Mr. Talk wants to embrace the words “nerd” and “geek,” not banish them from our vocabulary.
• Chaz says the mayor’s proposed changes to seniority should be a non-starter in contract negotiations.
• The federally-funded Teacher Incentive Fund seeks to examine a variety of outcomes and incentives.
• Liz Willen wonders if attending a specialized arts high school means sacrificing academics.
• A public schools satirist offers his predictions for 2010.
• And if you’re dying to know what day you’ll sit for the Math B Regents exam, here’s the schedule.

Frustrated by two years of contract negotiations, the city’s teachers union is pressuring a unionized Queens charter school to make a deal.

United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew and other union officials held a news conference in front of Merrick Academy-Queens Public Charter School today to protest the school’s contract with a for-profit educational management organization. According to the UFT, over the last four years Merrick Academy’s board has paid over $8 million to Victory Schools, a figure that Mulgrew said was “astronomical.”

At the center of the UFT’s rally today is its ongoing contract talks with the school. Union officials said the school’s board has been dragging its feet on negotiations.

In 2007, an overwhelming majority of teachers at Merrick Academy voted to make the UFT their exclusive bargaining agent, but since then the UFT and school’s board have yet to reach a contract agreement. (more…)

Not long before Merryl Tisch became head of the state’s public schools, she was a student herself, at Teachers College. There she wrote a doctoral dissertation on what would become her pet issue, teacher training.

The dissertation offers a window into Tisch’s oft-cited critique of teacher preparation — one that is far more robust and detailed than the stock line she uses in speeches.

Publicly, Tisch and education commissioner David Steiner have offered a barebones roadmap for changing how teachers are prepared. Last month, the Board of Regents approved an expansion of the number of alternative teacher certification programs in the state, opening the door for non-university programs to certify teachers.

Steiner has often spoken of increasing classroom-based training, and Tisch told me in an interview that the Board would seek programs “with a track record of success.” But the Board hasn’t been more specific about what they will look for in these programs, or how many they seek to approve, or what exactly a training program completed without the aid of a college or university will look like. (more…)