GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Legislators promised teachers an early-retirement incentive that could cost $200 million, one analysis says.
• Pissed Off Teacher defends the practice of passing math students even when they fail the Regents exam.
• On “Road to City Hall,” Mulgrew talked NAEP scores, school closings and stalled contract negotiations.
• Just 15 percent of public primary schools offer foreign languages, compared to over half of private schools.
• Norm Scott posts reports from last night’s rally to save Maxwell High School.
• Peter Murphy blasts Gov. Paterson for threatening to withhold state aid to school districts.
• Deborah Meier wonders what charter schools do better, other than attract wealthy donors’ money.
• And a former teacher asks the DOE to please, cancel her health insurance coverage.

Last night, at the GothamSchools party, I had the opportunity to say hello to David Cantor, Press Secretary for the New York City Department of Education.  As he turned to talk with an angry parent, a piece of paper fell out of his pocket, and I picked it up.  It looked like a draft of the press release he issued for the release of the 2009 NYC NAEP math scores, but it was all marked up.  Could I have found his annotations as he was drafting the press release?

Chancellor Klein Applauds New York City Public School Students For Six Years of Sustained and Significant Gains in Math on National Exam (Let’s get that “six years” in at the start, to make it look like the growth has been steady, rather than stalled over the past two years.)

City Students Outperform the Rest of the State and Nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“Outperform”?  Only in the sense that NYC fourth-graders scored almost as high as students in the nation overall, and were significantly lower than eighth-graders nationally.  But it’s a headline, and who pays attention to them, anyway?)

Record Number of Students Performing at or Above Proficiency

Chancellor Calls on State to Adopt More Rigorous Standards to Ensure Further Progress

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein today applauded consistent and sustained gains by New York City public school students on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math exam. (Consistent and sustained might be a stretch, but maybe it’ll pass.) (more…)

Lower East Side parents who want to ensure their pre-k students stay in the same school for kindergarten will now be able to do so, though a citywide policy bans schools from giving admissions preference to their own pre-k students.

Parents in Manhattan’s District 1 have been lobbying for the exemption for more than a year. The district’s parent council, elected officials and the Department of Education have hammered out a nearly-final deal, presented to parents at a public meeting last night.

Last school year the DOE began barring schools from giving admissions preference to students already enrolled in their own pre-k programs.

Lisa Donlan, the president of the parent’s council, said that the policy ran counter to the district’s historical commitment to having full-day pre-k programs that are considered fully integrated into the school’s culture, whereas many districts have half-day pre-k programs that are almost considered separate from the school itself. (more…)

Eva Moskowitz and Steven Evangelista. (Alexander Hoffman for GothamSchools.)

We’re still recovering from our fantastically successful party, which drew more than 200 people to our headquarters in SoHo last night.

We’ll have more pictures — and video! — soon, but for now here’s an image that embodies the good cheer that prevailed: It’s Harlem Link Charter School principal Steven Evangelista smiling during a chat with Eva Moskowitz, head of the Harlem Success Charter Network. Earlier this year, Evangelista criticized Moskowitz’s approach on GothamSchools.

This is the week my eighth grade son made the decision that, he thinks, will determine the rest of his life. He listed his high school choices first to last, and handed in the form.

Commence nervous wreck-hood? Can’t! All the schools we visited looked better than great. They left me soaring.

I know, I know — we only looked at “good” high schools. And when good schools throw an open house, they put on their best face ever. And the tour guides are the best of the brightest of the cutest of the cute — yes, they were all out to wow us, but so what? Nothing could dim the fact that those kids were all colors and creeds, all jazzed about their schools. And the schools looked ready to launch them on the right path.

Perhaps literally. (more…)

• The DOE proposed to close three more high schools next year. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1)
• The “Behind the Book” program brings children’s book authors into schools. (NY1)
• Newcomers High School in Queens made the top 10 of a U.S. News high schools ranking. (Daily News)
• The District 2 parent council proposed a zoning plan that keeps Tribeca at PS 234. (Tribeca Trib)
• Diane Ravitch says the new NAEP scores once again show that state test scores are inflated. (Post)
• The janitor who found two naked teachers at James Madison HS thought they were students. (Post)
• A third Madison teacher is under investigation for sending 200 text messages a student. (Daily News)
• The Detroit News says mayoral control is needed after the city posted the worst NAEP scores ever.
• D.C.’s school voucher program is unlikely to include new students. (Washington Post)
• California’s Assembly is meeting today to consider Race to the Top reforms. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• And the L.A. Times launched a new tool tool to compare neighborhood and magnet school performance.

• Students are worried that kids from closing schools will drag down their good schools.
• Was Beach Channel HS’s fate sealed when Far Rockaway HS was shuttered?
• The Choir Academy of Harlem HS never recovered from scandal and its founder’s death.
• Corey Bunje Bower wonders whether the ultimate goal of the Harlem Children’s Zone is well defined.
• A USDOE official thinks the United States should emulate Asian nations’ approach to teaching math.
• Miss Eyre says getting tenure should be the start of a teacher’s professional career, not an end in itself.
• Joel Klein tells WNYC there’s a chance the DOE could change its mind about school closings.
• New legislation in Congress seeks to stop abusive practices used to discipline disabled students.
• On hearing what students’ parents do when a teacher calls home, a teacher rethinks that strategy.
• And don’t even think about calling Michael Mulgrew “Mike.”

Parents at a school for students with disabilities are accusing the city of excluding them from discussions about plans to move their school to make way for an expanding charter school.

For the past month, debate has raged in District 1 over three scenarios the DOE has proposed to accommodate the expansion of Girls Prep Charter School into middle school grades. Seven elementary and secondary schools in the district could be affected by the plans. Last month, parents from most of those schools packed into the auditorium of P.S. 20 for a heated meeting to tell the DOE they won’t accept space-sharing plans.

While the meeting was raucous, the voices of parents from P.S. 94 were noticeably absent. The school, a District 75 school for severely disabled students that currently shares space with Girls Prep and a district school, would be affected by the expansion. One of the scenarios would move their students to a new building in Battery Park City.

Jessica Santos, the president of the parent association at P.S. 94, said that’s because parents learned only yesterday that the DOE was considering moving their school.

“I’m surprised, and to be honest, I’m pretty pissed off,” Santos said. “Our children are already vulnerable to the social stigmas of being disabled, and now it seems like the DOE is treating us the same way.” (more…)