Posts from January 2010
Bloomberg names Harlem school complex after Percy Sutton
The newly-named Percy Ellis Sutton Educational Complex. (Image via DOE website.)
Speaking at the funeral services for Percy E. Sutton this morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the best way to honor the civil rights activist and former Manhattan borough president is to name a school complex in Harlem after him.
Beginning today, a school building on Edgecombe Avenue, just north of 135th Street, will become the Percy Ellis Sutton Educational Complex, the mayor said. The building, which currently doesn’t have a formal name, is home to Mott Hall and Bread & Roses Integrated Arts High Schools, as well as a middle school, KAPPA IV.
The mayor also took the opportunity to tout his school reform efforts, citing the rise in test scores among Harlem students since 2002. Here’s the excerpt from Bloomberg’s remarks:
, at 1:54 pmI can’t think of a better way to remember Percy. Harlem has been the epicenter of our public school reforms. In 2002, only 12 percent of eighth graders here were at proficiency level in math. Today it’s 61 percent. Now of course that’s not good enough, but it’s progress which would surely gratify a man whose own father was a school principal, whose mother was a teacher and who worked so hard against so many odds to educate himself. And we owe it to Percy and his legacy to continue those bold reforms, not just here in Harlem but throughout the entire city so that we produce future trailblazers like Percy who will lead this city, as well as the world.
Leadership, Law, and Policy
January 6, 2010
Closing Schools: A Call for Independent Review
To write that I am a fan of closing failing schools is to fall into the same bombastic trap now enmeshing the Bloomberg administration. Before the Mayor took office, I wrote about the need to take forceful action against these educational mediocrities. But the wholesale closing and opening of schools that the Mayor has embarked upon is not the answer.
Replacing schools does not necessarily improve education. In the Mayor’s hands, it has become a shell game that defers instructional problems until they reappear elsewhere, to be met again with a similar reaction. Meanwhile, the often lengthy period of the schools’ decline — until so drastically and unconstructively arrested — has harmed thousands of students.
Until now, the Mayor’s strategy has been largely immune to public opposition. The Department of Education announced its hit list with little or no prior warning, the better to keep critics at bay. The new school governance statute, however, has created a process for notice and hearings that — while imperfect — will subject this year’s target list to formal scrutiny followed by likely approval by the mayor-controlled Panel for Educational Policy. Students, parents, teachers, and their supporters are organizing to reverse the DOE decree. (more…)
Headlines
January 6, 2010
Rise & Shine: Lawsuit seeks to force city to lower class sizes
- The teachers union sued the city for not reducing class sizes. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, Post)
- Christine Quinn called saving student MetroCards a “priority” for City Council budget talks. (Daily News)
- School districts are shifting federal funds allocated for special needs student to general ed uses. (WSJ)
- Albany officials extended an olive branch to the city’s largest charter operator. (Albany Times Union)
- In a reversal, the head of Buffalo schools says he will back the state’s RttT bid. (Buffalo News)
- Marcus Winters argues in the Daily News that the UFT distorts its claims on charter schools.
- A Brooklyn high school teacher pleaded guilty to sex offender charges. (Post)
- California lawmakers made it easier for parents to transfer students from struggling schools. (L.A. Times)
- The governor of Michigan signed her state’s bill designed to better its RttT chances. (Detroit News)
- Arne Duncan announced a more streamlined application for college financial aid. (Washington Post)
- Chicago’s mayor vowed to continue the push to replace failing schools with new ones. (Chicago Tribune)
nightcap
January 5, 2010
Remainders: Tisch hosts RttT summit for lawmakers in Brooklyn
- More than 100 city schools are competing to see who can reduce their energy consumption the most.
- Merryl Tisch held a “summit” with lawmakers today in Brooklyn to gather support for raising the charter cap.
- Some school districts, especially in Michigan, are hesitant to sign onto their states’ RttT plans.
- Grace Church School, a private K-8 school in Greenwich Village, is expanding to high school.
- Should teachers lower grades because of bad behavior in class? A parent wonders at InsideSchools.
- Norm Scott spreads the word of the Jan. 21 anti-school closure protest outside of Bloomberg’s residence.
- Liz Willen on the news that another kindergartner was left alone on a school bus: “This is not okay”…
- …While a class of kindergartners may have been left alone on a Brooklyn playground for half an hour.
- A Harvard professor told the NEA that technological advances will mean schools will need fewer teachers.
- New Orleans could be a model for school systems seeking to draw teachers from all over the country.
- Diane Ravitch says the deregulation of public education will create a new “Wild West of entrepreneurship.”
- And here are some “hot spots to watch” in early education issues this year.
Borough President Stringer enters the school closing fray
Tonight marks the beginning of school-closing-season: a 20-day race through mandatory public hearings at all of the schools before a grand showdown at the Panel for Educational policy meeting on January 26.
At the first meeting of the season, taking place tonight at the Academy of Environmental Science, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is calling on Department of Education officials to prove that they tried various ways of helping the school succeed before declaring it failed. In his prepared remarks, he says:
Furthermore, Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Klein, and others at the DOE must own their role in a schools’ performance, whether it is good or bad. The Department’s Educational Impact Statements show that that 20 schools are failing to make the grade, but I do not see evidence of the measures that DOE has taken to get these schools on their feet. I do not see evidence of benchmarks that the DOE has set for itself to help move schools forward, benchmarks the Department should have to meet before it can make the decision to close a school.
The rest of his testimony follows: (more…)
Study says...
January 5, 2010
Stanford study shows many city charters besting district schools
A chart from the CREDO study shows black and Hispanic students in charter schools have higher scores on reading and math tests than peers in district schools.
Students in nearly 50 charter schools across the city are outperforming their peers in district schools on state tests, according to a study by an education research group at Stanford University.
The report, which was done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, known as CREDO, uses the same methodology the group used when looking at the performance of charter schools in several states across the country. Looking at 49 city charter schools from the 2003-04 to 2008-09 school years, CREDO matched data from about 20,000 students in grades 3-8 to an identical number of students with comparable scores at local competing district schools. Though the Department of Education asked CREDO to do the analysis, the foundation procured its own funding for it.
CREDO’s study of charter schools across the country offered a mixed picture — charter schools in some states did better than local schools, while others did worse — but New York City stands out as having a particularly successful crop of charter schools. (more…)
class size goes to court
January 5, 2010
After years of complaints, union sues city over class size dollars
UFT President Michael Mulgrew announces the union's lawsuit. Behind Mulgrew are, from left to right, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, NAACP NY President Hazel Dukes, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Yolanda Morales, a plaintiff in the suit.
The city teachers union, along with a coalition of parents and advocacy groups, sued the Department of Education this morning, charging it with not spending allocated state money on reducing class sizes.
Since 2007, the state has allocated nearly $761 million for class size reduction, yet class sizes in schools across the city have risen over the past two years.
The lawsuit accuses the DOE of causing the class size increase by willfully misusing those funds.
“As far as we are concerned, this is deliberate,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a press conference at union headquarters this morning.
“New York City how has the highest class sizes in New York State,” Mulgrew said. “$760 million, for what?”
The lawsuit, filed this morning in the State Supreme Court in the Bronx, was brought by a coalition of parents, activist groups, the UFT, the New York chapter of the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation.
“The charges are without merit,” DOE Press Secretary David Cantor said. (more…)
Headlines
January 5, 2010
Rise & Shine: Bus driver abandoned special ed student
- Another study finds that NYC charter school students outperform students in regular schools. (WNYC)
- A five-year-old special ed student was left on a bus while the driver had breakfast. (Daily News, Post)
- A federal audit finds problems in the State Education Department’s tracking of stimulus funds. (TU)
- Brooklyn Tech’s email prank didn’t really keep kids out of school yesterday. (Daily News, NY Times)
- A science teacher sold students a book about Satan before the principal caught him. (Daily News)
- The Post says the UFT’s charter school proposals are dangerous and shouldn’t be considered.
- Queens council members’ new years resolutions: lowering class size, getting more seats (Daily News)
- The Empire Center is urging Gov. Paterson to freeze state workers’, including teachers’, pay. (Post)
- School districts and union have until Jan. 8 to sign onto the state’s Race to the Top plans. (WNYC)
- D.C. charter schools now have police posted on site after a spate of violent attacks. (Washington Post)
- An all-girls Montgomery County school is trying to instill interest in engineering. (Washington Post)
nightcap
January 4, 2010
Remainders: Brooklyn Tech students get punk’d
- An email telling Brooklyn Tech students they had the day off turned out to be a hoax.
- David Byrne suggests sending more state money to arts in schools instead of operas and symphonies.
- Richard Whitmire says a Bed-Stuy boys charter school is the “most impressive” school of its kind.
- Early Ed Watch warns districts against cutting back on full-day kindergarten to save money.
- Some teachers say they’re getting calls from a research firm asking what they’d give up for raises.
- A UFT blogger has a set of new years resolutions for Joel Klein, in case he ever asks.
- Joel Klein tells NY1′s Lindsey Christ that he’s sticking around for another four years.
- A teacher who’s been in the rubber room for two years tells his story to the Financial Times.
- Aaron Schutz wonders if TFA actually makes its members feel disempowered.
- One teacher’s goal (among many) for 2010: to find a new job, and not in teaching.
- Alexander Hoffman writes that solid arguments don’t always need research backing them up.
- Peter Murphy calls the UFT’s charter schools proposals a selfish wish list.
- Tom Vander Ark ranks his top 10 people who will impact education in 2010.
- A teacher says it’s almost refreshing when politicians say they want more charters to win RttT.
- Jay Mathews has more on D.C.’s teacher evaluations and reactions to his column.
- Pointing to a high school classmate’s success, a teacher says education needs to change.
- And coming soon to a school library near you: the Baby-Sitters Club, now with text messaging.
Who’s accountable for failing schools?
Over in the community section, Arthur Goldstein, a teacher at a Queens high school, writes that while there’s plenty of fingers being pointed over who’s to blame for failing schools, the city’s Department of Education isn’t taking any responsibility. He writes:
, at 5:07 pmIf schools they started specifically to replace closed schools don’t pass muster, that’s not their fault either. The folks at Tweed are ready and willing to close the schools they opened, and take no responsibility whatsoever. The important thing is they’re going to open even newer ones, and whether they end up closing is not their problem. It isn’t Tweed’s fault, it isn’t Chancellor Klein’s fault and it isn’t Mayor Bloomberg’s fault either. Here in New York City, that’s called “accountability.”
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