GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• “New York City schools is closed!” read the sign on one school building door today.
• Apparently the snow day was caused by a number of people sleeping in inside-out pajamas.
• How do teachers spend their snow days? BronxTeach gives an inside look.
• Kirsten Gillibrand is sponsoring a Senate bill to promote engineering education.
• Arthur Goldstein parses the city’s proposals for the teachers union contract.
• C.W. Arp: “Good teachers do feel their frustration as if it is the first, the only.”
• An editor at EdWeek is leaving to head a union-management reform project at the AFT….
• While Education Sector is looking for a new writer/editor.
• A policy analyst for FairTest calls attention to value-added models for teacher evaluation “hype.”
• The pre-kindergarten admissions process for soon-to-be public school students begins on Monday.
• Chaz posts a DN cartoon showing Klein using test scores as boxing gloves against “the Mighty Mulgrew.”
• CityPragmatist is launching a new series examining the pros and cons of charter schools.
• And a TFA’er teaching in the South Bronx will be filing weekly dispatches over at GOOD magazine.

Teachers' data reports place them in one of five categories depending on how much they were able to boost their students' test scores over the course of several years.

Reports ranking teachers on how much they were able to increase students’ test scores from one year to the next arrived in principal’s inboxes this week, and this time Department of Education officials say the reports are simpler and fairer than in years past.

First released in 2008, teacher data reports have rankled teachers who object to being judged solely on test scores and confused principals, some of whom found the reports too complicated to use. The reports released this week cover 12,000 teachers and address some of those concerns. They contain less information, are easier to read, and use a new formula to calculate teachers’ value-added scores.

This year, Chancellor Joel Klein has made it clear what should be done with the data: one in ten teachers who are up for tenure will have their reports used as a criteria in their tenure evaluations.

On Tuesday morning, principals with students in grades 3-8 — the state gives yearly math and English tests to these students — were given school summary reports. Teachers won’t receive their individual data reports until next week. The vast majority work in traditional public schools, as less than a dozen charter schools chose to participate, according to the Department of Education’s chief talent officer, Amy McIntosh. (more…)

I’m marginally astonished at the city’s contract demands, the ones that Mayor Bloomberg says are not demands. As I review the demands that are not demands, the one that really jumps out at me is the lowering of standards for dismissing teachers. Apparently, the city now has to show “just cause” but wishes to lower the standard to “arbitrary and capricious.”

One of the social studies teachers in my school, trained as a lawyer, could not believe I’d gotten the term right. But there it is, in GothamSchools, the most reliable source for education news and opinion in the known universe. So basically, they can fire you for stealing pencils, and you’d have to prove to them that you didn’t do it. After all, it’s “Children First” in New York City. So if you’re an adult, falsely accused, too bad. No salary or health benefits for you. And when the children who “came first” grow up, the hell with them too. They get the same 19th-century-style jobs we just took away from their parents.

The DOE, of course, is now two years into its quest to fire more teachers. So far, they’ve only been able to build successful cases against three. It’s remarkable that, led by a noted attorney, that’s as far as they got. I’m sure they could’ve done better if they weren’t expending so much energy on personal vendettas and utter nonsense. Still, you’d think someone who so reveres accountability and spurns excuses, like Chancellor Klein, would have a better explanation than the one he’s got — that the rules and regulations are neither arbitrary nor capricious enough. But those are the sort of results you can expect when you send people to the rubber room for bringing plants to school or reporting administrative malfeasance. I personally worked with someone who spent time there largely for the offense of not wearing a tie.

As a chapter leader, I’m particularly fascinated by the clause demanding that chapter leaders do all their work outside school hours. (more…)

Unlike Ms. Stone, Ms. Fire is always smiling, except when she is mad. And when she is mad she is disappointed, and surprised. She is surprised to find herself mad, as if every time were the first she has ever felt mad at a student. If I am in the room she will look at me in disbelief, as if she needs another adult to confirm that a student has angered her. Can you believe this, her look says, can you believe a student has made ME mad? It must be serious. And the kids all go silent. The offender is deep in shame and pulls one of the 42 faces of shame, ranging from sullen shame to giggling shame to crying shame. This happens many, many times a day.

All good teachers do this, of course, making their frustration look like the first, the only frustration they have ever felt over the behavior of a child. After school or in private they will laugh about it and say that it is an act, or a trick, but I know better. Good teachers do feel their frustration as if it is the first, the only. If it is a trick, then it is a trick that they play on themselves. Good teachers are surprised when kids do not do what they need to do.

But Ms. Fire takes it a step further and makes that surprise, that real disappointment, personal. I cannot believe that YOU have made me mad, YOU whom I KNOW. She becomes a musician, playing their shame like a violin. What a risky move! (more…)

• City schools are closed today because of snow, for the second time this month. (Daily News, Times, NY1)
• The record shows Joel Klein closes schools just for Eva Moskowitz, Juan Gonzalez says. (Daily News)
• For the first time, the PEP voted to table a proposal, stopping a home for Eagle Academy. (Daily News)
• The PEP also passed new rules banning homemade treats in school bake sales this week. (Times)
• Demand appears to be down at city private schools. (Bloomberg)
• Readers weigh in on Bob Herbert’s column extolling the Harlem Village Academy. (Times)
• Thwarted L.A. charter school operators say they would focus on special ed if they could. (L.A. Times)
• After rejecting many of her old views, Diane Ravitch has a book about the new ones. (Washington Post)
• Baltimore is struggling to make a decision for the first time about closing a charter school. (Baltimore Sun)
• Trying to mitigate budget cuts, San Francisco parents said they’d pay more taxes. (S.F. Chronicle)

• The reform movement’s ground zero has moved to Rhode Island, and Randi Weingarten is not pleased.
• In Chicago, Ron Huberman will cut costs by laying off central staff and attacking the pension fund.
• Leonie Haimson close-reads the Eva Moskowitz/Joel Klein e-mails published today by the Daily News.
• Governor Paterson had a very bad day. Now Al Sharpton’s holding a summit on what to do.
• Worlds collide: A 17-year-old Olympic figure skater attends a charter school. (Via Quick and the Ed.)
• Nevada lifted its “firewall” blocking teachers from being evaluated based on student test scores.
• On Capitol Hill, an early sign of pushback against national standards. Another critique.
• In Diane Ravitch’s new book, Richard Kahlenberg sees traces of Al Shanker. (Via Eduwonk.)
• Disney is making a movie called, “Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars.” Jezebel imagines other terrors.
• Teach For America has a strong lobby: House Dems criticized Arne Duncan today for cutting its funds.
• A rare academic study of a Massachusetts KIPP school finds learning gains.
• Deborah Meier quotes Sy Fliegel, asking what about our present will look odd in the future.
• Tween Teacher fantasizes about what teacher prep will look like in 2030.
• And here’s next school year’s testing schedule.

Charter school parents packed into last night's Panel for Educational Policy meeting to call for more city building space for charter schools.

Last night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting was the second in as many months to be packed to the gills with parents and teachers passionately pleading their case.

But this time it was charter school parents, not teachers and parents at closing district schools, who drove to the meeting in busloads.

“What we are pleading for this evening is space,” Trevor Alfred, a parent at Explore Empower Charter School, told the panel. “We deserve it.”

At first blush, the level of passion, and sometimes anger, directed towards the panel could seem odd. Although 16 school space proposals were up for a vote, the board had never voted down a city proposal, and none of the charter school proposals on the agenda yesterday was defeated.

But charter school advocates, stung by what they felt was a bruise at last month’s PEP meeting on school closures, which was dominated by charter school opponents, decided to take the opportunity to launch a new public relations offensive.

“I think this is the defining moment for the charter school movement, as an advocacy movement, to wake up,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, who leads Democracy Prep Charter Schools’ political organizing. (more…)

A teacher contract fight at Merrick Academy Charter School has expanded into a dispute over the school’s financial and physical conditions.

Emails sent to GothamSchools offer a window into a school where parents, teachers, and board members are locked in a bitter fight, trading accusations about mismanagement, ceiling leaks, and an alleged lack of textbooks. Problems began late last year when teachers and union officials accused the charter school’s board of spending millions of dollars on a for-profit management organization, Victory Schools.

Now, teachers and parents are blaming the board for shortchanging students on classroom supplies and not making needed repairs. In response, the board is accusing teachers of fabricating the problems. Meanwhile, the school’s founding principal has left suddenly, citing personal reasons. (more…)