GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• More students are taking Advanced Placement exams, but more are also failing them.
• A UFT blogger argues that the DOE’s reporting of closing schools’ graduation rates jukes the stats.
• Alan Singer says the DOE’s plan to move University Heights High School will kill the school.
• Pedro Espada calls the RttT deadline for raising the charter cap that state lawmakers missed “artificial.”
• The ARISE Coalition criticizes the DOE’s new special ed re-org for lacking a principal mandate for change.
• Three Chicago neighborhoods are beginning their plans to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone.
• For trying to get rid of $123 million in earmarks, Gail Collins give USDOE the “most fiscally tidy” award.
• The “mother of small schools,” Deborah Meier, explains why she still supports them, with reservations.
• The NYC Charter Center has pictures of banners charter parents waved at their rally this week in Albany.
• The USDOE’s school safety official wants schools to adopt common standards for “school climate.”
• Achievement gaps among the highest-performing students is growing, a new study reports.
• Livable Streets Education (like us, an initiative of TOPP) has a guide to student activism against MTA cuts…
• …And students plan to collect messages about how Metrocard cuts will affect them on their expired cards.

Local teachers union president Michael Mulgrew appears to be at odds with his old boss, national union president Randi Weingarten, over the question of whether to link students’ test scores to teacher evaluations.

In a speech delivered last month, Weingarten announced her newfound support for using test scores as a factor in deciding whether or not a teacher gets tenure. Following the speech, Mulgrew sent an email to United Federation of Teachers chapter leaders distancing himself from Weingarten’s position.

“Her proposals would require a climate of collaboration and trust that simply does not exist here,” he wrote. (more…)

In Albany this week, UFT President Michael Mulgrew floated a plan to save the city money by letting teachers retire earlier. But a new report on the health of the city’s teachers pension fund suggests that Mulgrew’s proposal would only compound the fund’s potentially crippling budget crunch.

The fund’s annual report, released last week, shows that it lost 29 percent of its value, more than $9 billion, last school year, even as the portion the city is required to pay reached unprecedented heights.

The mix of rising costs and declining value raises serious questions about how the city will be able to afford to pay the pensions it has promised in the future without major concessions by the teachers union.

The fund, called the Teachers Retirement System (TRS), is a collection of investments paid for with a combination of taxpayer dollars and teacher salaries. Every year a chunk of it is used to pay retired teachers and principals the pensions state law says they are owed.

Last year’s financial crisis sunk the fund to its lowest level in more than 15 years, effectively erasing all of the gains made in the past decade’s bull market, according to a database of TRS’s financial reports. Over that time span, the fund’s value, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk by more than $11 billion.

This leaves a $15 billion gap between what the fund expects to pay out in the next 30 or so years and what it will have saved by that time, according to the TRS’s preferred accounting method. Another way of calculating these “unfunded liabilities” used in the private sector puts the number even higher, at $27 billion.

“It’s not a crisis. It’s a long-run big problem: The pension system is far more costly than it ought to be,” said Charles Brecher of the Citizens Budget Commission, an independent group that advocates for changes in city and state finances. (more…)

Parents of East New York Prep students said the city should help the school correct its governance problems rather than close it.

Parents and students at an East New York charter school are pleading with the Department of Education to keep their school open after an investigation found that the school had violated its charter and its principal was expelling high-needs students.

Charter schools are rarely closed in New York City, but when they are it can inspire as much anger and confusion as the shuttering of a traditional public school. At a hearing at East New York Preparatory on Wednesday night, about 100 parents filled the auditorium to ask questions of DOE officials and speak out against the school’s proposed closure. Its embattled principal Sheila Joseph might have broken a few rules, they said, but in a high-crime, high-poverty neighborhood, a seat in her school was the only way out.

“In this community there aren’t many options for these kids,” said Leon Smillie, the father of a second grader. “This is a good option.” (more…)

• A Staten Island principal called home when a student brought in a 2-inch toy gun. (Daily News, Post)
• Shelter check-in rules caused a HS student to miss the last exam she needed to graduate. (Daily News)
• A new charter school opening up in Riverdale has kept a low profile. (Riverdale Press)
• To save money, the city will try to close day care centers in gentrified neighborhoods. (Times)
• The Upper East Side will get a new elementary school to cut down on crowding. (Times)
• Students and parents at the Clinton School protested against the school’s move last week. (The Villager)
• Letter-writers weigh in on teacher misconduct, in and outside of the rubber rooms. (Post)
• The head of the New York Civil Rights Coalition questions the NAACP’s school closure suit. (Daily News)
• In Los Angeles, communities vote on what should happen to low-performing schools. (L.A. Times)
• Philly students do have HS choices, but most can’t take advantage of them. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
• Jay Mathews showcases a teacher’s critique of D.C.’s teacher evaluation program. (Washington Post)
• In cities nationally, charter schools are more racially segregated than other schools. (Washington Post)
• Amsterdam News Editor Elinor Tatum writes an open letter to Dennis Walcott about school closures.