GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Chester Finn on Diane Ravitch: “She has become more conservative, while I have become more radical.”
• Liu’s decision to announce his audit of progress reports in advance is unusual among city officials.
• What happens if overly ambitious states ask for more money than RttT gives them?
• Norm Scott sends out a blast from the past, reprinting perspectives on closing schools — from 2003.
• An economist says the city’s new bake-sale regulations represent a bad form of regulation.
• Kim Gittleson breaks down how much charters that don’t get city space pay for their buildings.
• Linda Perlstein thinks the Gates teacher survey is valuable but doubts ed leaders will pay it much mind.
• Jose Vilson attended last night’s TFA panel and thought John Legend’s arguments were weak.
• James Davies O’Leary stumbled into a lecture by Bill Ayers and was not impressed.
• Mrs. Mimi describes the hoops she must jump through to get a student help against bullying.
• Jay Mathews corrects an error in his take on the plight of teachers in Central Falls, RI.
• When the Natural History Museum took Pluto out of the planet line up, students were not happy about it.
• And students at Urban Assembly New York Harbor School spotted a dolphin in Newtown Creek today.

When singer John Legend agreed to talk on a Teach for America panel about his views on education, he probably thought he’d get a warm reception. After all, he supports charter schools, a longer school day, and vigorous standardized testing, all policies championed by the education reform movement Teach for America helped fuel.

But things didn’t go his way last night.

One of six panelists at the event, “Men of Color and Education: A Discussion on the Pursuit of Excellence,” Legend met with more criticism and more boos than he’d bargained for. At first, the audience of mostly black and Latino teachers — most of them TFA members — praised Legend’s support for putting good teachers in front of high-need students, but the cheers soon turned to boos when he advocated for testing. (more…)

A recent report by the Independent Budget Office found that New York City charter schools that don’t use public space receive around $3,000 less per pupil than traditional public schools. This post reviews how much charter schools actually spend on their space.

We created a database using financial information from the 2008-2009 annual financial audits and school siting statistics from the 2008-2009 Blue Book report produced by the School Construction Authority to catalog school space. We found that the 26 schools not housed in Department of Education-provided space spent around $2,100 per pupil on occupancy costs, which includes rent, utilities, safety, and maintenance. You can see the full spreadsheet here. This database lists every charter school and whether or not it is in DOE space. As an added feature, for those in DOE space, it lists the schools with which they share space and their respective progress report scores.

This $2,100 number only tells part of the story. According to a source who helps charter schools find private space, the market average for a charter school to lease space is between $2,400 and $3,500 per pupil. If the rental costs are less than $2,000 per pupil, this probably indicates that the school negotiated a great rental deal, bought the building a long time ago and paid off most of the mortgage, or has some sort of philanthropic money subsidizing part of the cost. This is certainly the case for many of the schools in our spreadsheet, such as the Carl C. Icahn Charter School or Bronx Preparatory Academy — both schools that have some sort of philanthropic entity helping them with their rental and/or purchase needs. (more…)

While Elizabeth is enjoying a well-deserved vacation in the wilds of Wisconsin this week, take a look at what’s she’s been working on these last few months: A New York Times Magazine cover story about the building blocks of good teaching.

The story is centered on Doug Lemov, a founder of the Uncommon Schools charter chain who realized that no matter how much schools tinker with — or even fundamentally restructure — their curriculum, schedule, and use of data, they can still be left with mediocre teaching. So he decided to figure out how to make teachers great.

From Elizabeth’s article:

But what makes a good teacher? There have been many quests for the one essential trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try. …

When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.

It was the tiniest decision, but what was teaching if not a series of bite-size moves just like that?

• Arne Duncan is set to tell most states that they didn’t win Race to the Top funds. (Wall Street Journal)
• The possible elimination of student Metrocards is dominating this week’s MTA hearings. (Daily News)
• Diane Ravitch’s education policy about-face is the subject of her new book. (Times, GothamSchools)
• The pro-mayoral control lobbyists in Learn NY raised $7.5 million, but spent just over half. (WNYC)
• A new study finds young people don’t think much of their high school counselors. (Times, USA Today)
• The largest-ever survey of teachers finds they want good principals. (Washington Post, Seattle Times)
• Los Angeles’s school board will warn 5,200 employees that they could be laid off. (AP)