GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The mayor will give the principal of P.S. 24, Christina Fuentes, a Sloan Award tomorrow.
• A WNYC reporter visits a juvenile justice center and reports back on the conditions, funding problems.
• Newsweek says firing bad teachers and hiring good ones is imperative, nevermind the gray areas.
• A New Orleans charter school is built on teachers who work long hours for little, but can that continue?
• Diane Ravitch talks to Brian Lehrer about her new book and her change of mind.
• Edwize: more charter school regulation, not less, could have helped NY in its RttT bid.
• Patrick Sullivan, the parent of two Lower Lab students, says the Village Voice story got it wrong.
• Teacher quality isn’t the only important factor schools can control, school environment matters, too.
• Schools built around team structures are best for training teachers, writes a UFT blogger.
• Look for Race to the Top to be franchised out to other policy areas, writes Kevin Carey.
• To repeat the eternal question: is what teachers do like what doctors or lawyers do?
• Teachable Moment is annoyed that the tenor of RttT coverage resembles that of a horse-race.
• And there’s no better cure for a Monday than a P.S. 22 performance. This time: Lisztomania.

As dust settles on a months-long school rezoning battle in Tribeca, State Senator Daniel Squadron said he would introduce a new bill today that would force the Department of Education to give community leaders more information before they sit down to draw new zoning lines.

Standing outside the epicenter of that zoning battle, P.S. 234, Squadron said members of the parent council for District 2 had been asked to chose a rezoning plan — but hadn’t been given any information about how many kindergarten students to expect. As a result, P.S. 234 still has too many new students zoned for it, leaving families to take their chances in a lottery.

Shino Tanikawa, a member of the Community Education Council for District 2, said DOE officials gave the council numbers for how many kindergarten and first-grade students are enrolled in Tribeca schools, but not projections for how many were coming down the pipeline.

“We kept asking for enrollment projections and the number they had was an aggregate number based on historical trends,” she said. “For the actual zoning we had to do, there was nothing.” (more…)

With funding for student Metrocards on the line, students’ commutes have been a hot topic lately. But is it good for students to be commuting long distances?

I do not doubt that a great many students across the city travel long distances to attend a school they feel are the best fit for their needs. But students don’t always take on long commutes out of choice. Suspecting that lengthy commutes actually hurt many of our most vulnerable students, I undertook a study into attendance statistics that suggests that it might be better for some students to have a shorter trip to school.

The Background

We already know that enrollment patterns have an impact on progress report grades and contribute to the low scores received by schools that have been slated to close. Three years ago, I noticed a relationship between self-contained special education students (high-needs students requiring smaller classes) and progress report grades: Schools receiving poor grades serve far higher percentages of self-contained students.

In the last few months, I have looked deeper into these patterns within the Bronx, trying to understand the increasingly high concentrations of self-contained special needs students within the remaining large high schools (see the details by district here). I hypothesized that this ongoing shift was also not good for the students, who were being assigned to travel increasingly far to get to school as their neighborhood schools closed. I sought research on the relationship between commute and achievement for these most vulnerable of students, but kept coming up empty. (more…)

News from New York City:

• PTAs at 26 schools have raised more than $2 million this year to pay for extra teachers aides. (Post)
• The Board of Regents is considering eliminating 13 Regents exams to save money. (Daily News,Post)
• Parents say the Joel Klein-Eva Moskowitz e-mails should stop school closures for now. (Daily News)
• State Sen. Bill Perkins is at odds with many of his Harlem constituents on education policy. (Times)
• A member of the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board says the teachers union should get out of Harlem.
• A teacher is in the rubber room after being accused of choking a student at Life Academy HS. (Post)
• Students at the Brooklyn charter school that parents say is too strict earn top test scores. (Post)
• Parents and students protested against the impending closures of Catholic schools. (Daily News)
• Students from Samuel Gompers HS competed in a memory competition this weekend. (Daily News)
• This year’s Penny Harvest change drive will collect funds for Haiti. (NY1)
• Bob Herbert backs the New York Civil Liberties Union’s safety lawsuit against the city schools. (Times)

And beyond:

• Some think teachers can be made better with a new kind of teacher education. (Times)
• Others argue that teaching is an innate skill, so more bad teachers should be fired. (Newsweek)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan said states shouldn’t change schools policy just for money. (GothamSchools, Post)
• The Daily News says New York should still make changes to increase its Race to the Top chances.
• The Wall Street Journal says Race to the Top will fail because it’s trying to be all things to all people.
• Duncan is in Selma, Ala., today to unveil stepped-up civil rights initiatives. (Times, Wall Street Journal)
• President Obama’s warm response to the Central Falls mass teacher firing was “tough love.” (Times)
• Similar mass firings where teachers had to reapply for their jobs have helped some schools. (USA Today)
• Educational and fiscal imperatives compete in districts’ move to four-day weeks. (Wall Street Journal)
• Readers weigh in on Diane Ravitch’s changing education policy positions. (Times)
• A Boston Globe columnist argues against the current drive toward national standards.