GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The Texas Board of Ed approved a new set of social studies standards promoted by conservatives.
• Teachers at Bronx Academy of Promise Charter School announced that they want to unionize.
• Marilyn Gittell, a longtime advocate of community control of city schools, died at age 78.
• The Times has a call out for school bake-in-inspired recipes.
• Jay Mathews takes the “Remember the Titans” school to illustrate how numbers can mask good schools.
• Miss Mimi tried to find a bright side to national standards, but explains why she doesn’t think it’s there.
• A D.C. biology teacher might just be the nation’s only female varsity high school football coach.
• A general ed teacher explains why she usually avoids attending her special ed students’ IEP meetings.
• A Bronx teacher harnesses increased public interest in ed reform to finance his students’ New Orleans trip.
• A teacher explains he shared the results of his data report because it is both meaningless and meaningful.
• The student whose school canceled prom rather than allow her to bring her girlfriend made the TV rounds.
• Chancellor Joel Klein called the city’s graduation rates “a tribute to the mayor’s leadership” on MSNBC.
• And Diane Ravitch said she think the feds should mandate that all students study music.

The former principal of a dual-language Arabic-English school was forced to resign by city officials who discriminated against her, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found today.

A report by the commission found that in 2007, when Khalil Gibran International Academy interim principal Debbie Almontaser was forced to resign, Department of Education officials acted out of ethnic and religious bias. Almontaser, an Arab Muslim, was asked to leave the school after some found comments she made in the press offensive and began a campaign to paint her as an extremist. Since then, the school has struggled to get back on its feet and Almontaser is arguing that she should be allowed to have her old job back.

The commission’s report states that “the DOE succumbed to the very bias that the creation of the school was intended to dispel, and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on the DOE as an employer.” It goes on to suggest that the DOE consider reinstating Almontaser. (more…)

Yesterday, we wondered who would make up the team traveling to Washington to pitch New York’s Race to the Top proposal to federal officials.

Today, we know: State Education Commissioner David Steiner will be joined by his deputy commissioner, John King, along with Robert Hughes, president of the school support organization New Visions for Public Schools. Two other officials from the state education department, Ira Schwartz and Laura Smith, will also travel to D.C. to make the presentation, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said today.

Steiner and King, the top two officials at the state education department, are not surprises. Both have been among the most visible public faces of the state’s reform agenda, and Steiner’s plan to overhaul the way teachers are trained and certified is one of the centerpieces of the state’s Race to the Top application. (more…)

When it comes to New York City charter schools’ co-location in district buildings, the current debate has generated far more heat than light-and even the heat is exaggerated.

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking something like this: Charter school co-location involves widespread “space wars” provoked by elitist outsiders who invade neighborhood schools, exacerbate over-crowding, and take more than their share of scarce resources.” Yet every one of these impressions is wrong. In this column, I’ll explain why, and I’ll also offer my suggestion for a way to make the co-location process more fact-based.

1.  Charter school students are neighbors, not invaders. They come from the same districts and communities as children in co-located public schools. They are public school students, who would still need to be educated in a neighborhood school building if charter schools disappeared tomorrow.

No, charter students aren’t statistically identical in every respect; at the district level, charter students are more likely to be African American and somewhat less likely to have special needs (the reasons for this are complicated). (more…)

Earlier this week I shared my teacher data report with several co-workers at an academy meeting (my school is divided into four “mini-schools” or academies) and the readers of GothamSchools. Why did I share this somewhat private information, especially when it was so unflattering? I decided to share my data report because I really believe it is meaningful. I also decided to share my data report because I really believe it is meaningless. Let me explain.

The teacher data report is meaningful because of what it says about my performance as a teacher, and even more so, what it says about the dominant movement in education reform. With regards to my performance my data report shows that my students did not show the expected level of growth in one year. Regardless of my misgivings about the formula behind this calculation or the test itself, I have to concede that every other teacher in the city whose students took the grades 3-8 math and reading tests was evaluated by this same standard and therefore comparing poorly to my peers is cause for reflection.

Furthermore, while I have my qualms with the reading test, I do believe that a good reader can and should pass the test with a 3 or a 4. No matter where my students started the year, it was (and is) my goal to turn all my students into good readers. Therefore it was my goal, no matter how unrealistic, for all my students to pass with 3′s or 4′s. Falling short of this goal means I need to reflect and reevaluate my practices and how to help all my students become good readers. (more…)

• Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Head Start preschool program is being closed for mismanagement. (Daily News)
• The state is again proposing to cut the budget for administering GED tests. (Daily News, Post)
• District 22′s parent council head speaks out about possible new budget cuts. (Brooklyn Courier-Life)
• A Brooklyn community board said a charter school’s building plan was unsafe. (Brooklyn Courier-Life)
• A teacher at a Bronx charter school is being sued over accusations that he bullied students. (Post)
• More D.C. families than ever tried to get into schools outside their zone this year. (Washington Post)
• Kansas City’s drastic school closures reflect longtime mismanagement. (Times, Wall Street Journal)
• Critics say it’s not right for a high school in a diverse N.C. town to be 99 percent black. (NPR)
• Schools in the Chicago area are bracing for enormous budget cuts. (Times)