GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The big questions about charter schools are not the real issue in current fights over co-location with traditional public schools. Charter schools with their own buildings are being left alone. Like most wars, the dispute is about territory, not policy. This is not about long-simmering disagreements about charters’ instructional strengths, whether they cream more able students, lack of services for English language learners and students with special needs, segregative effects, and other important if wonky questions. This is about real estate.

In its zeal to support charters and other small-school alternatives, the Bloomberg administration has opened the doors of neighborhood schools to entities without community roots, an imposition understandably resented by many already housed there. Though Department of Education capacity estimates tend to be wildly inflated and the space needs of current schools undervalued, there might very well be room for two or more coexisting programs in some buildings. But the mayor’s and chancellor’s heavy-handed actions, treating current occupants like squatters and shunting them aside in favor of preferred institutions, create unnecessary antagonism between students, parents, and administrators.

This resonates with the old New York story of class warfare engendered by developers and landlords clearing out tenants. In schools, issues of gentrification, perceived religious school encroachment on public school space, and redrawing of district and attendance boundaries have long set off political fireworks. There were only sparks when the DOE moved regular public schools into these spaces. But with charters, these sparks are fanned into flames because of their association with moneyed interests and managerial profiteering. (more…)

• Even before the end of kindergarten registration, some popular schools are already full. (Daily News)
• The custodian at Thurgood Marshall Academy is accused of embezzling $30,000. (Daily News, Post)
• Budget watchdog Charles Brecher: NYC should “stop paying teachers who do not teach.” (Daily News)
• Page Six questions why the Times’ Diane Ravitch article didn’t mention her ex-husband, Richard. (Post)
• A handful of city public schools are among the holdouts who haven’t given up class pictures. (Times)
• New York is not likely to be among the first-round Race to the Top winners announced today. (Post)
• Chicago is making space at elite schools for top students from struggling schools. (Chicago Sun-Times)
• The Obama Administration appears to be starting with a blank slate in rewriting NCLB. (Times)
• The House approved a bill that would limit some forms of physical discipline in schools. (Times)
• A national survey found that students are reporting a big drop in bullying. (Wall Street Journal)
• Officials and teachers in Central Falls, R.I., have agreed to restart negotiations. (Providence Journal, AP)

• 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)

• The DOE will open a new school on the Upper West Side, but residents say the plan isn’t good enough.
• The State Assembly re-elected six members to the Board of Regents.
• Could a recession-driven exodus from private to public school reshape the face of public education?
• Chaz explains what the “just cause” and “arbitrary and capricious” standards for firing teachers mean.
• The AFL-CIO is coming out in support of the teachers who were fired in Central Falls, RI.
• Mass Insight’s Justin Cohen says that simply firing all of a school’s teachers is not a turnaround strategy.
• EdWeek imagines emails to RttT finalists and losers. (Finalists are urged to recruit Oprah to the cause.)
• Kindergarten isn’t mandatory in New York State. It’s still probably a good idea, though, says Ask Judy.
• Ed in the Apple writes an open letter to the Congressional Black Caucus arguing against school closure.
• The panel at Morning Joe takes Arne Duncan to task, just a bit, for being too moderate on teachers unions.
• And Duncan foreshadows a Race to the Top competition for early childhood education.
• Draft national standards for K-12 are due out for public comment next week.
• And happy birthday, Dr. Seuss! Mimi takes lessons from the good doctor and thinks Duncan should, too.

School districts should abandon lay-off policies that require principals to dismiss the newest teachers first and instead incorporate measures of teacher quality into firing decisions, a new report out today from The New Teacher Project argues.

The report proposes a scorecard that would rank teachers, weighing their classroom management skills, attendance, performance evaluations and length of service to the district to determine who should be laid off. Under the group’s proposal, a teacher’s performance rating would be given the most weight, while his or her number of years served would count for only a tenth of their score.

By doing so, the report argues, school districts can avoid laying off their best teachers who may not have worked in the system the longest. (more…)