GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Protesters rallied against the city’s new school bake sale rules. (GothamSchools, Insideschools, NY1)
• The Albany charter school that’s being closed has actually gotten better in recent years. (Times)
• One difficulty faced by many charter schools: Fielding competitive sports teams. (Washington Post)
• North Carolina’s Supreme Court will hear a case on the use of suspensions for minor offenses. (Times)
• In the Times, Susan Jacoby makes the case for a national curriculum and teacher training standards.
• A to-be-fired teacher in Central Falls, R.I., hanged President Obama in effigy in his classroom. (AP)

• One of those Central Falls, RI, teachers hung an effigy of Obama in school — and is sorry.
• Working with a university on standards, rather than using Common Core, won’t satisfy the RTTT judges.
• Hawaii’s RTTT app includes an admission that teachers get evaluated once every five years.
• The KIPP charter network and the AFT have settled their dispute over working hours at a Baltimore school.
• Everybody’s mother and daughter and son and some dads, too, were at the bake-sale ban rally today.
• Inside the UFT election: Chaz explains why he’s voting down the ICE ticket with one exception.
• That exception teacher makes his case, invoking his opposition to Randi Weingarten as a plus.
• Michelle Rhee’s hunt for master educators to evaluate D.C. teachers has launched. Apply here.
• Students against the MTA are “the most promising transit advocacy campaign going,” says Streetsblog.
• Community contributor Dana Lawit says her best teacher-evaluators are her students.

Chloe Leon and her mother, Leigh Anne O'Connor, man the home-baked treats stand at the "bake-in."

“Viva el cupcake!”

That was a battle cry of parents and children protesting outside City Hall today against new rules that restrict what foods can be sold at school bake sales. The regulation, passed last month by the Panel for Educational Policy, limits bake sales to packaged foods that are pre-approved by the Department of Education.

Parents and students who oppose the new regulation say that it won’t accomplish the city’s goal of reducing childhood obesity and will instead cost parent and student groups dearly needed funds. ”It’s an ill-considered policy,” Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said today, over cries of “NYC DOE: Read our lips, no more chips” and “Hey hey, ho ho, junk food has got to go.”

At the center of the rally, which drew well over 100 parents and children, were two tables featuring homemade baked goods, including tofu empanadas and carrot muffins, and the packaged foods that the city requires.

Chloe Leon, a third-grader at the Earth School who was monitoring the “banned” sweets table, said she prefers baked goods made at home. “A lot of ingredients are more fresh and organic,” she said. “It just tastes better.”

Her mother, Leigh Anne O’Connor, said without the funds raised by bake sales, the Earth School is facing a future without important special activities, such as the overnight camping trip the third grade has scheduled. (more…)

Last week I spent 12 hours listening to and watching the greatest assessment I have of myself as a teacher.  

The assessments came during parent-teacher conferences at my school, a small high school in Brooklyn. At our school, students take over the conferences — the conventional paradigm often misses the most important part of the equation, the student. During these student-led conferences, each student stands before a panel comprised of peers, teachers, and parents and talk about what he or she learned (or was meant to learn) over the past trimester.  This is an important, if not stressful, time for students to organize their work, stand before their parents, and answer some tough questions.  We tell them they’re learning public speaking skills; practicing the skills they’ll need for college and job interviews.  We also know that this is an important time for students to take responsibility for their learning and progress.

A student explained, “I want to talk to you about my history essay, because in many ways it was the hardest for me.”

“Why was it hard? ” I asked.

“Because I had to do a lot of the research on my own,” the student replied. (more…)

• Lawmakers are complaining that the Obama administration’s education plan is too city-focused. (Times)
• Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg offer their take on Obama’s education plan. (Time)
• George Will says Obama’s goal of universal “college and career readiness” by 2020 is unrealistic. (Post)
• The teachers union’s charter school got a shorter-than-typical charter renewal from the state. (Post)
• The head of the MTA told worried students that Metrocards won’t be voted on next week. (NY1)
• At a medicine-themed high school in the Bronx, students learn the periodic table by rapping. (NY1)
• A program called “Expanding the Walls” lets students explore the city through photography. (Times)
• The Villager praises the city’s indication that it will open a new school downtown sooner than planned.
• Under New Jersey’s proposed school budget cuts, some districts would lose all state funding. (Times)
• Some school districts are trying to earn extra cash by selling ad space on their Web sites. (USA Today)
• To avoid total financial ruin, Detroit is seeking to close 45 schools. (Times, AP)
• J.C. Brizard, the NYC alum who heads Rochester’s schools, dishes on leadership. (City Newspaper)
• The mayor of Harrisburg, Penn., wants to get rid of mayoral control. (Patriot-News)

• James Merriman says SUNY’s mixed review of the UFT’s charter schools should humble the union.
• The UFT can’t criticize charters for not admitting more high needs students, writes Rotherham.
• 16 NY state senators tell Paterson they won’t approve a budget with any cuts to education.
• WNYC looks at how other cities finance public transportation for students going to school.
• In TNR, Diane Ravitch responds to Ben Wildavsky’s criticism of her new book.
• Norm lists the different kinds of paperwork teachers at one elementary school have to wade through.
• Richard Kessler notes that Duncan’s ESEA blueprint mentions the arts only four times.
• Teachers unions are lining up to oppose Obama’s education budget for 2011.
• To cut down on spending, one teacher’s school is imposing a work curfew of 3:30 p.m.
• Rochester Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard says he needs leverage and talent to run the system.
• Leonie Haimson says the city got itself into a bake sale drama because it didn’t talk to parents.
• Audit of Chicago’s magnet schools finds that principals have too much power to hand pick students.
• Florida is thinking of adding civics to the annual high stakes tests students have to take.
• One of KIPP’s co-founders says schools that cut back on hours will regret it later.
• And Andy Smarick says Florida’s RttT bid has exciting things to say about teacher quality.

Here’s one way the jobs bill headed for the president’s desk today will affect New York City: it unfreezes more than $1 billion in school construction bonds the city needs to fund its capital plan.

The bonds were effectively frozen because of a significant flaw in last year’s federal stimulus bill, which set aside $22 billion over two years for school districts to sell interest-free bonds to fund school construction. As Pro Publica reported late last year, many banks refused to buy the bonds because they were funded by tax credits that investors found worthless.

The jobs bill the Senate passed today aims to solve that problem by using a direct subsidy, rather than a tax credit, to pay banks for the bonds. (The House passed a similar bill last month and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it.)

New York City, like many school districts around the country, had delayed issuing any bonds because of this problem, according to the mayor’s preliminary budget plan released in January. In the mayor’s plan, the Office of Management and Budget noted that it expected Congress to revise the school construction bond program and predicted that when it did, the city would successfully be able to issue all $1.4 billion in bonds. (more…)