GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A Manhattan middle school for suspended students has gone all year without an English teacher. (Post)
• The city is going to start billing schools for lunch fees when students don’t pay. (Insideschools, NY1)
• The city is also planning to cut yellow-bus service for seventh- and eighth-graders. (S.I. Advance)
• State Sen. Bill Perkins scrapped a follow-up charter school hearing without any explanation. (Post)
• Basil Smikle, who is running to unseat Perkins, puts schools third on his platform. (Post)
• Investigators found abuse at a special ed charter school. (GothamSchools, Post, Times, Daily News)
• Schools are learning a lot from money managers’ quick action and attention to data. (Forbes Magazine)
• Board members from Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School explain why their for-profit model works. (Post)
• Laid-off teachers could get financial aid for special education training under a city plan. (GothamSchools)
• Education Trust’s Kati Haycock says the city has the tools to make performance-based layoffs. (Times)
• Bronx Science teachers say they’re worried about the school’s future post fact-finding. (Riverdale Press)
• The “recession-proof” market for teachers is the worst it has been since the Great Depression. (Times)
• AFT President Randi Weingarten argues that public schools need a massive federal bailout. (WSJ)
• Education Secretary Arne Duncan pushed a federal jobs bill in a commencement speech. (Boston Globe)
• Some educators are focusing on the pre-high school years to stem the tide of dropouts. (USA Today)
• Texas is set to approve controversial, right-leaning social studies standards. (Wall Street Journal)
• Massachusetts is considering replacing its challenging state tests with a common test. (Boston Globe)
• After difficult months, Philadelphia’s schools chief will shake up her top staff. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

• All but eight upstate school budget proposals up for voter approval this week passed.
• Their approval came despite Gov. Paterson’s predictions of voter anger over state spending.
• NYSUT said the pass rate shows New Yorkers support school spending even in the dire economic climate.
• Is student feedback a good measure of teacher effectiveness? Teacher Beat wonders.
• Richard Kessler memorializes a great arts teacher, the former arts department chair at Beach Channel HS.
• The big raises in the new D.C. teachers contract make some charters nervous they can’t afford to compete.
• Mulgrew’s retirement incentive plan depends on the city replacing veteran teachers with brand new ones.
• Norm reads emergency union meetings as signs the UFT wants to tamp down teacher unrest.
• Education technology specialists discussed what they can learn from venture capitalists yesterday.
• Ed Reform Now is continuing its steady stream of new pro-charter, anti-union television ads.
• The final vote on proposed Texas social studies standards is scheduled for Friday.
• And a second-grader took the spotlight in the debate over immigration reform today.

City investigators are accusing a Manhattan charter school that focuses on serving special education students of violently disciplining students and covering up the abuses.

Staff at Opportunity Charter School allegedly punched one student, threw another to the ground and pulled a third out of a classroom by her hair during the 2007-08 school year, according to a report released today by the city’s Special Commissioner for Investigation. The report documents a total of six cases of verbal and physical abuse.

According to the report, the school’s staff members who were accused of violently disciplining students were never punished themselves. The accused staff include the school’s administrative director, a dean of students, and specialists trained to work with special needs students. In some cases, the school also failed to document cases of physical and verbal abuse in its own incident reports.

“The staff conduct at OCS during the 2007-2008 school year went beyond restraint and could be considered condoned assaults and abuse of schoolchildren,” the report concludes. (more…)

Faced with the possibility of laying off more than 6,000 school teachers, New York City school officials are privately working on a plan to save some of their jobs.

The plan would improve laid off teachers’ chances of staying in the school system by retraining them for a new subject area for which schools are in perpetual demand: special education. The retraining would happen at local education schools, at night or on weekends, so that teachers could remain working in schools without a pause.

The plan would make teachers more marketable at a time when the city is struggling to fill classroom vacancies in special education, said Deputy Chancellor John White at a citywide school board meeting last night.

DOE officials estimate they will need to hire between 600 and 800 special education teachers next year, though that number could shift as teachers retire or move. (more…)

• Ed Sec Arne Duncan visited three city schools. (GothamSchools, Times, Post, Wall Street Journal, NY1)
• Duncan said the state could up its Race to the Top chances by lifting the charter cap. (Albany Times Union)
• Gov. Paterson says he’s relying on “the power of persuasion” to get the charter cap lifted. (Daily News)
• The state teachers union is offering $200,000 to anyone who will run against Sen. Craig Johnson. (Post)
• Duncan’s visit shows that charter schools have won the choice wars, writes Errol Louis. (Daily News)
• The Post says Randi Weingarten’s input into Duncan’s school selection shows the union’s priorities.
• Post columnist Andrea Peyser says the union acted like children over the school visit dust-up.
• UFT President Michael Mulgrew says again that a retirement incentive would avert layoffs. (Daily News)
• The DOE mistakenly told UWS families they’d gotten into two hot schools. (Post, Wall Street Journal)
• An investigation found that many Head Start centers fraudulently enroll extra children. (Times)

• The state education dept. pushed back the release date of test scores by a month, to July.
• More than 50 parents of wait-listed kindergartners were mistakenly told they were into P.S. 87.
• A group of charter and district school parents waited in vain in the rain to talk to Duncan.
• A charter school student told Duncan today he gets a lot of homework, but that’s “awesome.”
• UFT President Michael Mulgrew said it’s “no one’s fault” if the state loses Race to the Top.
• Peter Murphy argues Speaker Sheldon Silver now has political cover to support a charter cap lift.
• A new report by the Casey Foundation serves as a reminder that students’ poverty does matter.
• A high school slated to move into space at a closing school faces an uncertain future.
• The DOE posted openings for executive principals, the high-paid positions in troubled schools.
• The teachers unions are protesting five State Senators tomorrow for voting for school aid cuts.
• A group of testing companies formed a coalition to help states develop standard assessments.
• And here is a horrifying way to teach geometry.

A first-grader at Brooklyn's P.S. 214 told U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan about the story of Rumplestiltskin today.

City, federal and union officials clash on the best way to lift the state’s charter school cap. They dispute the fairest way to lay off teachers. And they could barely agree on what school U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan should visit today.

But brought together for that visit, Duncan, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and teachers union president Michael Mulgrew could agree on one thing — the city needs federal dollars and it needs them soon. (more…)

So after the disastrous informal observation with my principal and wrestling with my ego for a few days I managed to turn things around. Coming to the rather obvious conclusion that I needed get over myself and use the criticisms I received to help my students was a powerful realization. Since then I have pushed myself to refine my planning and prepare myself better for each lesson. With a week of this newly found focus and drive under my belt, I felt more confident when my principal returned for a follow-up informal observation.

My principal sat through my entire literacy block which included about 25 minutes of word study and my readers’ workshop. I was proud of the lesson and the ways in which I thought I’d implemented my principal’s feedback. I looked forward to a conversation about it and proving that I could listen to criticism without getting defensive.

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to have that conversation, and I sat quietly and dutifully and listened to my principal’s feedback. Once again, there seemed to be a disconnect between my impression of the lesson and my principal’s. However, having identified the obstacles of my defensiveness and my ego, I swallowed my pride and thought about how to make the necessary improvements.

Hours later, there was still an internal struggle in my mind. For each of the criticisms I received I thought of a rebuttal. Thankfully I had the sense not to try this approach in the meeting with my principal, but I think it’s equally important not to allow this way of thinking frame my teaching and planning as I move forward.

I think one of the major challenges I’m facing as I receive some of the most brutal feedback of my short teaching career is learning how to listen to it and use it. For most of my first two years of teaching at my old school I hardly got any feedback. (more…)