GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The “new politics of education” has Race to the Top and other forces causing unions to change. (Times)
• Union chief Randi Weingarten pressured Education Sect. Arne Duncan to reroute his NYC visit. (DN)
• Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch thinks “her Michaels” will work out Race to the Top. (DN)
• The Daily News says Duncan’s visit will give a well-timed boost to Race to the Top’s chance in NY.
• At East Harlem TAG, parents focus on raising funds and improving the school’s image. (Times)
• Bob Herbert: we need more schools like Bard HS, where students graduate with an assoc. degree.
• Nearly two-thirds of VA & MD kids can’t read proficiently by the end of third grade. (Washington Post)
• A summer jobs program with more applicants than in the past has fewer jobs to offer. (WSJ)
• NY suburbanites will vote on school budgets today, most with cuts or slight pending increases. (WSJ)
• Bill Clinton and Al Sharpton are backing a bill that would raise NY’s charter cap. (Post)
• In a poll run by a pro-charter group, 63 percent of respondents said they want the cap lifted. (Post)
• Two I.S. 208 students were arrested for sexually abusing a 12 year old girl at school. (Post, NY1)
• A Manhattan Inst. writer says Diane Ravitch’s testimony against charter schools is flawed. (Post)
• Law & Order’s rubber room episode will include teachers who say they shouldn’t be there. (Post)

• Sol Stern, of the Manhattan Inst., submits his modest proposal for NY: suspend test score based bonuses.
• Senate Education Committee will consider a bill placing more restrictions on charter schools tomorrow.
• The DOE is rethinking its plan to move the Clinton School into the ASL school the night before the vote.
• The state teachers union is sending out mailers slamming Dems for supporting education cuts.
• Gov. Paterson predicts massive voter discontent with school boards and their budgets this year.
• Second Lady Jill Biden will be the keynote speaker at Teachers College’s graduation tomorrow.
• Students are planning to march across the Brooklyn Bridge next month to protest Metrocard cuts.
• Broome Street Academy, a charter that would focus on kids in shelters, is waiting for the cap to lift.
• Sen. Eric Adams’ “Stop the Sag” campaign is in schools, but Sen. Malcolm Smith is taking it to buses.
• Norm Scott thinks the city teachers union’s fate is to be an oppressive company union.
• Budgets cuts are causing language courses and other classes to drop from schools’ offerings.
• Does denying students things for bad behavior help learning? asks Jay Mathews.
• After all the controversy surrounding Central Falls, Rotherham asks why the solution took so long.
• The number of disabled students is down slightly and it could be because of schools.
• Patrick Riccards explains when and how it’s appropriate to use the term “education reform.”
• And Technorati comes out with its list of the top 20 education blogs (P.S. We’re number 3).

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. called on the citywide school board to postpone or vote down a contract that would pay an outside group to recruit new teachers, saying today that it “does not make any sense” with impending layoffs.

The contract, which the Panel for Educational Policy will vote on at tomorrow’s meeting, would pay The New Teacher Project a maximum of $4.9 million to recruit and train New York City Teaching Fellows. In a statement sent to reporters, Diaz said the money should be used to stave off layoffs rather than bring in new teachers. If Diaz’s appointee votes against the contract, she’ll likely be joined by panel member Patrick Sullivan, who criticized the contract in the Daily News.

But Department of Education officials have said that new teachers will be needed to fill vacancies in areas like science and special education regardless of layoffs. To meet this anticipated need, the roughly 450 Teaching Fellows who will enter the job market this summer will only be certified in either of those two subjects. (more…)

• Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised the State Senate for passing a charter school cap lift bill. (Post)
• Presumptive gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo reportedly also supports the cap lift bill. (Post)
• Gov. Paterson asked to delay $1.5 billion in school aid to keep the state from going broke. (Daily News)
• Archbishop Timothy Dolan says Catholic schools should welcome competition from charters. (Post)
• Inspired by Hunter College’s ed school, Harlem Success Academy is using videos to train teachers. (WSJ)
• Mayor Bloomberg appealed to Brooklyn churchgoers to help get the charter cap lifted. (WSJ, Daily News)
• A senior aide to Chancellor Joel Klein will likely be the next head of a leading gay rights group. (Times)
• The Post: Charter schools that emphasize ed school fads over student achievement deserve to be closed.
• Richard Whitmire: K-12 schools should be held accountable for boys’ poor literacy skills. (Daily News)
• The state teachers union supports lifting the charter cap, an upstate union rep says. (Buffalo News)
• Buffalo’s schools are failing students learning English, a new report says. (Buffalo News)
• Rochester’s mayor called its mayoral control bill a “hybrid system.” (Democrat and Chronicle)
• PS 37 on Staten Island has entered an online contest to win funds to help its disabled students. (NY1)
• Queens’ I.S. 238 memorializes its former assistant principal, killed by swine flu last year. (Daily News)
• N.J. Gov. Christie wants teachers to forgo raises, though their salaries are relatively low. (Star-Ledger)
• Central Falls, R.I., reached a deal with its union to re-hire the teachers the district fired in March. (AP)
• The final episode of “Law & Order” will be about the city’s “rubber rooms” for accused teachers. (Times)

• A commentator argues that non-politically-correct teachers can serve their students well.
• A second-year TFA’er teaching in the South Bronx defends his program against its critics.
• Brian Ellner, a top DOE aide, is set to leave for the helm of Empire State Pride Agenda.
• Would the TFA training model work better for two years than six weeks? Kevin Carey wonders.
• A former Times ed reporter resists the urge to offer advice on C-H-A-R-T-E-R schools to a 311 caller.
• Philissa and other reporters have some ideas to promote reasonable conversations about ed reform.
• Jay Mathews: education journalism will thrive because “our story is getting better.”
• Assemblyman Sam Hoyt does not believe the charter cap lift bill will pass the Assembly as-is.
• Pissed Off Teacher’s ninth period class is a challenging bunch.
• The Department of Education held an “Inclusion Celebration” today for kids with disabilities.
• And a new trend? More than 200 “green charter schools” have opened nation-wide.

Most city teachers hired since the fall of 2007 will lose their jobs if current draconian budget cut predictions come through. But that cutoff date could change — and where it falls will determine not just which teachers are laid off, but which neighborhoods lose the most teachers.

State law and the city union contract dictate that the newest teachers must be laid off first. Because of that system, schools and neighborhoods with the most new teachers — hard-to-staff districts with high teacher turnover and areas that have seen jumps in their enrollment — would take the nastiest blows.

Right now, it’s still unclear exactly how many teachers will have to be laid off as the city waits on a state budget that is six weeks overdue. The exact number of layoffs dictates how many years and months of hiring the city will have to wipe out.

In March, when the city was projecting a worst-case-scenario of 8,500 layoffs, Chancellor Joel Klein outlined projections of how many teachers each community school district would lose. Under the latest estimates, which call for 4,400 pink slips, the Bronx would still be hardest hit. But neighborhoods in Manhattan — whose new teachers are on average slightly less new — are seeing greater relief. (more…)