GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Governor David Paterson says we’ll have a budget Monday no matter what. (State of Politics)
• But he may be headed for a big showdown with Speaker Sheldon Silver first. (Daily Politics)
• Next year’s school battles are likely to be even more dramatic than this year’s. (City Room)
• An experiment: Does competition boost performance or encourage cheating? (Core Knowledge)
• “Extremism in school reform is not a virtue,” says an ed professor. (Answer Sheet)
• Curious internet outages have disrupted schools during the last few days of the year. (City Room)
• Going deep into how accountability worked — or didn’t — at Kennedy HS. (NYC Parent Blog)
• Kennedy’s former chapter leader describes how four city investigations floundered. (JD2718)
• Remember NCLB? A look at how we entered a new era of ed reform. (Kevin Carey)
• And here’s some great audio of Brooklyn first-graders reading their original poetry. (The Local)

Graduating seniors celebrated today inside the Cobble Hill School of American Studies

Today was a roller coaster for Kenneth Cuthbert, principal of the Cobble Hill School of American Studies in Brooklyn.

At 1 p.m., he stood inside a new basement auditorium he excavated from a former garbage dump and watched more than 100 of his students graduate to shattering cheers. A few hours later, he learned that he might lose his job.

Cobble Hill has been named one of the 34 city schools the state will attempt “turn around” as part of an Obama administration program. The news Cuthbert received this afternoon, in an e-mail message from Chancellor Joel Klein, is that Cobble Hill will undergo the so-called “transformation” model — the less severe model that preserves a school’s teaching staff, but still endangers its principal.

State rules say that all schools on the federal list should lose their principals, but city officials are considering appealing for some principals to stay, and the principals union is pressuring them to save these jobs. So far, Cuthbert doesn’t know where he falls.

“They need to do what’s in the best interest of the children,” he told me this afternoon, after receiving the news. “I will be fine. God sends us here with gifts, talents, and abilities. What are you going to do? You play the hand you’re dealt. We’ve played it for the last several years.”

His mixed feelings reflect the fact that, for the five years that he’s been principal, Cuthbert has seen himself as on a war path to improve the school — and he feels like he’s made important steps. Last year’s four-year graduation rate was 65 percent, up from 42 percent two years before. Since he came, the school has launched several new programs, including a law program that he said is behind increasing enrollment. (Achievement statistics on the school can be found here and here.) (more…)

When the city proposed changes to its discipline rules, its new policy towards “cyber-bullying” and “sexting” caught the public eye.

But the central changes have nothing to do with text messages. They represent a win by civil rights groups who have been calling on the city to make sure that schools use more counseling and less punishment and suspension to resolve problems.

At a hearing on the proposed changes Wednesday, one middle school principal described a program that she piloted and is now part of the new code. In some schools the program, which is known as PBIS and is designed to encourage good behavior in all students at a school, can include a reward system in which students collect points toward a prize for demonstrating things like good study skills.

Denise Jamison, principal of Williamsburg’s M.S. 50, said that the program has helped improve the behavior of even some of her most struggling students. The “hottest ticket” for rewards, she said, is a “No Uniform Today” pass, or “NUT card.” One day, she recalled, she pulled over a student well-known by school staff for his temper and asked why he wasn’t in uniform.

“He pulls out [his NUT card], and we all started congratulating him,” she said. “Because we knew how much he would have had to improved in order to earn that.” (more…)

As students shimmied and wobbled on perilously high heels across the stage at Bayard Rustin High School’s graduation today, teachers commented on what a difficult year it had been.

The Chelsea high school began phasing out last fall when it opened without a new ninth grade, and it will close for good in 2012. In October four Bayard Rustin students attended a Harvard Black Alumni Society panel on the dropout crisis and confronted Chancellor Joel Klein about his decision to close their school.

At the time, Klein made the students a bet: if they graduated, and would like him to, he would speak at their graduation.

The four students did graduate and Klein did speak today, but it was another panel member, New York University sociologist Dr. Pedro Noguera, who the students asked to be their graduation speaker. Noguera has been critical of Klein’s decisions to phase out struggling schools. Here’s some of what he said:

Part of what attracted me to coming was what the students said. Students said they were worried about what it means to graduate from a school that’s being phased out. (more…)

The principals union is fighting against a federal program that calls for improving struggling schools by firing their principals.

As part of a three year federal grant program to “turn around” the city’s lowest-performing schools, the city can choose from four intervention plans, all of which call for removal of the schools’ principals. Even the least intrusive option — the transformation method — keeps the schools’ staff in place but requires the principals to be replaced.

Department of Education officials said on Thursday that they were lobbying the state to allow them to keep some principals in place. Schools that are showing signs of progress and others that have principals hired in the last three years, may be able to keep their principals, officials said. (more…)

Nearly two dozen struggling schools will be closed, turned into charter schools, or lose their principals and at least half of their teachers over the next several years, city officials announced today.

City officials released the list of 34 schools today that will be part of a three year federal grant program to “turn around” the city’s most struggling schools. Of those schools, 11 will use the “transformation” model — the least invasive option that relies on removing the principal, bringing in more support services, and changing how school time is used. But most of the schools — 23 in total — will undergo one of three plans set out by the federal government”, all of which require many teachers and principals be removed.

Department of Education officials said the transformation model was only being offered to schools that were already showing significant improvement. Many of these are vocational schools, such as William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School and Automotive High School.

The other 23 schools will experience “very dramatic change,” said Deputy Chancellor John White. (more…)

Not sure if anyone realized this, but there are only three days of school left. It’s really impossible to believe. The process of frantically trying to clean and pack up the classroom has begun. Meanwhile I’m hoping to get the kids to publish one last writing piece, create “summer survival kits” and rehearse a play. As I remarked last year, I’m doing more teaching in my last days of school now, than I did at any point my first year. In light of that progress, in spite of the challenges of this year, I feel good.

At yesterday’s meeting with my principal to discuss the year and my students’ data I had nothing but positive statements about the year and I had data to support that. Not the state assessment data. No, looking at those scores all one would notice are four “did not meet criteria” labels out of 19 students. But looking at the other meaningful measures of progress I have, I could point out that all of my students made a year’s growth or more in reading and math. The only point of regret I made was that in my class, most of the students needed more than a year of growth to “catch up.”

Still, in spite of this positive moment of reflection, overall, the end of the year has always felt like an anticlimactic time. Yes, the classroom gets totally disassembled and wiped clean. Yes, there will be pizza parties and a final class meeting. But the best and worst part of teaching as that no matter what the results of your year, there is no final product, no tangible outcome. The students are a work in progress, one that you must pass on and hope for the best. If you’re lucky you’ll keep in touch with a few of them, but for most of them, especially elementary school kids, the end result remains an unanswered question.

What’s surprised me most lately is how ready I am to go back in the fall. This wasn’t the case as recently a few weeks ago. (more…)

• L.A.’s Locke High School has improved, but at a cost that makes its success hard to replicate. (Times)
• Parents have diverse reasons for enrolling at Brooklyn’s Hebrew language charter school. (Times)
• Staff at Kennedy High School are accused of stealing $90,000 of student-raised funds. (Daily News)
• The city will pay some teachers at failing schools more. (GothamSchools, Times, WSJ, Post, Daily News)
• A task force to help black male students could start unveiling new programs soon. (WSJ)
• Parents think the city’s end- and beginning-of-year schedules are silly. (GothamSchools, WSJ, NY1)
• Every eighth-grader at Harlem Village Academy charters passed science and social studies tests. (Post)
• Nicole Suriel’s classmates say they were told it was okay to enter the unsupervised water. (Post, NY1)
• Too small for a gym, Park Slope’s PS 39 now can’t afford the space it’s been renting. (Brooklyn Paper)
• The city is investigating an expensive retreat taken by staff at Progress High School. (Daily News)
• A Jamaica elementary school that’s split over three buildings wants its own space. (Daily News)
• Chicago’s charter schools send most graduating seniors to college, but many also drop out. (Times)
• A fight is brewing between L.A’s mayor and superintendent over charter schools. (L.A. Times)
• San Francisco’s City College is curtailing its remedial education offerings. (Times)

• Inside Tilden High School during its last days, a “triage” atmosphere. (Huffington Post)
• The city Dept of Ed launched a sustainability website today. (Insideschools)
• A tearful end to eighth grade — because they will miss it. (Miss Eyre)
• A Park Slope preschool is at war over discipline policies. (The Local)
• A Los Angeles student ends up being bummed to have high school end early. (The Choice)
• Nationwide, fewer students are getting diagnosed with learning disabilities. (Flypaper)
• Is talking about teaching “techniques” at odds with progressive education? (Larry Cuban)
• Nearly 1,000 neighborhoods will compete for Promise zone money. (NPR)
• Randi Weingarten, Michelle Rhee, and Davis Guggenheim share the red carpet. (WashPost)
• Four ways to have a difficult conversation with a teacher. (ACSD)
• A roundup of ways to use cell phones in the classroom — productively! (Innovative Educator)

The city and the teachers union have struck a performance pay deal that will tie some teachers’ salaries to a range of measures of their effectiveness, including their students’ test scores.

The deal is part of a federal grant program to “turn around” the city’s most struggling schools. It also builds on a teacher evaluation agreement reached between the union and state education officials last month. According to the deal, 34 schools that have been designated as persistently lowest achieving will be able to pay model teachers significantly more money to take on greater responsibilities. Deemed the best-of-the-best, these teachers will mentor their colleagues, write curriculum, and open their classrooms to teachers who want to watch a lesson.

City officials have decided that 11 of these 34 schools will undergo the transformation model beginning next September. This means they can get support services, have an extended school day or an entirely new schedule, and can keep the teachers they have. In some cases, the city may decide to replace these schools’ principals. (more…)