GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• An obstacle to a state budget is how SUNY schools should be allowed to set tuition. (WNYC)
• Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy is mourning a student who drowned on Sunday. (Riverdale Press)
• Investigators: PS 114′s ex-principal mismanaged the school. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post, NY1)
• Wake County could adopt “controlled choice” admissions policy to foster diversity. (News & Observer)
• Chicago is laying off 400 teachers this week, possibly only temporarily. (Sun-Times)
• Philly’s charter school chief resigned in the city’s latest round of schools shakeups. (Inquirer)

• New York has quietly adopted “common core” aka national standards. (Curriculum Matters)
• New research finds black males are more likely to get a rookie high school teacher. (EdWeek)
• Voices against national standards worry about routinization, lack of rigor. (Room for Debate)
• Those in favor say debate can lead to consensus and poor kids will win. (Room for Debate)
• Al Shanker is no longer with us, but now his namesake institute has a blog. (Shanker Blog)
• Shifting leadership helped a “principal from hell” go unnoticed. (GothamSchools)
• The new leader at the Chicago teachers union is cleaning house — and hiring up. (District 299)
• The teachers’ contract isn’t the problem; state legislation is. (Education Next via Rick Hess)
• The school that canceled prom when a same-sex couple tried to go lost its court case. (Daily News)
• The “Drunken Pirate” case of a teaching license denied due to Facebook is historic. (New York Times)

City principals say they’re pretty darn happy with their jobs, according to the results of the city’s annual survey for principals. They gave high marks in virtually every area, including the one the city might have wanted them to endorse less enthusiastically — their ability to root out and deal with poor teachers.

The city’s current teacher tenure policy is a pet peeve of Chancellor Joel Klein, who argues that student performance, not just years in the classroom, should determine whether a teacher gets and maintains tenure. And Deputy Chancellor Eric Nadelstern has said that two-thirds of the city’s teachers may need improvement.

But principals said they already have the tools they need to help struggling teachers.

A total of 85 percent said that they were given good enough “support and information to address low-performing employees.” And 93 percent of principals who responded to the survey reported that they either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I am given sufficient support and information to guide tenure decisions.” Neither of those rates have changed since March 2008.

Regardless of principals’ views, the teacher evaluation and tenure system is set to change. Under a deal struck between the state and teachers unions this spring, student test scores will begin to factor in teacher evaluations beginning in the 2011-12 school year.

Around 84 percent of the city’s 1,532 principals responded to the survey, which the city has given each fall and spring since November 2007. The city’s full report on the survey results is below: (more…)

Thousands of city students who passed their high school completion exams last year will receive a rude awakening once they get to college: They’ll have to retake high school math — if they get into college at all.

New analysis of students’ scores by Harvard testing expert Daniel Koretz shows that many students who passed these exams have essentially been lied to about their skill level. While a score of 65 on a Regents exam technically means the student is proficient, students actually need to score above a 75 or an 80 on the English and math tests in order to have a chance of getting into college and doing well once they’re in.

The percentage of New York City students who fell in this dangerous range of scoring between a 65 and a 75 or 80 was very high in 2009, when the most recent data was available. At that time, 51 percent of students scored in this range in algebra and 32 in English. (more…)

A study of the city’s small high schools illustrates the challenges of making and assessing policy in the accountability era. An editorial about the study underlines the failures of the fourth estate to exercise critical judgment.

The closing of 20 large high schools and creation of 132 small high schools is one of many initiatives Joel Klein has taken to close the achievement gap. The theory is that traditional “comprehensive” high schools, often with 3,000 or more students, are too large to offer the individual attention and accountability that traditionally disadvantaged students need to make it to college. The fight over Jamaica High School this past spring was, in a far less academic sense, a debate whether “big schools” serve our children’s needs.

Into this fray comes the MDRC, a research group focused on poverty. Their report’s headline cuts right to the chase: “Transforming the High School Experience: How New York City’s New Small Schools Are Boosting Student Achievement and Graduation Rates.” This conclusion is interesting because several prior studies of the effort were not positive. The Gates Foundation, which put close to $2 billion into small schools, was so uncertain of the schools’ impact that it stopped funding small schools projects in 2008.

But MDRC claims that “SSCs [Small Schools of Choice] increase overall graduation rates by 6.8 percentage points, which is roughly one-third the size of the gap in graduation rates between white students and students of color in New York City.” (more…)

When Maria Penaherrera was removed as principal of Brooklyn’s PS 114 in February 2009, the community breathed a sigh of relief. Her leadership had drawn protests from teachers and parents, and it was well known that the school was in bad shape financially.

But according to a report released today by Special Commissioner of Education Richard Condon, none of those problems caused the city to remove Pena-Herrera. Instead, it was failing to follow proper procedure during an evacuation that cost Pena-Herrera her job.

The report paints a picture of an uncommonly bad principal whose obvious shortcomings went unaddressed by department officials during a period when the city frequently redrew lines of authority over schools.

Pena-Herrera became principal of PS 114 in Brooklyn in 2004 after two decades in the city schools. By the time she was removed, she had amassed a reputation as a “principal from hell” who unsuccessfully tried to bully parents into giving her good marks on the city’s survey. According to the report, she ran up a deficit of more than $100,000, hired and fired four assistant principals, illicitly employed uncertified teachers and paraprofessionals, and paid consultants to replicate support she was already getting. When her replacement inquired about safety issues with a city-funded after-school program that Pena-Herrera had allowed to use school space without a permit, the program’s head offered a bribe of knockoff handbags. A school custodian told investigators that the bribe was typical of the way business was done at the school.

What’s not clear from the report is how Pena-Herrera lasted as long as she did. (more…)

M.S. 223's budget over time; the lightly shaded area is what he expects to bring in grants this year. (Source: NYC DOE historical Galaxy allocations)

In the last five years, city school budgets have been riding a roller coaster: A historic teacher salary hike was followed by a landmark lawsuit that injected billions in new funds, but then a worldwide financial crisis caused sweeping cuts.

So in the long view, are schools better or worse off than in 2005?

Ramon Gonzalez, principal of the South Bronx’s M.S. 223, has been able to keep his budget steadily higher than it was five years ago. But his modest boon is less than the courts promised in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, and it has as much to do with his own mix of prudent saving and aggressive fundraising as it does with increases in taxpayer support.

“The city budget is not made for you to do incredible things,” Gonzalez said. “You have to figure out how to do the incredible things. That for me is the bottom line.” (more…)

• Teachers at PS 222 in Queens say their principal excessed seven of them but is still hiring. (NY1)
• Merrick Academy charter school fired teachers by mail, possibly because of union activity. (Daily News)
• The Beacon teacher who took students to Cuba was banned. (GothamSchools, WSJ, NY1, Daily News)
• Retired testing analyst Fred Smith says better tests can’t happen until we know why they are bad. (Post)
• The Post is skeptical about state officials’ promises to make tests harder.
• New York joined dozens of states in adopting new national standards on Monday. (Times)
• City officials hope more free swimming lessons will reduce the rate of youth drownings. (NBC NY)
• The progressive Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn is hitting road bumps as it grows up. (Times)
• Detroit’s new plan for academic improvement is to spend more time on math and reading. (Free Press)
• After a policy change, white students will occupy more seats in magnet schools. (Chicago Tribune)
• Nineteen people were arrested in North Carolina in protests over diversity policies. (AP)

• Why are unions still powerful? Americans like checks and balances too much. (Antonucci)
• Russ Whitehurst says Harlem Children’s Zone works, but not as advertised. (Brookings)
• Joel Klein is now partnering with Microsoft to make a school e-mail system. (Datamation)
• Why forcing teachers to work at struggling schools doesn’t work. (This Week in Education)
• A first look at the first step in the federal education budget process. (Ed Money Watch)
• Meanwhile, edujobs isn’t totally dead — not yet, at least. (Politics K12)
• The University of Phoenix took more than a billion in Pell grants, a record. (Quick and the Ed)
• Charter school critic Sen. Bill Perkins was endorsed by two former mayoral candidates. (Daily Politics)
• Round 2 admissions for public pre-K are underway and seats are open. (Insideschools)
• John McWhorter and Richard Thompson Ford debate the merits of segregated schools. (Bloggingheads)

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein hasn’t weighed in on a state political race in several years, but he’s doing so now.

According to the New York State Board of Elections website, Klein gave $1,000 last month to Upper East Side Assemblyman Jonathan Bing. The chancellor’s wife, Nicole Seligman, a Sony executive vice president, also gave Bing $1,000.

The chancellor and his wife live in Bing’s district, where he’s being challenged by Gregg Lundahl, a government teacher at Washington Irving High School. And it can only have helped Bing’s relationship with Klein that he introduced a bill last spring to eliminate seniority-based layoffs for teachers. At the time, teacher layoffs seemed inevitable to the Department of Education and Klein was pushing for an end to the policy that lays off the newest teachers first. (more…)