GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The tent-sleeping principal of East Side Community HS explains why he moved outdoors. (YouTube)
• Ross Global Academy’s former principal was de facto cleared of test-tampering charges. (NY Sun)
• Kate Walsh says releasing teacher value-added data won’t serve all children. (Talk of the Nation)
• Why not publish only the names of the top 25% of teachers?, suggests Doug Lemov. (TOTN)
• Can the charter school founded by John King, now of NYSED, scale its success? (Boston Mag)
• A push to consider cutting high school sports spending. (Reason via Flypaper)
• A case that “blame the teacher” and “anti-teacher” aren’t the same, and that one is real. (Corey)
• The president of D.C.’s teacher union calls the IMPACT evaluation “dangerous.” (Learning Matters)
• India now has schools on wheels, so that teachers travel to students. (City Fix via Flypaper)
• Reminiscing on NYSUT’s “rather breathtaking 180-degree turnaround” on RTTT. (NYFERA)

For years, the High School for International Business and Finance has been one of four schools in the George Washington campus, each named the High School for Something and Something. But over the summer, the school changed its name, rebranding itself as College Academy.

New York City public schools can re-name themselves only by jumping through a series of bureaucratic hoops that ultimately lead to Chancellor Joel Klein’s final approval.

Once a principal approves or initiates a change, it’s voted on by the parent association, which then passes it on to the school’s superintendent. In cases where a school is part of a community school district, the superintendent makes a recommendation to the community education council, which holds a public meeting and then votes on the change. But for most high schools and other schools that are not zoned for a district, the decision goes straight from the superintendent to Chancellor Klein. (more…)

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan defended himself yesterday to critics of one of the centerpieces of his federal education policy — his practice of staging competitions to reward student progress or new ideas.

Duncan’s approach, which inspired his signature Race to the Top grant program, has drawn criticism from advocates like the NAACP, some state leaders and even members of Congress. His critics say that a policy that awards funds based on anything other than student need will inevitably leave some districts behind.

During Duncan’s visit to the state teachers union headquarters in Albany yesterday, those concerns surfaced again, this time from a teacher from Newburgh. Patricia Van Duser told Duncan that school districts like hers depend on the reliable funding that the federal education department doles out to schools based on need.

Van Duser worried that her district’s finances could be jeopardized if the federal government moves towards a more competitive model as the Obama administration plans its overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

“You really need that to be formula-driven, not competitive-driven,” she said. (more…)

Over the past four years, I have created, developed, and spread an annual History Day in my school, as part of the National History Day competition. All sophomores and juniors at Bronx Lab spend five weeks conducting in-depth historical research, which they then present to both our school and general community each February.

My school’s History Day is the accomplishment in which I take the most pride in my teaching career. It is the only event in the year that’s attended by the entire school and the only event at my school where parents and community members are invited to view the products of students’ learning. My former principal (Marc Sternberg, now a deputy chancellor) always told me that History Day was his favorite day of the school year.

Most significantly, it yields the greatest buy-in, interest, and growth in my students of anything I do. Students look forward to having the opportunity to learn about a topic in which they have interest and show off to the community. It has become a rite of passage. Over the past four years, I have had students complete research on a range of topics from the Missouri Compromise to the Spanish Civil War to Septima Clark, often yielding insights and understandings new even to me. It is the only time in our curriculum where students have the opportunity to complete in-depth, college-level research.

The students who go on to the city and even state levels of the competition have the opportunity to compete with and learn from the best students New York has to offer. It has been a transformative experience for my public school students, nearly all of whom are black or Latino, to see that their work is just as strong as that from the mostly white, private school students who enter our city’s competition.

I am very proud that in two of the past four years my students have won awards at the city level. But I am even more proud that four of my students have used their History Day papers as the writing samples that helped earn them full-tuition Posse Scholarships to elite private colleges. It meant the world to me, and their future to them, that they all felt that the best piece of writing they did in four years of high school was their work on the History Day project.

• The Yankees briefly offered a back-to-school promotion for a game on the first day of school. (Post)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan praised New York’s reforms in Albany. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post, WNYC)
• Last night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting reprised conflict over test scores. (NY1)
• An all-girls charter high school opened in Albany yesterday, the state’s first. (WNYC)
• New Orleans parents want to see more racial diversity now that there is more school choice. (NPR)
• Seattle and its teachers might have agreed about using test scores in evaluations. (Seattle Times)

• Tracking down South Bronx students eight years later, with disappointing results. (Robert Pondiscio)
• A kindergarten teacher’s son was murdered by one of her former students. (Baltimore Sun)
• An inspiring story about a student who tried, failed, and tried again. (Pissed Off Teacher)
• A historical argument for why translating memos to parents is a really good idea. (Tablet)
• Unpacking the New York Post’s high school rankings. (Leonie Haimson)
• Budget documents suggest the city is cutting funds to lower class size. (Norm’s Notes)
• The Economic Policy Institute finds issues with score-based value-added evaluations. (Answer Sheet)
• Race to the Top and the problem of trying to do too much at once. (Sara Mead)
• Why D.C.’s mayoral primary is “a caution for overcaffeinated fans of mayoral control.” (Rick Hess)
• What teachers really want: Well-rested students. (Dan Willingham)
• D.C.-area schools are growing more diverse, maybe because of the recession. (Washington Examiner)
• Or maybe because schools are actively recruiting white families. (Washington City Paper)
• And congratulations to Elizabeth! She’s writing a book based on “Building a Better Teacher.” (Russo)

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (right, blue shirt) and NYSUT President Richard Ianuzzi listen to a teacher at a roundtable at NYSUT's Albany headquarters today.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Teamwork was the watchword as U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan took his national back-to-school bus tour to Albany today.

Duncan has taken to the road to celebrate teachers, and to convince them that his reform efforts will not undercut their interests.

In New York, many teachers are still skittish of a new teacher evaluation plan that will, for the first time, allow school districts to judge them based on their students’ test scores. The state and city teachers union struck the agreement with state education officials in May, in part to improve the state’s Race to the Top application.

And so, in appearances at the state teachers union headquarters and the State Capitol, Duncan and state officials emphasized that New York’s reform policies are the result of a team effort between state education officials and its teachers unions. Those policies won the state nearly $700 million in federal Race to the Top funds last week.

“Where other states were not able to reach consensus, New York was,” Duncan said. (more…)

With fewer dues-paying members, the United Federation of Teachers is renting out space in its downtown headquarters to help cover its operating costs. (Photo via Flickr)

The bags of swag at the city teachers union’s regular conferences might be lighter this year, the catered dinners less lavish. The recession has caught up with the union and it’s beginning to cut back.

Hit with the combination of a two-year hiring freeze and typical teacher attrition, the United Federation of Teachers has lost roughly 2,000 members in the last year. With them has gone about $2 million in dues.

On top of the membership decline, the union is now funding programs that the state used to support. This year, the state legislature cut all $16 million of its funding for the Teacher Center, a professional development program that trains teachers at over a hundred city schools. To keep a cut-back version of the program going, the UFT has had to kick in $5 million of its own money.

“In many respects, you can say the economy caught up to us,” said the union’s Chief Financial Officer David Hickey. “We’ve done okay in the last couple of years. And so it did, it got us.” (more…)

• Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s back-to-school bus tour visits Albany today. (Washington Post)
• Duncan makes his argument for why states should release data on individual teachers. (Daily News)
• Teachers aren’t happy about the release of value-added rankings for 6,000 of them. (L.A. Times)
• Teachers whose students score high are rarely recognized or emulated. (L.A. Times)
• New Jersey’s fired education chief says he isn’t to blame for losing Race to the Top. (WSJ)
• The Times says states shouldn’t stop reforming education now that Race to the Top is over.
• Twelve of the state’s 16 persistently dangerous schools are in New York City. (Post, Daily News)
• Teachers flock to back-to-school shopping at Barclay School Supplies in Brooklyn. (Times)
• The new principal of the largest high school in Portland, Ore., is from New York City. (Oregonian)
• Five years after Katrina, charter schools dominate New Orleans. (Christian Science Monitor, WSJ)
• Online credit recovery is attractive because it’s fast and inexpensive. (Chicago Tribune)
• D.C. schools closed the achievement gap less this year than in recent years. (Washington Post)

• N.J. Gov. Chris Christie fired his education chief over his costly Race to the Top goof. (Star-Ledger)
• Christie previously blamed federal officials for not checking the clerical error. (NYTimes)
• But USDOE released video showing that the state didn’t give the right data when asked. (USDOE)
• Nine of the 12 winning RttT applicants were supported by Gates Foundation grants. (State Ed Watch)
• Former city schools Chancellor Rudy Crew is “not there yet” in his support for RttT. (Russo)
• La. schools chief Paul Pastorek says most state ed departments aren’t designed for reform.  (Rick Hess)
• And Arne Duncan will appear at the state teachers union on Monday to talk teacher evaluations. (T-U)

And in other news:

• A parallel between Mayor Lindsay’s fire department and Mayor Bloomberg’s schools? (NYSun)
• A Mississippi middle school has ended its race-based rules for class election eligibility. (Jezebel)
• A group of parents write to President Obama opposing the federal turnaround strategy. (Answer Sheet)
• And a portrait of how New Orleans schools have changed since Katrina. (EdWeek)