GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Khem Irby, a parent and education council member, said the city had to accept responsibility for the decline in scores.

A group of parents angered by the massive drop in city test scores stormed a Panel for Educational Policy meeting, bringing it to a halt.

As soon as the Monday evening meeting at Murry Bergtraum High School began, members of the Coalition for Educational Justice — a organization of parents and activists who largely oppose Mayor Bloomberg’s education policies — demanded to speak. Told they would have to wait until the public comment period at the end of the meeting, parents being yelling, drowning out panel members who left their seats and retreated backstage.

“You dumbed down the tests and the fact is, our kids are not being prepared for college and the world of work,” Ocynthia Williams, one of the coalition’s parent leaders, said into a bull horn. (more…)

• Education Equality Project filings show Mayor Bloomberg used it to donate to Al Sharpton. (Daily News)
• That makes 32 entries on the Bloomberg-Sharpton political machination timeline. (Leonie Haimson)
• After kindergarten at Brooklyn’s PS 29, a family moves on – to private school. (Insideschools)
• A new book examines the history of public school activism in the Bronx’s District 9. (In These Times)
• Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill requiring a recycling coordinator at every city school. (NYC.gov)
• Tonight’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting includes a look at this year’s budget. (Insideschools)
• Historian Thomas Sugrue says the achievement gap last closed in the 1970s. (The Atlantic)
• One problem with turning around high schools is there’s no model for success. (Answer Sheet)
• Some say tenured college faculty are blocking the career paths of younger professors. (Times)
• A breakdown of the fact and fiction behind the edujobs bill. (Flypaper)
• One takeaway from the L.A. Times’ story: Teachers want to be told their value. (Quick and the Ed)
• A call for more nuance in future coverage of value-added teacher evaluations. (Educated Reporter)
• Journalism warning labels that GothamSchools doesn’t need. (Tom Scott)

Thirty six charter schools could open in New York City next fall in the first wave of new schools allowed under the charter school law passed in May.

Legislators voted to more than double the cap on charter schools, permitting 260 new schools over the next four years, of which 114 could be in New York City. Today, the state announced that 47 school leaders applied this month to open new schools in 2011, 30 of them in the city. An additional six schools applied to open in New York City as part of SUNY’s Charter School Institute’s earlier summer deadline, bringing the total of schools looking to open in the city in fall of 2011 to 36.

Ten of the new applicants want to open in the Bronx — most in the South Bronx — and another 10 want to open in Brooklyn. Eight have applied to open in Manhattan, one in Queens, and one in Staten Island.

In a shift, 10 of the new applicants are high schools. Currently, just 13 city charter schools serve grades 9-12, although more are set to add those grades as they expand. Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch last year challenged charter school operators to open more high schools, saying that is where the need is greatest. One of the proposed schools would join Wildcat Academy as the only charter transfer schools. Another is Christopher Columbus Charter High School, the school proposed to reincarnate the Bronx school that’s slated to close. (more…)

Nearly three weeks after state officials announced a dramatic reduction in test scores, city teachers and parents can find out how their students fared.

State test scores for students in grades 3-8 quietly went live today on ARIS, the city’s online school data system, and parents and teachers in district schools can log in to check the scores. (Charter school parents have to call their schools for the information.)

Charter schools have their scores and can decide individually how to share them.

We heard from an Upper East Side middle school teacher who said she eagerly awaited this moment but doesn’t know what she’ll do next. The teacher wrote:

I’m sort of the unofficial news watcher for my grade team, so I put this date on my calendar a few weeks ago when the DOE announced that they’d finally be posting the scores on August 16th. I didn’t get any email from the DOE today, so I’ll bet that a lot of people don’t know about it. I was looking forward to seeing [the scores], especially because of the new grading system and all the news surrounding it of late.

To be honest, though, I’m not sure how I’ll use this information just yet. (more…)

News from New York City:

• Suddenly, the city is finding that its claim to have closed the achievement gap isn’t believed. (Times)
• And the performance gap between rich and poor students has actually widened. (Daily News)
• Brooklyn’s Believe Charter School has been using factory space to hold classes. (GothamSchools)
• Joel Klein won’t use emergency powers to help a charter school. (GothamSchools, Daily News, WSJ)
• The official demoted after Nicole Suriel’s death has been rehired at the same school. (Post, Daily News)
• The health teacher suspended for sex talk language is headed back to the classroom. (Daily News)
• The Brooklyn principal censured for letting teachers drink at prom also paid for their attendance. (Post)
• A PS 4 staff member badmouthed a special ed student and his mom — on mom’s voicemail. (Post)
• Staten Island isn’t losing its middle school bus service this year after all. (NY1)
• The Post wonders whether the United Federation of Teachers is actually anti-union.
• The Daily News praises the city’s new college readiness reports.
• And Joel Klein says high schools have to prepare students for college, not just graduation. (Forbes)

And beyond:

• A value-added analysis of L.A. teachers finds that top teachers vary in style and location. (L.A. Times) (more…)

• The backstory on the union reporter who says he was fired for unionization efforts. (Norm Scott)
• Answering just one question can land states federal edujobs funding. (Politics K-12)
• Milwaukee balked when thousands of its teachers were prescribed Viagra. (ABC News)
• It’s so hot in Chicago that some are calling for a snow day. (Chicago Tribune)
• Joel Klein argues that city students have made “undeniable progress.” (Education Gadfly)
• Online radio will soon see the return of an education policy talk show. (Alexander Russo)
• An old overview of the Swedish company that wants to open a city charter school. (GothamSchools)
• And don’t forget to take our very important reader survey, if you haven’t already.

Security camera footage captures students walking into a building that is not certified for educational use but houses the offices for the Believe Charter School Network.

Strapped for space, a Brooklyn charter school network sent its students to classes at a facility that was only approved for factory and office use — not educational purposes, according to security camera footage and interviews with people who witnessed students’ use.

The footage and accounts document students’ regular trips to the space this summer and during the last school year. A student at the school told me that the space, a former factory at 33 Nassau Ave. in Williamsburg, is known to students as “the art building.”

View the full footage in a slideshow below.

The charter operator, Believe High Schools Network, appears to have begun to send students to the office space after its plan to open two new schools in a private facility hit a snag in 2009. Forced to improvise, the network arranged to house both of the two new schools in the same district school building used by its original school, Williamsburg Charter High School, a former employee said.

That was despite the fact that the second floor office space at 33 Nassau Ave. is certified by the city Department of Buildings only for use as a factory, shipping, storage, or office space.

State education law requires that charter schools use buildings approved for educational use. For that reason, Believe officials originally used the 33 Nassau space only for offices, said Joshua Morales, a former consultant to Believe.

In the last month, both the city and state departments of education have launched investigations into Believe’s use of the 33 Nassau space. The city department oversees Williamsburg Charter High School, and the state department oversees the two new schools, Northside and Southside charter high schools.

Officials at Believe did not return several phone call and e-mail requests for comment today.

The arrangement highlights the risks of the city’s current charter school space situation. (more…)

In a major reversal, the city said today it would ask a Lower East Side charter school to find a new space instead of expanding inside its current building.

Facing a threat of litigation, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is backing down, at least for the moment, from using new emergency powers to allow Girls Preparatory Charter School to add a middle school inside the PS 188 building. Klein said last week that he would use the powers to override a state ruling barring the expansion, but the city never took the steps to make his declaration official.

Klein said he hasn’t ruled out taking those steps in the future.

“Given the threats of litigation and continuing uncertainty, we are working with the Board of Girls Prep to find a stable solution for these young women,” he said. “At the same time, we remain prepared to exercise our emergency powers should that become necessary.”

Meanwhile, Girls Prep will delay the first day of classes for some students by up to a month while it searches for more space. (more…)

• Columbus High School wants to avoid its planned closure by becoming a charter school. (Post)
• A writer for the teachers union newspaper says he was fired for trying to unionize workers. (Daily News)
• The city says discarded school desks should have been reused, not discarded. (Post)
• The principal of a Brooklyn school was chastised for letting teachers drink at prom. (Daily News)
• For the first time, the city is handing out summer lunches via food trucks. (NY1)
• The city’s spending on homeless youth is way up. (Post)
• A rep of the conservative Manhattan Institute says city schools are better, despite lower scores. (Post)
• After cutting its staff size by 10 percent, Yonkers is now cutting its curriculum and programs, too. (Times)
• Half of Chicago’s charter schools are operating at a fiscal deficit. (Times)

• Advice for teachers aiming to build an online presence. (Innovative Educator)
• Swedish school operators want to open a charter school in Manhattan. (Insideschools)
• Chris Arp reports on a Bed-Stuy school aide being groomed as an R&B star. (Capital NY)
• The state teachers union is holding off on endorsing a gubernatorial candidate. (NYSUT)
• Unlike the Senate, the House hasn’t revealed exactly what’s in its ed spending bill. (Politics K-12)
• A fourth-grader who happens to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a new style icon. (Jezebel)
• Two students whose families immigrated illegally describe their college fears. (Jay Mathews)
• Early childhood ed really wasn’t shut out of innovation grants, Arne Duncan insists. (Early Stories)
• A breakdown of school staff firings in Chicago’s turnaround schools. (Chicago Public Radio)