GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Companies without track records or capacity are up for federal turnaround funds. (Times)
• The city has started telling high schools how their graduates fare at local colleges. (Times)
• Elected officials say Joel Klein’s use of emergency powers amounts to abuse. (NY1)
• Chicago’s year-round schools are starting their academic year this week. (Chicago Tribune)
• Four out of five New Jersey schools say they’re likely to have fewer teachers this year. (AP)
• Australia’s prime minister wants to give 10 percent bonuses to top teachers. (The Australian)

• Sarah Palin gets caught rolling her eyes when a woman introduces herself as a teacher. (Daily Intel)
• Investments in public media like “Sesame Street” could help poor children read sooner. (Ed Week)
• A life coaching husband and wife are among groups vying for turnaround dollars. (Times)
• The school Joel Klein emergency-gave-space-to is tied to him in many ways. (NYCPSPB)
• In Denver, some say the Times described that pension deal all wrong. (Ed News Colorado)
• Lumina sets a below-100% target in its effort to raise college graduation rates. (Joanne Jacobs)
• Some reasons to be skeptical about the importance of the edujobs bill. (NPR)
• A rookie teacher translated mentoring into a new job after getting excessed. (NYC Educator)
• Kati Haycock explains the tradeoff: teacher jobs in exchange for food stamp cuts. (HuffPost)
• Be careful to slow down when driving in the “shcool” zone, a road warns. (LA Times)
• What’s the Amazon for education? A USDOE official describes the “learning registry.” (Ed Reformer)

School staff reviewed sample student work that meets the common standards for kindergarten writing. More sample student work that meets the new standards is available here (pdf).

What will national standards mean for New York City’s classrooms?

For the past few weeks, groups of principals, teachers and staff members have been gathering with their school networks to begin answering that question.

Last week, a large group of principals, assistant principals and teachers met in the cafeteria of P.S. 129 in Flushing, Queens. They came in teams of three from each school in a Children’s First Network led by Diane Foley.

The state won’t begin to use the core standards to test students until 2014.

But, as Foley and her staff reminded principals, the first group of students who will take the new exams — 2014′s fourth-graders — are entering kindergarten this fall. Foley’s goal was to nudge schools towards the core standards by helping them think of small changes they can make immediately.

“Let’s find one or two things that schools can do this year,” Foley said. “It’s about the little tiny steps you can take.” (more…)

One thing is sure, even in an uncertain economy: Students will still take tests.

New York State made that official last week when it finalized some cost-cutting changes to the state’s high school testing program but left most exams and test dates intact.

Back in March, state officials issued a dramatic proposal to gut the high school testing program. The state could save $13.7 million annually, they said, by eliminating exams in all subjects except math, reading, and science; ending January and August test dates used to help students graduate; and no longer translating test materials into foreign languages.

After the state budget provided for part of the Education Department’s funding request, officials ultimately decided to enact a scaled-down set of test changes. Students will no longer take a social studies exam in grades 5 and 8, and students who study German, Hebrew, and Latin won’t be able to take a state exam in those subjects.

But the vast majority of the Regents exams required for graduation will remain in place, at least for now. (more…)

• President Obama is set to announce a new bid to up college completion. (Wall Street Journal, Times)
• A cheating scandal is threatening the 11-year tenure of Beverly Hall, Atlanta’s superintendent. (Times)
• City students are interning with technology entrepreneurs this summer. (NY1)
• After learning business, a Brooklyn Tech grad launched child-tracking tools for parents. (Daily News)
• The Daily News says Joel Klein was justified in using emergency powers to expand a charter school.
• The Post says the teacher who faked a fall to avoid a poor rating shows tougher evaluations are needed.
• Leaders of the Achievement First charter school network say their lower test scores are worth it. (Post)
• KIPP’s two D.C. charter schools saw their test scores fall last year. (Washington Post)
• Several Boston schools are hiring teams of experienced teachers as they try to turn around. (Times)
• Schools in Texas and elsewhere are still required to hire dubious tutoring outfits. (Houston Chronicle)
• In a suburban New Jersey school district, students can earn C’s and F’s, but not D’s. (Times)
• With states shedding teaching jobs, the profession is feeling even less secure. (Chicago Tribune)

• Lots of LES electeds criticized the city for ignoring a state ruling against a charter expansion. (Lo-Down)
• Marc Epstein: The state should fix high school Regents exams, too. (City Journal)
• Ravitz vs. Ravitch: the DOE’s new communications chief takes on a major critic. (HuffPo)
• Is the middle of a recession the right time for education reform? (Hechinger)
• One teacher is skeptical that the city will spend its $200 million share of edujobs properly. (Chaz)
• NewSchools Venture Fund has a new $100 million fund for innovation. (Politics K-12)
• A charter student is suing a city paper for using his photo in a story about gangs. (Courthouse News)

Teachers are panicked. I’m panicked. With the state’s new teacher evaluation system, I figure I have three years before I can be fired for factors beyond my control.

Next year I’ll be rated as usual. That shouldn’t be a problem — administrators who’ve judged me by what they’ve seen in my classroom have been pretty good to me. But come 2012 and 2013 they’ll look at my students’ scores. They depend not only on what I do, but also on what the kids do. I’ve been teaching teenagers for 25 years (and I have one at home). I know one thing for certain about teenagers — you never know what they will do.

On the brighter side, there are surefire ways to improve statistics. When you focus on that, you don’t need to worry as much about whether or not kids actually learn anything, or communicate in English (the language I’m paid to teach). Taking this broad view, it may be easier to create favorable statistics than actually teach. Instead of wasting time with actual classroom techniques, let’s examine a few individuals who’ve managed to look good under this up-and-coming paradigm. (more…)

In a Friday afternoon gift to prospective teachers, the city announced today that it is relaxing hiring restrictions in a few more subjects.

Principals are now allowed to look outside the city’s current teaching corps to fill physics, gifted and talented, and elementary English as a second language positions. Applicants who want to teach gifted classes must have special certification from the state.

The positions join a handful of others that are exempt from the Department of Education’s teacher hiring freeze, which was instituted to curb costs in May 2009.

Today’s announcement gives some hints about what kinds of positions principals are cutting — and what kinds they’re keeping. The fact that some principals are evidently seeking physics, gifted and talented, and elementary ESL teachers suggests that those subjects didn’t suffer major cuts. When restrictions in other areas were lifted last month, a city spokeswoman, Ann Forte, said there were more open positions in those areas than there were teachers whose jobs had been eliminated.

The city still has not said how principals chose to spend their slimmed-down budgets, or how many teaching jobs they chose to cut.

Schools that screen come out on top and schools that take neighborhood students fall to the bottom of our next rankings installment, which tackles middle schools.

A few charter schools are also in the mix — both on the top and bottom lists. Unlike our elementary school list, we included charter schools in these rankings.

To generate the rankings, we averaged the percentage of students who scored proficient across all the tested grade levels. (We excluded schools that don’t include grades six, seven, and eight.) In response to reader requests, we also listed the borough of the school in parentheses after each one.

The results contain very few surprises. All of the schools on the top-scoring lists except the two charter schools have a selective admissions process. Students must score high on standardized tests and sometimes pass in-person interviews in order to get into schools like Anderson, NEST+m, and Mark Twain Middle School — all of which rank high on these lists. (more…)

Will teachers offended by the crusading film “Waiting for Superman” make their voices heard? A first attempt has fizzled, so far.

The film’s negative portrayal of teachers unions has drawn criticism from, among others, teachers union president Randi Weingarten. So when Donors Choose, the website that helps match small donors with teachers seeking to fund classroom projects, sent out an email to its members asking them to pledge to see the film, a teacher who blogs at the site Accountable Talk was upset.

“Never mind that if the film makers get their way, you most likely won’t have a classroom or a job, so your need for project funding will be drastically reduced,” he wrote. He cancelled his membership with the site and urged others to do the same. A few other bloggers took up the call, and a Facebook group called “Boycott Donors Choose” currently has just over 35 members. (more…)