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Newark Mayor Cory Booker had just the person in mind to fix his city’s public schools, but that candidate — a top-ranking New York education official — turned the job down.

John King, the newly appointed second in command of New York State’s Education Department, is that New Yorker. Two sources confirm that King was offered the job of Newark schools superintendent, which would have put him in charge of 40,000 students and a recent $100 million gift from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

New Jersey State Department of Education officials decided not to renew the contract of the city’s current superintendent, Clifford Janey, back in August.

King joined SED a year ago and helped the department was prepare its application for Race to the Top, a federal grant competition that the state won last month. Now with $696 million to spend on improvements to New York’s schools, King is choosing to stick around and see the plan through.

“John King has no comment on the Newark superintendency,” said SED spokesman Tom Dunn. “He is  fully engaged in implementing New York State’s Race to the Top plan.”

Other education leaders in New York have been approached about the job. Newark’s Star Ledger has reported that New York City deputy chancellor John White and former deputy schools chancellor Christopher Cerf are both under consideration.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded New York City $3 million today to more than double the percentage of city college students who earn associate’s degrees.

Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott said the city’s goal is to have 25 percent of City University of New York students earn an associate’s degree after three years of college. The city is giving itself until 2010 to reach that objective, and it’s got a long way to go. Currently, only 10 percent of the students who enter CUNY complete enough coursework for an associate’s degree in three years. Well-prepared students can typically earn this degree in two years.

Walcott said the city would also use the grant money to align public high schools’ curriculum with what’s being taught at CUNY to prevent students from entering college unable to do the work.

“One of the things we’ve been trying to do for a number of years in New York City and what this grant does for us, is make sure our K-12 and our CUNY system are constantly talking together and planning together,” he said in a conference call with reporters today. (more…)

“Don’t smile until Christmas.” I wish I could say this wasn’t the most common snippet of advice about classroom management offered in my graduate coursework. Instead, I’m baffled by having entered a field where the conventional wisdom is to act like you don’t want to be there for the first few months.

The first few days and weeks of school are essential for establishing an orderly and productive space for students. They provide the groundwork for a successful school year. As a teacher, I’ve struggled each year with my role as classroom manager. My first year in the classroom, I wanted to assert myself as an authority. I was, after all, the teacher. I demanded silence and told students when they could and couldn’t go to the bathroom. I found myself in power struggles with no easy victor.  It was clear to me when students were exhibiting behaviors that distracted themselves and others from learning, but I didn’t know how to communicate what I knew. As I observe new teachers interacting with students, I recall that feeling of knowing what I want to accomplish, but not knowing the steps to get there.

This year in my classrooms I still demand silence and tell students when they can and can’t go to the bathroom, but I don’t find myself in as many power struggles. I’ve learned to assert authority is a different way. Early in my career, I drew my authority from my role as teacher. Over the past few years I’ve learned to find authority from a clear sense of purpose and direction. We need to do this now so that you’ll learn this so that you will be able to do this then, I recite to my students over and over again. For me, clear intentions and deliberate instruction are the best classroom management. Still, I only partially know how to make this level of planning happen.

As I imagine routines and structures for my classrooms I work, I have a new goal in mind. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg on NBC today, announcing a crackdown on seniority-based layoffs and a new tenure policy.

In his first major education policy announcement for the new school year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning vowed a renewed attack on seniority laws that protect veteran teachers and a change in how teachers are awarded tenure.

He made the remarks on NBC, which is dedicating this week to school reporting in a project called “Education Nation.”

The attack on seniority laws came as city officials made a dire budget prediction for next year, saying that they will likely have to lay off public school teachers as federal stimulus funding runs out. Under the current state law, teachers with the least seniority would be the first to lose their jobs — a policy known as “last in, first out.” The mayor and Chancellor Joel Klein oppose this policy, but their effort to change the law, which the teachers union does support, went nowhere last year.

Today, the mayor said he would try dismantling the policy again before the city confronts an expected $700 million budget hole and possible layoffs next year.

“It’s time for us to end the ‘last-in, first out’ layoff policy that puts children at risk here in New York — and across our wonderful country,” Bloomberg said on NBC. ”How could anyone argue that this is good for children? The law is nothing more than special interest politics, and we’re going to get rid of it before it hurts our kids,” he added.

Teachers union officials immediately squashed any possibility that they might partner with the mayor. (more…)

• Gov. Paterson vetoed a bill that would move a radioactive waste station away from a school. (Daily News)
• Two weeks into the year, late buses are still making some needy students miss class. (Daily News)
• A broken elevator kept two wheelchair-bound I.S. 143 students out of class for weeks. (Daily News)
• Mandarin instruction is growing more prevalent in New York public schools. (WSJ)
• Since the start of school, the city’s 311 hotline has gotten 22 reports of bedbugs in schools. (Times)
• The furor over Staten Island busing has caught the Department of Education by surprise. (SI Advance)
• A Bryant HS student is in ninth-grade limbo because of a tuition dispute at her former school. (Post)
• Automotive High School’s high-ranked football team played its first real home game in years. (WNYC)
• A Bronx public school teacher has been unusually candid about her past as a sex worker. (Post, Times)
• The Post: It’s a harbinger of change when “committed Hollywood liberals” are criticizing teachers unions.
• But some parents and teachers say “Waiting for Superman” misrepresents education’s problems. (Fox)
• And teachers protested the film’s opening at theaters and Rockefeller Center. (Post, Daily News)
• Cory Booker has raised 40 percent of the funds needed to match Facebook’s gift to Newark. (WSJ)
• The Daily News: Newark should spend its Facebook money on new teachers, charters and data systems.
• Ed Hirsch, Jr.: States should use new common standards to write better curriculum. (Daily News)
• The Post editorial board sides with the city against former rubber room teachers who filed grievances.
• A St. Louis school for troubled teens requires all students to study chess as an academic subject. (WSJ)
• California charters are weathering the budget crisis better than district schools. (SF Chronicle)
• A Chicago architecture critic wonders if better school buildings make better students. (Chicago Tribune)

• Chancellor Klein says “Superman” isn’t anti-teacher or blindly pro-charter. (HuffPo)
• A report calls on the DOE to consider homeless children before closing schools. (Gotham Gazette)
• Merryl Tisch: NYC’s promotion policy is tough but will be good for kids in the long run. (NBC)
• Jose Antonio Vargas calls the timing of Zuckerberg’s Newark gift “curious.” (New Yorker)
• On Oprah today, Zuckerberg said he’s looking for education leaders to invest in. (WSJ)
• Forty percent of California schools don’t offer kids free drinking water in the cafeteria. (NPR)
• Two algebra classes, two class sizes, and it makes all the difference. (Pissed Off Teacher)
• And Chicago parents are staging a sit-in to keep a school from being demolished. (WBEZ)

On Sunday, NBC will launch a week-long series of events it’s calling “Education Nation.” The series is being touted as a nationally-televised conversation about how to improve American public education. But the events have also prompted protests from teachers and parents who feel their voices are being lost or ignored in NBC’s high-profile line-up of officials, politicians and philanthropists.

One panel during the week is designed to showcase the voices of teachers: a “Teacher Town Hall” that NBC anchor Brian Williams is hosting on Sunday. Teacher and GothamSchools contributer Stephen Lazar was invited to participate in the event, and he gives a preview of what he wants to say in the Community section.

The national conversation around education needs to change, Lazar writes, and he has a list of where to start. Among his suggestions:

[W]e need…a shift from talking about testing and accountability towards talking about curriculum and learning. There’s a ridiculous notion that bad teachers are bad because they are lazy, and if we could just hold their feet to the fire, they would improve, or leave. That’s simply not reality. Most struggling teachers simply don’t know any better. We need to begin conversations about what they should be doing in their classrooms before their students are assessed, and then figure out how to support teachers in doing this.

I am going to be on stage with Brian Williams this Sunday at noon as part of NBC’s “Education Nation” Teacher Town Hall. The week-long Education Nation event, coming on the back of the release of “Waiting for ‘Superman‘” and Oprah’s two education specials this week, has received a lot of negative pushback from educators and parents who feel that their voices are being left out of the conversation. When I was approached, I knew I could not miss the chance to talk about great teaching before a national audience, and I hope I will have the chance to do so, because the current national conversation over education needs to change.

The first change we need is to get over the public vs. charter school debate. It makes no sense to be pro- or anti-charter; the only question that should matter is whether a school is helping students to learn. Until we focus on how to improve all schools, be them public or charter, nothing will change. There is nothing about being a charter that tells us anything about whether or not a school is effective. There are good and bad charter schools, just as there are good and bad public schools. Let’s stop wasting our breath over this debate.

The next change we need is a shift from talking about testing and accountability towards talking about curriculum and learning. (more…)

• The city held back more than 11,000 elementary and middle schoolers this year. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• That’s nearly five times the number the city held back last year. (Times, Daily News)
• Newark Mayor Cory Booker is trying to find another $100 million to match Facebook’s donation. (WSJ)
• The Times: Newark should use its Facebook gift for more charters and performance pay for teachers.
• Vincent Gray met Michelle Rhee yesterday, but did not discuss her job’s future. (Washington Post)
• The Bronx’s P.S. 7 officially opened its student-designed playground. (NY1)
• The city chose not to spend an influx of cash in its budget on buses in Staten Island. (S.I. Advance)
• Cincinnati school board members met Joel Klein and toured three city charters. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
• “Waiting for Superman” opens in theaters today and film critics weigh in. (Times, Post, L.A. Times)
• The Daily News editorial board urges readers to see the movie “right away.”
• The movie is one of four education documentaries set to open this year. (AP)
• A Mass. charter school opened yesterday despite officials’ concerns it broke the law. (Boston Globe)
• Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks Chicago school violence has gotten worse. (Chicago Tribune)

• A new budget policy is forcing schools to toss sports teams off their fields after 6 p.m. (Post)
• WNYC education reporter Beth Fertig gives her review of “Waiting for Superman.” (WNYC)
• The movie rails against teachers unions just as they’re beginning to change. (Nation)
• A group of teachers, union activists, parents is promoting its alternative to “Superman.” (Trailer)
• Asked about his future, a student tells his teacher: “I’ll just live with my mom.” (NYC Educator)
• Mike Petrilli says the GOP doesn’t know where it stands on education anymore. (Gadfly)
• The GOP’s to-do list includes cutting spending and no education policy ideas. (EdWeek)
• Michelle Rhee and Vincent Gray met today and their body language said it all. (WaPo)
• A Delaware education prof is hosting an “Ultimate Block Party,” in Central Park. (UDel)