GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

I was 21 when I started student teaching, and like all good 21-year-olds, I thought I knew it all. This was not in the sense that I thought I already knew how to be a master teacher, but rather that I thought there were good teachers who I could model myself after and bad teachers to teach me how not to teach. The good teachers were the enthusiastic progressive teachers doing new and different things in their classrooms who genuinely liked and cared about their students; the bad were the ones lecturing to students in rows or doing work out of the textbook like nearly all of my high school teachers.

I was lucky to be quickly humbled.

My first lesson in humility were taught to me by a math teacher who welcomed me to observe his class regularly, and who I thought was a bad teacher because he didn’t seem to like his kids. After observing him a couple of times, I wrote him off and stopped going to his class.

In hindsight, these might have been two randomly bad classes, or he might actually have not been a very good teacher, but he later gave me the best advice I got while student teaching: Create a “Happy Folder” filled with thank you notes, work from challenging students who finally got it, and those letters that teachers often get from students who, years after leaving the classroom, write to share about how they finally understood a lesson. (more…)

• Special ed students are suffering severe school bus snafus at the start of the year. (Daily News)
• City teachers are building data systems to compete with the city’s own. (GothamSchools)
• A “gun-running” teacher sent to the rubber room then became a school dean. (Post)
• Four schools, including Brooklyn’s PS 10, received grants to teach about opera. (WSJ)

D.C. edition:

• Adrian Fenty’s loss in D.C. could jeopardize school reforms there. (Times, WSJ, Time)
• It could also discourage other big-city mayors from pushing major school changes. (NPR)
• Some D.C. Council members want to see Michelle Rhee stay on until 2012. (Washington Post)
• The American Federation of Teachers spent more than $1 million to oppose Fenty. (Politico)
• A D.C. columnist says Fenty and Rhee made mistakes that other reformers won’t copy. (Post)
• The Daily News says Rhee’s changes to teacher salaries should survive and come to New York.

• D.C. Mayor Fenty’s loss shows the flaws of the “heroic reformer” theory of change. (Jay Greene)
• Is Rhee-style school reform politically dangerous? Two no’s and a hell yes. (Mead, Carey, Casey)
• What will stay and what hangs in the balance if Rhee follows her boss and leaves. (The New Republic)
• Suggestions for members of the “Education Justice League” who could replace Rhee. (Jay Mathews)
• Election fallout includes the loss of a Republican with deep expertise in K-12 issues. (Politics K12)
• Meet the man who will take over for George Miller if the Republicans take the House. (Politics K-12)
• Norm Scott is trying to organize the ATR pool and reports making some headway. (EdNotes)
• An attempt to make an Encyclopedia entry for “no-excuses charter schools.” (Dewey to Delpit)
• The charter school boosters in Ohio are worrying that fast growth is sacrificing quality. (Flypaper)
• Should Obama have been more honest about the good chance many kids will fail? (Joanne Jacobs)
• Is education think tank “research” at a high enough quality to deserve that name? (National Journal)

Created by teachers at the High School for Telecommunication, DataCation collects and analyzes student data, rivaling the city's own database.

When he began teaching at a Bronx high school, Jesse Olsen found the school had a large blind spot when it came to taking attendance.

If a student came to class for the first half of the school day and then skipped out, she’d go down in the official record as being present for the full day. The information holes made it impossible for teachers to know what their students’ true attendance was like, Olsen said.

A new, sophisticated database known as ARIS, for Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, might have been just the thing to solve the problem. But the system only let schools see how many days a student had missed, not how many classes they were skipping.

So Olsen took matters into his own hands, drawing on his computer science training to build an attendance system for his school, Validus Preparatory Academy.  In doing so he joined a growing number of teachers who don’t rely on the city’s data tools to track student information.

Brought into the city’s public schools in 2008 as a major initiative of Chancellor Joel Klein, ARIS cost $80 million to make. It debuted at the same time that Klein began to ask teachers to keep close track of student data and use it to adjust their instruction. (more…)

(Photo courtesy Chartock)

The executive director of the State University of New York’s charter authorizer, Jonas Chartock, is leaving to lead a New Orleans-based teacher training program as it expands around the country, SUNY officials announced today.

Beginning in January, Chartock will head up the “Leading Educators” project. The group currently runs a professional development program in New Orleans aimed at keeping strong teachers in the classroom by grooming them for leadership positions that don’t take them away from students.

UPDATE: Chartock just weighed in with more details on the program. He will be charged with expanding the program around the United States, though he said that the group hasn’t yet finalized the first school districts and charter school chains where the program will initially grow. The national expansion won’t necessarily mean replicating the New Orleans program exactly as it is now, Chartock said, and part of his job will be to adapt the model for teachers in other school systems.

The program in New Orleans is currently part of New Leaders for New Schools, the Manhattan-based group whose co-founder, Jon Schnur, served as an advisor to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, but will become an independent non-profit, Chartock said. The “Leading Educators” program is modeled after a similar teacher training program launched in the United Kingdom by Jay Altman, who now runs a charter network in New Orleans. (more…)

Returning to the classroom isn’t just a source of anticipation and stress for teachers. It’s also a source for blog fodder.

The GothamSchools community section has been abuzz since last week with back-to-school thoughts from contributors old and new. Read Ruben Brosbe on the little-known phenomenon of teacher backsliding; Lizzie Hetzer on the mixed emotions brought on by moving to a more teacher-friendly school; Dana Lawit on the symbolism of fresh pencils; and Stephen Lazar on his hopes and fears for the new year.

The section’s newest author is actually a former city teacher. Collin Lawrence just left the city after four years at a small high school in Brooklyn, which he is calling the Brooklyn Arts Academy. In his first post, “Back to Civilian Life,” Lawrence outlined his project:

I have decided to chronicle the tumultuous four-year saga that marked my tenure at the Brooklyn Arts Academy. …

I stubbornly stuck it out for four years, longer than every other teacher who started with me save one, and so bore witness to enough drama to last a lifetime.

Over the next year, I’ll revisit this drama from the shock of my first day to the bittersweet goodbye of my last one.

There’s more than enough room in the community section for more voices. Are you interested in sharing your experience as a teacher, parent, administrator, or student? Contact us.

I’ll admit it: When I hear the phrase “charter school miracle,” my antennae go up. It’s not that I think that charter schools can’t possibly be good schools, or that they cannot surpass traditional public schools in the measured achievements of their students. The evidence is pretty clear that there are many fine charter schools, just as there are many struggling charter schools.

No, it’s that I think miracles are exceedingly rare phenomena. And the current narrative about miracles in school reform relies heavily on a “great man” theory, replete with outsized personalities. Witness the contemporary stage, on the cusp of the release of Waiting for “Superman”: Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee, even — God help us — Bill Gates and Joel Klein being anointed as miracle-workers who, by dint of their commitments, hard work and personalities, are overcoming entrenched bureaucracies and transforming the life-chances of poor and minority children across America’s urban landscape.

It was against this backdrop that I read Caitlin Flanagan’s stirring op-ed that graced the gatefold of Sunday’s New York Daily News. Flanagan, a former prep-school teacher who now writes for The Atlantic and other publications, singles out Mike Piscal, who founded a charter management organization called the Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF) that now operates 15 elementary, middle and high schools in south Los Angeles. Flanagan and Piscal were colleagues, once upon a time, in the English department of the elite Harvard-Westlake School.

Flanagan’s argument goes something like this: the ICEF schools are extraordinarily high-performing; in fact, the elementary schools have eliminated the achievement gap. (more…)

As the last two weeks of summer went by, I met with old and new teaching colleagues. I reminisced over dinner with a teacher who taught across the hall from me at the school I left last year. I laughed over lunch with a nurturing and seasoned paraprofessional from that school. And I sent back-to-school packages to students from last year’s class, piecing together some books, erasers, and pencils. What did I realize? It’s difficult to move on. Especially as a new teacher.

At the same time, I was getting settled in my new school, with a wonderfully warm and welcoming staff and a brand-new co-teacher. This year, I’m teaching in an integrated co-teaching setting — meaning that our first grade classroom has a general education teacher and a special education teacher (that’s me). Forty percent of our students require special education services; the rest don’t.

Sharing a classroom with another teacher isn’t my only big change. I’ve also moved from a Title I School where most students are poor enough to qualify for free lunch to one with many middle-class families. At this point in my career, I want to work in a collaborative setting with a focus on progressive curriculum, and I think that I have found a place where I can grow. But moving on is hard. (more…)

• State Sen. Bill Perkins won his primary against charter school challenger Basil Smikle. (Times)
• The state has told the city it must do more to help students learn English. (Daily News)
• City students bucked the trend and posted higher SAT scores. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1, WSJ)
• The city teachers union is suing over class sizes at Francis Lewis High School. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• The all-boys Eagle Academy moved into a brand new $50 million building this fall. (Daily News)
• A teacher on unpaid medical leave was arrested in an illegal arms sting. (Daily News)
• Staff members of an after-school program foundation were arrested for misusing funds. (Daily News)
• Michelle Rhee’s future in D.C. is uncertain after Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his primary. (Washington Post)
• Los Angeles teachers protested outside the paper that posted their value-added scores. (L.A. Times)
• The Wall Street Journal says the edujobs fund discriminates against charter school teachers.

• Al Sharpton is launching a new TV show, 30 minutes of which will be about education. (Politico)
• D.C. Mayor Fenty’s opponent, Vincent Gray, said he’ll “see” if he’ll keep Michelle Rhee. (WashPost)
• President Obama’s getting some flak for not supporting Fenty in today’s race. (Flypaper)
• As Eva Moskowitz’s Success chain moves to the Bronx, the space wars follow her. (Daily News)
• To do “turnarounds” right, school districts need to build dedicated offices for the work. (Ed Week)
• Some of the findings from OECD’s 2010 roundup of of ed stats around the world. (Quick and the Ed)
• Study partly funded by charter advocates scrutinizes the schools’ high teacher turnover. (CRPE)
• The most ridiculous pitches by companies trying to get into back-to-school coverage. (CityRoom)
• A master math teacher is talking to people who use math in their jobs, like road engineers. (Dan Meyer)
• The Gates Foundation is spending $8M to keep a city road around its office uninterrupted. (AP)
• Andrew Cuomo is happy to go after the state teachers union, but not SEIU 199. (Capital New York)
• And the winner of New York Cares’ mural contest will get to paint in a public school. (NY Cares)