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Chancellor Joel Klein went outside the walls of Tweed and into public schools 84 times in the last year, according to a list of the chancellor’s school visits released today.

Most of the schools he has visited are in Manhattan and the majority are middle and elementary schools. In the last year, he’s been to six charter schools, ten schools in the Bronx, and 25 in Brooklyn. In under one month, he went to the School of One program four times.

A DOE spokesman said that some of the chancellor’s visits were made for public events such as graduation speeches or policy announcements. Others, such as a visit to Bronx Science to meet with new teachers, were kept private.

The list includes visits to schools the chancellor sometimes went back to two or three times later in the same year. Williamsburg Preparatory and LaGuardia High School hosted him twice and he stopped by I.S. 228, a magnet middle school in Gravesend, Brooklyn four times.

But he hasn’t only gone to the city’s best, most selective schools. Twice, Klein visited Norman Thomas High School, which will either be closed, replaced with a charter school, or lose half its staff next year, and to Boys and Girls High School. Queens Vocational and Technical High School, which is one of the 11 city schools undergoing the federal government’s “transformation” model, had a visit from the chancellor last spring.

The full list of schools Klein visited last year and so far this year is below: (more…)

Denver principal Marc Waxman’s public declaration last month that he no longer believed in school “reform” initially attracted a response from Diane Ravitch. Now it’s prompting a deeper conversation about big education policy questions.

Waxman has enlisted Stacey Gauthier, co-principal of Renaissance High School in Queens, for an open correspondence about how to improve schools. Gauthier and Waxman know each other already; they both worked at New York City charter schools that had converted from district schools.

In the column’s first entry today in the GothamSchools community section, Gauthier writes:

When Marc asked if I was interested in starting up a dialogue about educational issues facing us today, I first thought “Isn’t there enough of that?” But then I was reminded by a wise woman at GothamSchools that this dialogue often takes place outside of those people actually doing the work day to day educating our young people. …

Our goal for this dialogue is to take back ownership of some of these issues, while discussing them in the context of real-world practice.

Waxman and Gauthier have sworn to be “brutally honest” as they work through big issues, such as about how charter schools and unions can coexist. Their posts will appear regularly on GothamSchools and Education News Colorado.

Dear GothamSchools Community,

A few weeks ago, as I read through GothamSchools, I saw a link to a column written by Marc Waxman. Even though Marc now lives in Denver, I know him well. For over a decade he worked in New York City where he worked as a teacher and administrator at KIPP Bronx and then founded and directed (with his wife) a school in Harlem which became a conversion charter school several years ago. Since his school and mine, Renaissance Charter School in Queens, are one of only five conversion charter schools in the city, we worked closely on many issues.

After emailing with Marc about some technical issues relevant to running multiple charter schools (something I am working on here in NYC and Marc is doing in Denver), Marc invited me to enter into a public dialogue with him (a la Diane Ravitch and Debbie Meier). This letter is the kickoff of that dialogue.

I was delayed in getting this first installment for GothamSchools’ community page. Why was I late? Well, I am a school principal (aka leader, administrator, management) and this is the beginning of the third week of school. Things are busy and I am working — 60-plus hours a week. This is not meant to get sympathy — I have a big job to do and failure is just not an option — but okay, you say, where is this going?

I am also busy leaving no child behind, chartering new territory (yes, this is a clue to my background), racing to the top (did I say I am afraid of heights?), advocating for anything advocatable (I am asking that this become a new eduterm), analyzing data to do all of these things and now I stand outside school every day waiting for superman.  He has not arrived. At least not yet. (more…)

• City schools are seeing more students whose homes are in foreclosure. (Crain’s NY)
• Nearly all city parents think their children are healthy, but 40 percent are overweight. (Post)
• A Queens HS student is complaining about sexually explicit content in her assigned reading. (CBS)
• An early Head Start program in Harlem is trying to reach children before they fall behind. (NY1)
• The Manhattan Free School has 23 students, a sliding tuition scale, and no rules. (Times)
• The maritime-themed Harbor School is the first tenant on Governor’s Island in 15 years. (WSJ)
• The Wall Street Journal says teachers unions’ “Superman” opposition shows their days are numbered.
• Denver wants its high school students to take tougher classes. (Denver Post)

• Klein and the Edu Equality Board say Lemann is wrong, schools are in crisis. (New Yorker)
• Bloomberg and Klein cut a fishnet to celebrate the Harbor School’s opening. (DNAinfo)
• Salary comparability could find its way into ESEA’s reauthorization. (Politics K-12)
• South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint says there’s support for banning gay teachers. (Gawker)
• Michelle Rhee talks about the future of D.C. schools, with or without her. (WaPo)
• Huffington Post launches an education section around “Waiting for Superman.” (HuffPo)
• A Chicago charter school teacher takes issue with Superman’s slant on charters. (HuffPo)
• David Denby: we need a different movie about why some charters aren’t working. (New Yorker)
• A retired NYC teacher explains why unions are not the enemy of good schools. (The Root)
• Mike Petrilli: Duncan is wrong to think schools can fix broken neighborhoods. (Flypaper)
• A charter school broke the law by bribing students to show up for the student census. (Denver Post)

Will new technologies transform the way teachers teach and students learn? Is online learning really the way of the future? And how can we ensure that teaching becomes a respected profession?

Those were some of the questions tackled during a panel discussion to discuss what teaching might look like in 30 years. The panel, held the week before last, featured KIPP co-founder David Levin; Joel Rose of the School of One; Becky Crowe Hill, formerly of Partners in School Innovation; Jose Ferreira, CEO and founder of Knewton; and Alex Grodd, the founder of Better Lesson; it was also moderated by GothamSchools editor Elizabeth Green and Nick Ehrmann, the founder of the non-profit Blue Engine.

We’ve compiled some of the highlights from the discussion, which ranged from the challenge of school “organ rejection” of reforms to how KIPP’s David Levin met his wife, and what that has to do with teaching:

Did Albert Shanker scoop Joel Klein on ARIS?

The late formidable teachers union leader may not have named that particular New York City platform, meant to make it easier for parents and teachers to share information about student achievement and teachers’ lesson plans. But, in 1995, giving testimony to a Congressional committee on educational technology, Shanker did imagine a future tool that sounds quite modern:

Of course, this vision sounds more like what the web site Better Lesson is building than what embattled ARIS has been able to achieve.

The full text of Shanker’s testimony is inside the PDF linked on this page, on page 266.

• The lowest progress report grade went to a school the city tried to shut down. (Post)
• Bronx schools were affected by progress report changes just like everyone else. (Daily News)
• The Post says the city should do away with the reports and their poor scores for charter schools.
• Parents at PS 224 in East Flatbush want the school’s tutoring program up and running. (Daily News)
• The city’s move to charge schools for after-school use will shift $5 million in costs. (Daily News)
• Some schools that spent extra time prepping students for the SAT saw score boosts. (Post)
• Middle-schoolers started lining up three hours early for the citywide high school fair. (NY1)
• In letters, Post readers paint a complex picture of the question of teacher tenure.
• Stanley Crouch says a Harlem philanthropy is setting students up for better opportunities. (Daily News)
• The woman who helps charter schools get buildings came from the corporate world. (Times)
• The head of the Charter School Growth Fund says it is helping city charter schools scale up. (Post)
• The Wall Street Journal praises the Walton Foundation’s saturation theory of charter school success.
• Judith Warner wonders whether Michelle Rhee’s setbacks relate to the Tea Party movement. (Times)

• A feature called “Where I Stand” lets ed activists go beyond black and white labels. (Failing Schools)
• Don’t jump to conclusions in the case of the L.A. teacher who committed suicide. (Educated Reporter)
• A federal group debates the role teachers should play in education research. (EdWeek)
• On “Meet a Scientologist,” a teacher explains how the faith improves his practice. (Curriculum Matters)
• A Harvard grad makes a graceful, cost-free exit from his teacher training program. (Goldstein)
• Davis Guggenheim says he aims to get people “fired up,” not suggest policy. (Dallas Morning News)
• What their friends think determines where 8th graders apply to high school. (Insideschools)

What if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had met and been wooed not by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, as reportedly happened this July in Idaho, setting the stage for Zuckerberg’s dramatic $100 million gift, but by our own Joel Klein? A hawk-eyed reader alerted us to the counterintuitive advice Klein might have given him.

The clue lies in a March 2008 issue of the New York Times Magazine in which Paul Tough led a roundtable discussion of education leaders about educational philanthropy. Tough proposed a hypothetical: A “high-tech entrepreneur” has just taken his company public, and now he has $2 billion to give away. He wants to improve public education. What should the billionaire spend his money on?

The key excerpt:

Tough: Joel, you run the country’s biggest school system. What if this money was simply added to New York City’s regular education budget for next year? Would you be able to make a difference with it?

Klein: Well, I agree with Vanessa [Kirsch, founder of New Profit] that philanthropists should think strategically, and what you’re suggesting would be about as nonstrategic an investment as you could make. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t like an additional billion dollars next year. But I think our billionaire should think about this entirely differently.

Klein suggested spending the money to create a national policy group to do “serious research” to fill the many knowledge gaps in education. He also suggested investing in a handful of individual superintendents, like Michelle Rhee, with the goal of helping them demonstrate how to turn around a poorly performing school district.