GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The city’s decision to release teacher evaluation data this week represents a departure from an agreement officials made with the teachers union two years ago.

In a deal made in 2008 between then-president of the United Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten and Department of Education Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf, the city and union agreed to keep the reports private. The reports assign scores to teachers based on how much they improve their students’ test scores.

“It is the DOEs’ [sic] firm position and expectation that Teacher Data reports will not and should not be disclosed or shared outside of the school community, defined to include administrators, coaches, mentors and other professional colleagues authorized by the teacher in question,” Cerf wrote.

“In the event a FOIL request for such documents is made, we will work with the UFT to craft the best legal arguments available to the effect that such documents fall within an exemption,” he wrote.

DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said the city’s decision to release the scores doesn’t violate the agreement.

“We do not believe that any of the exemptions under FOIL apply in this matter, which is what we told the UFT.  But that will be for a judge to decide,” she wrote in an email. (more…)

The debate that began in Los Angeles over whether it is ethical to release public school teachers’ effectiveness scores has made its way to New York City. The city’s Department of Education plans to give the ratings, which are based solely on test scores, to reporters this week.

According to sources familiar with the discussion, city officials are debating with the teachers union over whether to release the scores with or without teachers’ names attached. The union has announced that it plans to seek an injunction in order to halt the release.

“The union will charge in its lawsuit that the TDRs [teacher data reports] are ‘unreliable, often incorrect, subjective analyses dressed up as scientific facts,’ and the methodology’s calculations of individual teachers’ value-add is ‘a complex and largely subjective guessing game on the part of the DOE,’” union officials said in statement.

DOE press secretary Natalie Ravitz said the city plans to give reporters the ratings this Friday.

“It had been our intention to respond to those FOILs and release the information today. However, UFT lawyers informed us that they intend to sue us to prevent the release,” she said in a statement. (more…)

Stacey Gauthier, a co-principal of Renaissance Charter High School, and Marc Waxman, a principal of a charter school in Denver, are corresponding about school policy. Read their entire exchange.

Hi Marc,

Your last letter to me discussing Denver Green School got me thinking about the absolute necessity of teacher voice in the whole discussion of improving education. Before I answer your question about Renaissance’s collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) let me frame it first with some recent experiences I’ve had.

Last week, I saw “Waiting for ‘Superman.’” It is a heart-wrenching documentary about families seeking a great education for their kids and mostly not getting it. It raises the important issue of teacher quality as the mainstay of this great education. Who can argue with that? No one — not labor, special interests, charter advocates, politicians, educrats. This is good news because we can agree on something and that is a starting point for constructive dialogue.

And speaking of dialogue, over the last year, I have followed the New York Post and its series called “The War on Charters.” I would like to change the tone of this to “A Dialogue on Charters.” This might seem to be just semantics, but sometimes, as in the classic Gloria Estefan song, “the words get in the way.” Being in a war and having a dialogue are two very different experiences. I also followed all the education reform conversations around Race to the Top and improving education in America. As for these dialogues, teachers as agents of change were never really mentioned. Huh, you say?Sure, we talked about serving more special needs students in charter schools, eliminating rubber rooms, tying teacher performance to test scores and tenure (all important), but not the actual role of teachers themselves in bringing the change we all agree must happen into fruition.

In the DPS piece, Buck highlights a core premise that is missing from “Waiting for ‘Superman’” and the political debate — the role of teacher leadership in promoting real and meaningful systemic educational reform. (more…)

• Eva Moskowitz’s latest charter school expansion plan is causing tension in Harlem. (WSJ)
• PS 145, where Moskowitz wants a Harlem Success school, has other plans for the space. (Daily News)
• Parents of special education students rallied in favor of speedier bus service. (Post)
• A teacher is suing over his $15,000 fine for cursing in Spanish during class. (Post, Daily News)
• Students from the Talented and Gifted School in East Harlem video-chatted with students in India. (NY1)
• PS/IS 184 in Brooklyn is trying to use running to cut down on its asthma rate. (NY1)
• The state’s top court ruled that charter schools don’t have to pay prevailing construction wages. (Post)
• N.J. Gov. Chris Christie wants Michelle Rhee to become his education commissioner. (Post)

• Andrew Cuomo backed Obama’s education policies during last night’s debate. (State of Politics)
• A court ruled today that charter schools don’t have to match union wages for contractors. (Chalkboard)
• Pushback against Eva Moskowitz’s proposed UWS charter school begins. (Ed Notes Online)
• Without a dean to oversee unruly students, a new teacher struggles to keep order. (GS Community)
• NBC profiles Citizen Schools in Boston, which extends the school day with volunteers. (MSNBC)
• Brooklyn’s P.S. 216 students planed apple trees and kale in their Edible Schoolyard. (NY Times)
• Georgia’s largest school district won the $1 million Broad Prize today. (Washington Post)
• In an election year, most state education ballot initiatives are funding-focused. (Edweek)
• Excessed teachers say the city is scheduling “mandatory interviews” for them. (Chaz)
• Suffering from budget cuts, some schools are putting paid advertisements on lockers. (Star Tribune)
• And in a few years the city schools will be full of Jaydens and Isabellas. (WSJ)

Hoping to prevent the public outcry that met city officials last year when they tried to shutter nearly 20 schools, the Department of Education has begun holding meetings at schools that may be closed or overhauled next year.

One of the first of those meetings was held at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn last night, where parents, students, and teachers filled the auditorium to hear high school superintendent Aimeee Horowitz explain what could happen next year. Similar meetings have already taken place at Sheepshead Bay High School and John F. Kennedy High School and will continue as the city and state identify more schools they may want to close or significantly change.

Dewey, Sheepshead, and Kennedy are among 23 “turnaround” schools the city has received federal money to improve. This means that next year the city could close the schools and replace them with a district or charter school; it could fire half of their teaching staffs and principals; or it could decide that they are making progress and just need more funding, new programs, and experienced teachers.

DOE spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld said the city has not made any decisions about the schools’ future and likely wouldn’t announce its plans until early December. (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.

As a former distance runner, I am fond of saying that teaching is a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve never captivated students with an energetic personality or by my physical presence from day one. I am not an imposing guy. I am short and slim, with a quiet voice and an introverted personality. But I’ve learned to establish my authority through work ethic, grit, and perseverance. My routine efforts, combined with an infrequent demonstration of muscle (sending a disruptive student to the dean), created a functioning classroom during my Minnesota teaching days.

I figured this strategy would also work for me at the Brooklyn Arts Academy. This was before I learned that our school had no dean. In fact, in our meetings before the start of the school year, the one question for which I could not get a straight answer was, “What do I do if I have a student who is disrupting the learning process of others?” I was more or less told not to remove a student except in the instance of a physical fight.

So I felt apprehensive going into the first day of the school year as the tenth-grade global history teacher. I decided on a first lesson that would ask students to consider how historians use evidence to construct understandings about the past. I set up five different stations and at each placed an artifact that represented something about my background, such as a high school yearbook and family picture. The plan was to put the students in groups and have them rotate through each station, examining the artifacts and drawing conclusions about this guy who would teach them for the year.

But on the first day of school, students began bouncing of the walls, screaming and embracing, before they even entered my classroom. (more…)

Add theater to the list of subjects for which principals have been allowed to circumvent the city’s longstanding teacher hiring freeze.

The city allowed four principals to hire theater teachers from outside the school system last month, breaking from the hiring restrictions in place since May 2009 that limit most job searches to current city teachers.

The Center for Arts Education, a group that advocates for more arts instruction in the city’s public schools, released a statement cheering the city for opening hiring for theater teachers and calling on it to end the freeze for all arts teachers. The city has just 100 theater teachers, and 20 percent of schools have no arts teachers at all, according to CAE.

But city officials said the hiring freeze hasn’t been lifted in theater the way it has been in other subjects, such as Latin and English as a second language. Instead, the city simply granted exemptions to all of the schools looking for theater teachers in mid-September, according to Ann Forte, a Department of Education spokeswoman. (more…)

• Charter school advocates in New Jersey fear ally Gov. Chris Christie is moving too slowly. (WSJ)
• The “war on teachers” is really just a move toward rewarding good ones, Eric Hanushek says. (WSJ)
• William Grady HS is banking on federal intervention to save it from low expectations. (GothamSchools)
• Chelsea Career and Technical HS is taking a student-by-student approach to graduation. (WNYC)
• Mayor Bloomberg says teachers shouldn’t flirt with students on Facebook. (Post)
• Chicago ended a month-long parent sit-in by agreeing to build a new library. (Sun-Times)

• A cartoonist proposes value-added assessment for parents. (Signe via Joanne Jacobs)
• The TV show “Glee” is inspiring real-life glee clubs around the country. (AP)
• A Brooklyn mom is impressed by her tour of the Harbor School. (Insideschools)
• Nevada Senate candidate tells Hispanic union students they look Asian. (Las Vegas Sun)
• Ruben’s students include: Babyface, the Scowler, and Woodstock. (GS Community)
• One AP course honor code banned talking about work with parents. (WashPost)
• Obama’s ed agenda is under attack in the midterms from both parties. (Daily Beast)
• Obama signed an executive order to form a commission on Hispanic education. (EdWeek)
• CUNY colleges vary widely in how they define a “credit.” (Quick and the Ed, Chronicle)
• A teacher says rhetoric about educators’ autonomy contradicts reality. (Ed News Colorado)