GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Diane Ravitch is saluted for checking “the ascendant education orthodoxy.” (Atlantic)
• In a higher ed study, class size mattered, but less than proximity to dawn. (Quick and the Ed)
• The Times points out the challenges in anointing the Harlem Children’s Zone a model. (NYT)
• A crowd-sourcing project seeks the best ideas for re-imagining the American classroom. (Slate)
• Social Studies teachers worry that their students aren’t learning what they should. (EdWeek)
• Untangling the tricky relationship between improving education and solving poverty. (Kevin Carey)
• The Gates Foundation is giving out $20 million to challenge technological ed innovation. (Seattle PI)
• Our friends at Learning Matters, the nonprofit TV education journalists, got a big grant. (Learning Matters)
• Some press coverage of “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is leaning the union’s way. (Ed is Watching)
• Ideas for using Twitter at school include capturing field trip feedback. (Innovative Educator)

The Rutgers University report on equitable school funding released today highlights that how a state distributes its education funds could matter as much as how much it spends.

The report ranked New York close to the bottom among states in terms of how much it spends on impoverished students compared to students in low-poverty districts. (The full report is below.)

The top-ranked state, Utah, spends one and a half times more per student in needy districts than in districts with no impoverished students. By contrast, in New York, districts with high concentrations of students in poverty spend just over 80 percent of what the wealthiest districts spend.

Geri Palast, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, said the analysis pointed to the need to re-work how the state doles out money among school districts.

“In an era where we continue to impose ever greater standards on school kids, the fact that funding inequality persists to this degree — especially in a state like this one, where a lot of money is invested but the poorest kids don’t get their fair share — we have to rethink how we use and distribute our dollars,” she said. (more…)

A Bronx middle school is about to get new window shades, thanks to a rule that forces the city to match costly repairs in charter schools with ones in neighboring district schools.

Albany legislators voted in the new measure last May as part of the law that more than doubled the state’s cap on charter schools. For years, critics of the way the city co-locates charter and district schools have complained that while charters have start-up funds to beautify classrooms and repair their facilities, district schools often can’t afford the same fixes. The new rule, which is now being put into practice, was one of several changes to co-location procedure meant to mollify these critics.

Now, if the charter school spends over $5,000 on building improvements, the city has to spend the same amount on repairs for the district school in the same building. At a meeting of the citywide school board last week, Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm said that city has already approved 29 such quid-pro-quo arrangements. (more…)

I admire the efficiencies of some of my colleagues. There’s a teacher down the hall who can get students in and out of groups of two, three, or four in near silence all under 20 seconds. Another coworker wishes students into uniform just by looking at them. I admire their ability to do things that don’t come as naturally to me that I often spend a lot of time planning or executing in the classroom.

Recently I was admiring a colleague’s ability to grade tests. I watched as she zipped through narrow slips of paper that contained student’s multiple choice responses, quickly counting up the correct answers and making note of the raw score. Then she flipped to the students’ short-answer responses and noted the raw score before grading their short responses.

She explained that over the years she’s tried to increase the speed with which she’s able to grade while decreasing the amount of paper she uses. It requires organization and planning to be that efficient with time and materials. “Multiple-choice scoring goes faster,” she told me. “The long part is the short responses.”

I flipped through some of the short-response booklets and looked at some of the student answers. “They’re doing much better this year,” she told me. “Same test, students are scoring much higher.” “Why?” I asked.

“I just wrote ‘answer in complete sentences’ after each question,” she replied. (more…)

• City and state officials ignored warning signs of flaws in state tests for years. (Times)
• Shuang Wen School is asking parents to pay tuition for its mandatory Mandarin classes. (NY1)
• Ross Global Charter, which got the city’s lowest report card score, is recruiting students. (Daily News)
• The Children’s School, which serves high-needs special ed students, ranked third in the city. (NY1)
• Some Queens students are being bussed outside of their districts because of overcrowding. (Daily News)
• As schools adopt new common standards, students will start to read more non-fiction. (WNYC)
• Schools haven’t yet received any of the profits from the city’s new vending machines. (Post, Daily News)
• New York has some of the U.S.’s least equitably-funded schools, a new report says. (WNYC, Daily News)
• Ross Douthat endorses a school funding model where money follows students. (Times)
• The Post blasts Suzi Oppenheimer for refusing to hold hearings on how state tests got so easy to pass.
• A Staten Island middle school student was bullied and beaten for being Muslim. (Post)
• Many school sports events are being held without security in violation of DOE rules. (Daily News)
• The schoolkids featured in “Waiting for ‘Superman’” met President Obama yesterday. (Daily News, Post)
• A district school teacher defends the movie from critics who say education is not in crisis. (Daily News)

And beyond:

• Buffalo is re-submitting its plan to use federal funds to improve its most struggling schools. (Buffalo News)
• A New Jersey school district has gotten rid of “D” grades and requires students to get a “C” to pass. (NPR)
• Robert Bobb is proposing a New Orleans-style dual school system for Detroit. (Michigan Citizen)
• NOLA schools run by its school board are outperforming the Recovery School District. (Times Picayune)
• Some Boston parents are upset at the city’s plan to close six public schools. (Boston Globe)
• The U.S. Department of Ed’s civil rights office received the most complaints this year in a decade. (AP)
• Investigations into cheating on Georgia state tests has focused attention on Atlanta public schools. (NPR)

• The U.S. DOE wants to know how to attract more black and Hispanic teachers. (Ed.gov)
• Andy Rotherham says more is working against education reform than for it. (Time)
• A WTU leadership candidate has questions for Randi and Rhee. (Washington Teacher)
• A guide to how to get your school to follow recycling guidelines. (GothamSchools Community)
• Community college students struggle to get beyond remedial classes. (Hechinger Report)
• Buried in a report is reason to be skeptical about increased teacher mobility. (School Finance 101)
• High school achievement predicets whether low-income students finish college. (EdWeek)
• Arianna Huffington is doing an education town hall with Joel Klein and others. (HuffPost)
• The AP fact-checks “Superman” claim that teachers can get tenure by “breathing.” (AP)
• And we’re taking Monday off to celebrate Philissa’s wedding!

After successfully suing to stop the city from closing schools last year, the city’s teachers union is raising a new set of concerns that could pave the way for another legal battle.

At last night’s meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, a United Federation of Teachers official outlined a dozen issues the union has with the city’s new rules governing the kinds of information released about the schools it wants to close. Last year, the union sued the city for writing barebones education impact statements that didn’t include enough data to comply with the state law governing how schools are closed.

Now, the city has a new regulation that calls for more information to be released. This school year, education impact statements should include information about how schools will share space if they’re located in the same building, as well as how a school’s closure or loss of building space will affect special education students and English language learners.

But the teachers union wants still more information. In his letter to the Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg, UFT president Michael Mulgrew called for the reports to include data on how class sizes will change and an explanation of what the city did to save the schools before it decided to close them. (more…)

We New Yorkers create approximately 26,000 tons of garbage a day, enough to fill the entire Empire State Building in a week. Like the rest of the city, all New York City schools, both public and private, are required by law to recycle. Schools in Manhattan’s District 3 have taken the lead in enacting extensive recycling programs and reducing waste in their schools.

Last year Jennifer Freeman, an environmental writer whose child attended PS 166, invited schools in District 3 to share ideas and information about going green. Her initiative gave rise to “D3 Green Schools,” a group that meets monthly to discuss how to make the district’s schools more sustainable. As Jennifer explains, “Everything the D3 Green Schools did last year was low-cost, with minimal time required from school staffs. We hope all schools will soon have recycling programs, cut their energy use, and find other ways to build green communities.”

Before highlighting the many accomplishments of D3 Green Schools, we’d like to clarify what schools are supposed to be doing to reduce their waste. Chancellor’s Regulation A-850 requires principals to appoint a “sustainability coordinator” at their schools from their administrative or teaching staffs. The principal and sustainability coordinator are responsible for creating and implementing a recycling and waste reduction plan for their school. This year, principals must submit their recycling plans to the Department of Education by Nov. 12. (more…)

• The city teachers union got a one-year exemption from new federal health-care rules. (Post)
• P.S. 282′s principal banned some teachers from an award ceremony held there this week. (Daily News)
• Members of Congress asked for the city to speed up clean-up of 700 contaminated schools. (Daily News)
• Some parents want the city to fire a Brooklyn teacher with a history of shoving students. (Daily News)
• Joel Klein, plus 15 other district heads, lay out their formula for school reform. (Washington Post)
• New Jersey’s fired ed commissioner blamed Gov. Christie for the states Race to the Top loss. (Times)
• Federal grants are helping Chicago charter groups expand despite state budget cuts. (Times)
• Michelle Rhee could be offered several top ed posts, but she may not want them. (Washington Post)

• The principal of an F school has held two meetings with parents in four days. (NYT Local)
• Will the Bronx teacher who was a sex worker take $60,000 to pose nude? (Observer)
• Are “education transformers” the new “education reformers”? (Ed is Watching)
• Bloomberg called a mandated paid sick leave bill in Albany “disastrous.” (WSJ Metropolis)
• Amid speculation about her next move, Michelle Rhee won’t comment “on the record.” (WashPost)
• Jay Greene and his son are enjoying learning online at Khan Academy. (Jay Greene)
• A New Jersey law might bar Christie and Booker from steering Zuckerberg’s grant. (Star Ledger)
• The “Widget Effect” team has a new report with guidelines for how to evaluate teachers. (TNTP)
• Finnish mathematicians aren’t sure the country’s top standing on the PISA test is good. (Flypaper)
• An activist says the real problem with “Superman” is it doesn’t depict actual teaching. (HuffPost)
• In Denver, the teacher-evaluation-building process gets overly bureaucratic. (Ed News Colorado)