GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• On her first day as chancellor-designate, Cathie Black read to students in the Bronx. (GS, NYT, Observer)
• Black wouldn’t answer a parent’s questions about this year’s school closings. (WNYC)
• “That was yesterday,” Black said about the controversy that surrounds her appointment. (WSJ)
• Yesterday, Black said that people at parties are thanking her for taking the job. (NY1)
• Parents and teachers will wear red on Thursday to protest Black’s appointment. (Education Notes)
• After a student drowned, the principal of Columbia Secondary School was fired for other reasons. (NYT)
• Jim Liebman and Jonah Rockoff say schools unequivocally improved under Joel Klein. (EdWeek)
• Ruben Brosbe: it sometimes seems that we’re teaching reading strategies, not reading. (GS)
• A teacher says she still doesn’t get why Cathie Black wants to be chancellor. (Morton School)
• A report says the DOE sent states “mixed messages” about spending stimulus money. (EdWeek)
• The national graduation rate is up from 72 to 75 percent, but the gains are uneven among states. (Time)
• Diane Ravitch: Bill Gates can’t understand how schools are different from Microsoft. (EdWeek)

Schools chancellor-to-be Cathleen Black introduced herself twice today.

One introduction was in person, made to parents, teachers and the press at a Bronx elementary school. The other came in the form of an e-mail sent to Department of Education staffers this afternoon.

“You might have heard or read a little about me in the past few weeks,” Black writes in the message. “But I would like the opportunity to tell you in my own words who I am and why I am excited about this job.”

She continues:

For four decades I devoted my professional life to blazing trails in the magazine and publishing industry. I got where I am today by working hard, making bold decisions, and listening closely to the strong teams I’ve had around me. I intend to proceed in the same way during my upcoming tenure at the DOE.

Black also gives a hint about the working relationship she could develop with new Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky and Chief Operating Officer Sharon Greenberger. (more…)

Publishing executive Cathleen Black, who yesterday was granted the waiver she needs to become schools chancellor, greets students outside of P.S. 109 this morning.

At her first public visit to a city school today, newly green-lighted chancellor-to-be Cathleen Black met a handful of students and teachers, praised the student’s artwork on the walls, and was deemed a “natural teacher” by the school’s principal.

Black visited the Bronx’s P.S. 109 this morning, the day after State Education Commissioner David Steiner formally gave her the go-ahead to become chancellor. She was met by a gaggle of reporters and some parents who have waited three weeks to speak to her.

“It’s the beginning of a whole new era and I’m really excited,” Black said as she stopped briefly for questions before entering the school for a tour.

Black, along with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Deputy Chancellor Dennis Walcott, greeted students and parents as they arrived. Black then toured classes, stopping to read the book “Caps for Sale” to a class of first-graders.

Black admitted that she is approaching her school visits as a learning experience. The new chancellor officially takes office on January 3 but said she plans to continue to visit schools before then.

“I’m very much of an outreach person, historically,” she said. “I look forward to it because that’s where I’m going to learn more, and I want to be in the schools and listen to the children, and get a feel for the schools and a feel for their leadership.” (more…)

I was looking over a carefully written poster I’d made for a lesson on author’s purpose, when suddenly it struck me as rather strange. It’s not that the concept of author’s purpose is new to me. I’ve probably taught a couple dozen of lessons on author’s purpose in my limited tenure as a teacher. But if you asked me before I started teaching, “What is author’s purpose?”, I’m not sure I’d have a quick answer. I imagine non-teachers reading this blog might be unfamiliar with the phrase as well.

How is this possible? How did all of us manage to become such avid and proficient readers, without explicitly learning about author’s purpose? As a kid I don’t remember learning about author’s purpose, and I don’t remember learning about main idea and details, sequence, or any of the other soundbite strategies I teach my students. What I do remember is reading, writing, and talking about books.

So how and when did this change happen? It feels to me like the way we’re teaching the students, they lose the forest through the trees, or rather they’re losing a love of reading through the reading strategies.

Perhaps I’m wrong to dismiss the changes. Aren’t these changes in instruction progress? After all, I may not have learned to read via strategies, but I also wasn’t able to use the internet for research projects. In theory, literacy instruction has evolved over time to incorporate the latest and best research. (more…)

Students from the Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School paid a visit to the GothamSchools team this morning to talk about journalism and the stories they’re writing about their own school. When they’re done, we’ll hopefully be able to share them with you in the community section.

If you’ve got a journalism class or after-school club and want to stop by, let us know.

It’s the first day of school for chancellor-in-waiting Cathie Black.

The morning after receiving permission from the state to make Black the city’s new schools chief, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking her to meet some of the students and teachers who will soon be in her charge. Bloomberg and Black, along with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, will greet parents and students as they arrive at PS 109 in the Bronx.

Home to a gifted program, PS 109 is one of the top-performing elementary schools in District 9, scoring an A on its most recent progress report and getting extra credit for boosting its weakest students’ test scores. Principal Amanda Blatter brought a focus on accountability to the school, according to Insideschools, which also reports that 16 teachers left the school during Blatter’s first two years at PS 109.

Black’s visit marks the first time she has appeared in public since Bloomberg surprised the city earlier this month by picking her to replace outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein. Black lives on Park Avenue, attended parochial school, and sent her children to boarding school, but today won’t be her first time in a Bronx public school — she was an honorary principal of IS 125 for a day in April 2000.

Conspicuously missing from the city’s press release about today’s school visit: Shael Polakow-Suransky, who is set to become Black’s chief academic officer. His promotion was key to Black’s waiver, but Bloomberg swore yesterday that Black alone would run the school system.

• Cathie Black got the waiver she needs to be chancellor. (GS, Times, Post, WSJ, DN, NY1, WNYC)
• Despite the deal, Mayor Bloomberg said there won’t be any power-sharing at the DOE. (WSJ)
• The Times says Bloomberg must assure New Yorkers that the chief academic officer has real power.
• Teachers are trying again to convert struggling Columbus HS to a charter school. (GothamSchools)
• A 9-year-old girl says bullies forced her to drink toilet water at PS 22 in Brooklyn. (Post)
• The national high school graduation rate is rising, to 75 percent in 2008. (Times)

• Cathie Black received the waiver she needs to become chancellor. (GS, Times, DN, WNYC)
• Bloomberg on the Black-Suransky pairing: “There will be one person in charge.” (Daily Politics)
• Eli Broad argues that management is the most important skill for superintendents. (HuffPo)
• Teachers will go to Hearst tomorrow and ask to be hired as Black’s replacement. (Observer)
• Gayle King, Oprah Winfrey’s best friend, says Black is “scary smart.” (Gatecrasher)
• Shael Polakow-Suransky is a “thoughtful educator” who shares Klein’s love of data. (Village Voice)
• City education officials are making decisions this week about which schools to close. (WNYC)
• In Albany, a bill that allocates federal school aid would also freeze funding to charters. (Albany T-U)
• A city teacher was suspended for using a Spanish slang word with many meanings, some profane. (AP)
• Getting the best teachers into the neediest schools is proving a challenge in Milwaukee. (Hechinger)
• The Philadelphia superintendent interceded to replace one contractor with another. (Inquirer)
• Rick Hess examines some of the trade-offs prompted by special ed spending mandates. (EdWeek)
• Despite early-onset Alzheimer’s, US Ed Sec Arne Duncan’s mother Sue continues to tutor. (Chicago Trib)

At a meeting with parents earlier this month, Principal Lisa Fuentes asked for their votes to convert the district school into a charter school.

Teachers and administrators at a Bronx high school are making a second attempt to fight the school’s possible closure by converting it into a charter school, something that is rarely done in New York.

One of the 19 schools the city’s Department of Education tried and failed to close last year, Christopher Columbus High School is again in danger of being closed this year. Unwilling to wait and hope that the city will grant it a reprieve, the school’s staff is trying convert Columbus into a charter school.

State officials turned down Columbus principal Lisa Fuentes’ first application in September, saying that the school didn’t follow the protocol for conversion. Now Fuentes is trying again. At a meeting with parents earlier this month where city officials explained that they are considering phasing out Columbus, Fuentes told parents they could save the school by voting for its conversion. (more…)

As expected, State Education Commissioner David Steiner has granted publishing executive Cathleen Black the waiver she needs to become the city’s next schools chancellor.

Steiner’s decision follows a deal struck between city and state officials, the details of which emerged late last week. The agreement called for Black to promote Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky to a new position of Chief Academic Officer and was designed to ameliorate Steiner’s concerns about Black’s lack of experience in the education field.

Under state law, the commissioner is allow to waive the requirements for education experience and certification if the chancellor candidate’s experience is “substantially equivalent.”

In his letter today, Steiner cites the waiver that his predecessor, Richard Mills, gave former Chancellor Harold Levy 2000. In that case, Mills wrote that the chancellor’s experience did not need to mirror the required credentials, but rather that the candidate’s experience has prepared her for the chancellor’s job.

“After careful review of the record before me it is my judgment that, when viewed in its entirety, Ms. Black’s training, background and experience are substantially equivalent to the certification requirements set forth in law,” Steiner writes. (more…)