GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Oprah Winfrey is the latest bigwig to back Cathie Black’s for chancellor. (Daily News)
• Mayor Bloomberg formally asked the state to let Black take the job. (GothamSchools, Times, WSJ, NY1)
• Black has been placing “charmingly informal and maddeningly vague” calls to VIPs. (Times)
• Several past mayors sent a letter supporting Black as chancellor. (Post)
• Black released her first statement but won’t be available for interviews for several weeks. (WNYC)
• The Manhattan Institute’s Marcus Winters offers Black a teachers union primer. (Daily News)
• In a year when class sizes grew, 31 percent of students are now in classes of 28 or more. (Times)
• The city cleared most rubber room cases but missed its deadline in 16. (NY1, GothamSchools)
• Those 16 teachers will return to the classroom as the city-union rubber room deal requires. (Daily News)
• Students from NEST participated in a national discussion about science education. (NY1)
• A Long Island district wants to open a drug rehab facility inside a high school. (AP)
• Two Staten Island councilmen won’t endorse Black without busing changes. (S.I. Advance)
• Durham, N.C., might use Race to the Top funds to give students iPads. (News & Observer)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has formally asked the state to approve his choice for chancellor, publishing executive Cathie Black.

Because Black lacks the education credentials legally required to be chancellor, State Education Commissioner David Steiner must grant Black a waiver allowing her to take the post. State law allows the commissioner to waive the requirements for chancellor candidates who are “exceptionally qualified.”

Black has almost no experience in public school systems in New York or elsewhere, and the mayor’s surprise appointment of her last week has caused an uproar from critics who believe the chancellor should have experience in schools.

In a six-page letter to Steiner released this evening, Bloomberg makes the argument that Black’s extensive experience in the magazine publishing world, including fifteen years as the head of Hearst Magazines, will translate into the skills she will need to run the nation’s largest public school system.

For example, Bloomberg argues that Black’s experience starting a digital media unit at Hearst shows that she can help schools teach students more technologically advanced skills and improve the way that schools track and improve student progress. He also contends that because Black saw Hearst through financial challenges that precipitated layoffs and the closure of struggling magazines, she will be prepared to handle the steep budget reductions city schools will likely face in the next year.

The next step will be for Steiner to appoint a panel that will review Bloomberg’s case for Black. The panel will issue a non-binding recommendation to Steiner, who will then announce his decision. It’s not clear when Steiner will appoint his panel or when he will make his final decision.

We will have much more on the mayor’s formal case for Black tomorrow. (Tonight we are throwing a party!) But in the meantime, the mayor’s letter to Steiner is below. Please share your observations on the letter in the comments! (more…)

• Joel Klein’s brief teaching experience won him the waiver in 2002, panel members say. (City Room)
• Three former mayors are supporting Cathie Black on mayoral control grounds. (Daily Politics)
• Is Cathie Black really running for mayor? Bloomberg might think so. (Observer)
• Or maybe she is being sacrificed to ease the way for someone more controversial.(Pissed Off Teacher)
• This is likely the biggest decision Commissioner Steiner has had to make on the job. (Chalkboard)
• Gadfly Norm Scott on his hug from Joel Klein: “I am not a hater. I love everybody.” (Ed Notes)
• If a school is like a basketball team, individual teacher incentives might cause problems. (GS Community)
• Bricks are being laid at the addition to PS 8 in Brooklyn Heights. (Brownstoner)
• Brooking report: We judge things on semi-reliable data all the time, so why not teachers. (Class Struggle)
• Andy Rotherham says the Brookings report is “measured and sensible.” (Eduwonk)
• Angry about school bus snafus? Join PIST: Parents to Improve School Transportation. (Insideschools)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan says school districts should boost class sizes before cutting teachers. (Politics K-12)

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This is one of those old teaching adages, passed down from the elders to me in my early days of teaching. Like many great cliches, it has endured, because it’s true. I’ve recognized the central role of planning to my teaching since the Labor Day Monday before my first day, when I anxiously tried to plan a whole 7 hours of lessons.

It’s laughable now to think back on how difficult that first day’s lesson plan was for me. What’s funnier is that I once thought that my first year of lesson planning would be my last. Get that first year of lesson plans written, I thought, and I’d be set for life. The reality is, three years later, I’m not only still planning, but I’m also still learning how to plan better.

My first year’s plans were an honest effort. I was sure to include all the components I’d learned during my Fellows pre-service training: an objective, standard(s) addressed, HITS (High Impact Teaching Strategies) I would be employing, materials, motivation and introduction to new material, guided practice, independent practice and summary. Other than the HITS (which I think is just so adorable), my lesson plans look similar in structure, with a few minor changes and additions.

Those first lesson plans however, were lacking the same depth of experience as their teacher. (more…)

More than 15 city teachers and staff sent to reassignment centers last year are still waiting for charges to be filed against them, a seeming violation of an agreement between the city and the union.

In April, the city and union agreed to close the reassignment centers — known as “rubber rooms” — and to clear out the backlog of cases by the end of the calendar year. In order to do that, the agreement stated that the city would have 60 days to either file charges against an accused teacher or return her to her school.

For teachers reassigned before September, the agreement gave the city a November 1 deadline to file charges. But according to numbers the city and the union released today, 16 employees that should have received charges are still waiting for them.

“I expect both sides to live up to the terms of the agreement,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. (more…)

City officials brushed off parents’ concerns over an ongoing cheating investigation at a Bronx high school last night, telling them that if the principal had really been changing grades, the school wouldn’t be failing.

In 2009, teachers at Herbert Lehman High School reported that executive principal Janet Saraceno was changing dozens of students’ grades in order to boost the school’s graduation rate. More than a year later, Saraceno remains under investigation and Lehman is teetering on the edge of being shut down by the city after receiving an F on its progress report. Yet when parents asked Department of Education officials about the investigation at a meeting last night, they were told to ignore it.

“Let’s let the investigators do their work,” said Juan Ruiz, a DOE official heading the team assigned to support Lehman. He told parents that if Saraceno had really been changing students’ grades from failing to passing, “we probably wouldn’t have an F.”

In fact, Saraceno is only under investigation for changing grades during the 2008-09 school year and Lehman’s progress report grade for that year was a B. A year later, after DOE officials became aware of the cheating and began to monitor the school more closely, its grade fell to an F. (more…)

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

Stacey,

Let’s shift gears slightly from teacher incentives to a connected topic — teacher effectiveness. As with so many terms in education, this is a bit of a jargony term and also one that 20 people might give 20 different definitions for. The concept of teacher effectiveness as currently used as part of the dominant narrative seems to be pretty straightforward — the more academic growth students show while the responsibility of an individual teacher the more effective that teacher is. Of course, this definition opens up a slew of questions. Here are just a few: What data are used, and how are they used, to measure academic growth? How is an individual teacher’s impact on a student or group of students differentiated from other variables that might also impact growth?What happens in those subjects and/or grade levels where standardized assessments don’t yet exist?

The concept of teacher effectiveness has been used by schools and districts as the underpinning of merit pay and incentive systems. I found it interesting to learn through your last post that your school does not tie incentives to individual teachers’ effectiveness. I wonder if this is because of the difficulties in evaluating effectiveness or because the potential impact on the culture of collegiality you have built or for some other reason.

A new trend in public education is to use teacher effectiveness as a concept to underpin teacher evaluation. I won’t claim to be an expert on all the current plans across the country or even in Denver (where legislation was recently passed on this topic specifically). At schools I have helped start and run we have never considered using student growth data as part of a teacher’s evaluation, and I don’t think we will any time soon even though the schools themselves have to meet very specific benchmarks in order to remain open. (Among other issues, I have definitely seen years where weak teachers have students show strong growth in test scores while the students of great teachers show little growth in test scores. It happens.)

I have started to spend time thinking more deeply about the idea both as it might play out in the larger public school system and how it could play out at an individual charter school. (more…)

• On Coca-Cola’s board, Cathie Black sat on a committee that dealt with keeping Coke in schools. (Times)
• Coca-Cola has a record of labor abuses in its overseas plants, Juan Gonzalez writes. (Daily News)
• Discussion of Black’s appointment dominated last night’s school board meeting. (Times, WNYC)
• Black visited Tweed Courthouse yesterday for the first time since being appointed. (GothamSchools)
• Black vowed that she would be approved and become chancellor. (Post)
• She also said 40 years of management experience qualifies her for the job. (NY1)
• Members of the state legislature’s minority caucus are registering concerns about Black. (Daily News)
• New Yorkers shouldn’t have to wait while Black gets up to speed, Josh Greenman writes. (Daily News)
• Bronx students have mixed opinions on Black’s business advice. (NY1)
• After six custodians were laid off, students say Lehman High School is a mess. (Daily News)
• Brooklyn students used radar guns to identify speeding outside their elementary school. (City Room)
• Maggie Gallagher says the solution to boys’ underachievement is to let boys be boys. (Post)

• “Public school chic has to be a positive” compared to previous “neglect.” (Atlantic Monthly)
• At tonight’s PEP, Norman Scott and Joel Klein shared a wish-fulfilling embrace. (Twitter, EdNotes)
• The weekly salmon-colored newspaper becomes the first to endorse Cathie Black. (Observer)
• Class sizes rose by an average of 0.6 students per class this year. (Edwize)
• A Daily News edit-head explains why Cathie Black’s not winning his patience. (Daily News)
• Sol Stern doesn’t care who Bloomberg picks; they’ll all share his poor principles. (City Journal)
• Assemblyman James Brennan says we need a chancellor to “hit the ground running.” (E-mail)
• Mayor Bloomberg will make another announcement this week: budget cuts! (WSJNY)
• Meanwhile, in Chicago, the interim schools head is a foundation leader. (Catalyst)
• New York is one of eight states doing a pilot program to transform teacher education. (AP)
• Is this attempt by ed schools to turn themselves around the real deal? (Rick Hess Says No)

Cathie Black, Mayor Bloomberg's nominee to replace Joel Klein, arrived at Tweed Courthouse today for the first time. Photo courtesy of the Department of Education.

New schools chancellor appointee Cathie Black visited Department of Education headquarters at Tweed Courthouse for the first time today, exactly a week after Mayor Michael Bloomberg surprised the city with her appointment.

Black met with the members of the chancellor’s cabinet, which includes all of the deputy chancellors and heads of various departments, said spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz. She also introduced herself to many of the staff, Ravitz said.

If Black becomes chancellor, she will enter the department as a virtual unknown to many of its staff. Black has almost no experience in education, and her appointment came as a surprise even to some of current Chancellor Joel Klein’s senior aides.

Since Bloomberg announced Black’s appointment last week, the chancellor appointee has been sequestered from the press and the public. Yesterday, Deputy Mayors Harold Wolfson and Dennis Walcott, as well as the city’s chief lobbyist Micah Lasher, were spotted by Times reporters at Hearst’s headquarters meeting with Black.

More photos from Black’s visit, courtesy of the Department of Education: (more…)