GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The Gotham School brain trust must have done a rush job today. The article about the Military has nothing to do with “Cadets”. Cadets are the best and brightest in the country, perhaps even oct-scoring a character like Klein. The article was about military “recruits”, those attempting to enlist. Cadets are the young folks that go to places like West Point and tha Naval Academy.

Here is ONE prediction – IF the court rules in the favor of the UFT and Black is not allowed to be appointed based on her lack of educational credentials, I predict Emperor Bloomberg will contribute “PHILANTHROPIC DONATIONS” to the President of CUNY in exchange for giving Black an “honorary MA” degree in some subject – i.e. Basket Weaving. Abra cadabra – now she is educationally qualified AND she has the waiver from Commish Steiner. The parents, teachers, and students lose again. Anyone want to take bets on this prophecy coming to pass?

Article on charter schools movement in Cleveland, Ohio.

Why do newly formed charter schools or recently established charter schools always have a picture of a minority child? Why would it seem that the charter schools target the poor Black and hispanic communities? Why do these profit organizations continue to perpetuate the “separate and unequal” education in our nation? Why isn’t the AFT or the NEA revisiting the historical, landmark decision of Brown vs Board of Education and determine if these charter schools are violating the decree?

Sometimes your remainders are less than satisfactory.

rather than yet another WSJ plug for “The Lottery”, directed by the daughter of a prominent charter school supporter, and funded through the family fortune, I would recommend the WaPost Answer sheet, with the banned play Jamaica HS students wrote about the closing of their school at

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/a-student-play-criticizing-sch.html

Also, our parent blog, w/ goodbye and good riddance to Joel Klein at

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/12/goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-joel-klein.html

Leonie-

remember, Gotham Schools only pays lip service to being “unbiased.” in reality they are just another cog in the deformers movement.

oops that should be “corrected”, not correctly. See what happens when you don’t double check your work before you hit submit

I’m not a teacher, but if I WERE, I’d think the holidays are a little less happy given Klein’s goodbye and look-out-for-the-layoffs from the hatchet-wielder-in-waiting message.

As a PARENT, I don’t appreciate it either.

But I DO appreciate that there are people like Leonie Haimson, no, make than Leonie Haimson individually, out there blogging 24/7/365 — including XMas eve — to call out those whose policies haven’t performed as hyped, and whose departing droppings, far from having any semblance of humility, regret, remorse, or retrospection, only continue the spin and promise more of the same.

Both at Tweed and at NewsCorp.

Then there’s this:
Check out the story of Kaplan University (on-line revenue cash cow for the WashPo) bilking students out of registration fees. Covered on HuffPo 12/22. Why mention here? Klein’s new job is online ed for another media conglomerate. The confusion between profit and meaningful education, let alone meaningful graduation, will be a continuing theme in Klein’s career arc.

And this:
“We are working with the Obama administration to find solutions [for PCB problems in school light fixtures and caulking] that do not impose a $1 billion unfunded mandate on city taxpayers that would force 15,000 teacher layoffs.”
– DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz (in NewsCorp’s WSJ)
Check it out on HuffPo.

More T.S. for J.K.:
“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.”
– T. S. Eliot

So pardon this Xmas eve defense of the elves, one in particular, in spite of the Scrooges selling lumps of coal and proclaiming them diamonds in the same media outlets with which they are in cahoots.

Only in the distorted world view of Bloomberg, Klein, and Black should we have to choose between teachers and toxins.

Other than that, Happy Holidaze to everyone.

I agree with Michael M and roma. In my opinion, Leonie Haimson is a Godsend and is fighting a valiant fight on behalf of the students, parents and teachers of the New York City Public School System. And I agree with Leonie that the “Remainders” here at GothamSchools, especially this one, definitely leave a lot to be desired.

In addition to Leonie, I also appreciate the people who filed the lawsuits and made the trip to Albany to try to have the Cathie Black wavier overturned. Special thanks to Norm Scott for sharing his videos of the hearings; the lawyers including Norman Siegel, Eric Snyder and Mr. Warenhem who all did a wonderful job presenting their cases; and the parents, teachers, students and involved citizens who made the trip to Albany. These are the true heroes and heroines of the education battle.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to get more involved in the issues facing our schools and I hope other NYC teachers and parents will join me. We must act now, even if it is not our school being targeted for closure or co-location, even if it is not our job being threatened, even if it is not our students who are being irreparably damaged by the misguided decisions of the DOE… because tomorrow it very well may be.

And by “little darling” I’m not talking about Leonie H. but our points of views.

Article on Ms. Petro: Former teacher who did sex work says “reassignment” means paid time to write her memoir.

If the DoE take steps to terminate her, using the 3020a process, especially since all of this is in her past, will the DoE also terminate the principal, Richard Bost, of Fordham Leadership Academy for his sexual harrassment, which was committed during his tenure?

Here’s the article and a reminder to everyone the double-standard that the DoE is notorious of using. http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/06/24/2010-06-24_bx_principal_probed__again__in_sex_harass_charges_from_staffers.html

I was very surprised last year when he closed the schools. I was watching channel 2, getting ready to dig out my car for work, wondering whether I’d manage, while the weather guy was expressing disbelief the schools were closed. Minutes later he announced city schools were closed. In my school a lot of people came in before discovering the school was closed. It’s patently irresponsible, if it’s too dangerous to travel, to wait until the last moment and put people at risk.

Perhaps it’s an improvement on Giuliani’s approach. One day, while driving on the LIE, cars crashing to my right and left, I heard Saint Rudy say for goodness sake stay home if at all possible. Oddly he hadn’t bothered to close the schools. I posted his words on the board for the three or four kids who showed up. I can’t remember whether or not I gave them extra credit for being as crazy as I was.

Alex,
the fundamental mistake that the city makes is that they use confidence intervals to give individual teachers a score. This is totally false. I am also suspicious about any other statistics tool they misuse. I want their methodology, to be published and challenged by, or reviewed, by mathematicians who know what they are talking about.
My trust has being destroyed by Klein’s Incompetence, and by the incompetence of the people that work for him. The UFT should hire expert statisticians not just lawyers to challenge the city’s insistence to publish erroneous and useless scores.

May Bloomberg’s position soon be added to the “Recently Posted Jobs” of your site.

Think of this blizzard as his and Klein’s destructive educational policies over the past nine years.

Students, parents, and teachers smothered under the ineptness, corruption, and incompetence of this tyrannical mayor.

The destruction of New York City – Bloomberg style.

Arrogance incarnate. Manifest stupidity. Basic inhumanity.

Superficial ‘Progressivity’. Abuse of power. Blind, bumbling, morally neutral commercialization and gentrification. Destruction of public education: replacement of scattered corruption with rampant and more aggressive corruption of a different kind.

Here’s the link to the Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/nyregion/30black.html?hpw

From Cathie Black’s nightmare scenario, after having taught for 20 minutes at a high needs middle or high school in the Bronx….”I fire myself, as it is obvious that I cannot fire my little children!” and she can be overheard talking in the phone, at some little dark corner of the building, to some Manhattan high roller, “hey, I have NEVER worked for an organization where I had NO SAY on the fate of my underlings!”  ”I quit.”  

Cathie, please do fasten your seatbelt, as the rollercoaster of NYC Public School is starting UP.

Teacher of LD kids,
my comment refers to the following paragraph in the NYT article

“The high margin of error for most scores, something the city refers to as the confidence interval, is another source of uncertainty, Dr. Corcoran said. In math, judging a teacher over three years, the average confidence interval was 34 points, meaning a city teacher who was ranked in the 63rd percentile actually had a score anywhere between the 46th and 80th percentiles, with the 63rd percentile as the most likely score. Even then, the ranking is only 95 percent certain. The result is that half of the city’s ranked teachers were statistically indistinguishable. ”

As you know, confidence intervals are used to estimate a population mean using a statistic from a SRS. The approximation must be taking from a normal distribution, or an approximately normal (mount shaped) distribution. The researcher has to decide whether to use Z-scores or t-scores to find the CI using a predetermined confidence level. A teacher’s performance is not easily measured as a baseball players performance. I specifically would like a mathematical justification of the methodology they used to arrive at a score assigned to a specific teacher. Their word that they (the DOE) went about it scientifically is meaningless.

Correction: I meant “ineffective” – below about the 2nd percentile. Oops. Sorry.