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For more than 6,000 teachers, the path to tenure this year will be different and, the city hopes, tougher.

City education officials announced a new rubric today that will guide principals as they make tenure recommendations this year. The “effectiveness framework” places teachers in one of four categories: highly effective, effective, developing, and ineffective, based on students’ tests scores, classroom observations, parent feedback, and other factors. No single element is meant to be weighed more heavily than the others and principals still have the ability to pick and choose what goes into their final decision.

Principals will be encouraged to give tenure only to teachers they believe are effective or highly effective, city officials said today. Teachers who are “developing” will have their probation extended, giving them another year in which to improve. This extension can occur again and again until a principal makes a final decision or the teacher leaves the job.

In the past, granting tenure meant checking a series of boxes in an online form. Was the teacher dressed appropriately? Check. Did she have good classroom management? Check. Principals who wanted to deny tenure had to offer a brief justification, but granting it didn’t require a principal to give her rationale for doing so. (more…)

The most jarring experience I have on a regular basis is the 70-minute trip I take once a month from my school in the North Bronx down to the UFT headquarters in Downtown Manhattan.

I start on the fourth floor of my school, go down a stairwell that, by the end of the day, is often filled with food, condoms, or fresh graffiti, and head out to Gun Hill Road. Across the street, I see an entire city block of shops that have been boarded up for the five years I’ve been working there, walk about 10 minutes past litter-filled gutters, past the YB gang that stands daily at the corner of Gun Hill and White Plains to terrorize our students, and board the 2 train.

I emerge from the train nearly an hour later at the Wall Street stop. I walk half a block, only to be met by the stare of George Washington in front of the neo-classical Federal Hall where he was inaugurated, take a left to pass the New York Stock Exchange, move past the tourists, and a few blocks later arrive at the teachers union headquarters, located in a towering office building. (more…)

• Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s sizable slush fund is likely to disappear under Republicans. (Times)
• The DOE’s turnaround chief resigned from his last job after a staffer embezzled funds. (Daily News)
• After News Corp.’s big education technology buy, it must figure out its broad strategy. (WSJ)
• Despite a grant from Gov. Paterson, Chess-in-the-Schools is making cuts and charging schools. (Post)
• Some principals manage to keep teaching, despite the many demands on their time. (Daily News)
• Brownsville’s PS 12 is struggling to maintain tutoring that 80 percent of students need. (Daily News)
• Students at three city high schools are taking comedy classes. (Post)
• A new study found teachers whose students rated them highly also posted higher test scores. (Times)
• Students say the closure of new schools shows that schools haven’t improved recently. (Daily News)
• Atlanta, long among the most stable urban school districts, is now embroiled in turmoil. (Times)
• A teacher charges that working at A Philip Randolph HS gave him a heart condition. (Daily News)
• Two lawyers could face fines for frivolously filing rubber room legal challenges. (Post)
• The teens whose fight preceded an intervening teacher’s miscarriage won’t face charges. (Post)
• Geoffrey Canada isn’t saying for sure whether Mayor Bloomberg offered him the chancellorship. (NY1)
• A school finance advocate says the state will have to make unpopular moves to cut school costs. (Post)

• Cathie Black says Mayor Bloomberg told her she was the first pick for chancellor. (NY1, NYT)
• Seyward Darby: Bloomberg wanted the “right type” of chancellor in Geoffrey Canada. (TNR)
• A study by the Gates Foundation says value-added measurements are reliable. (LA Times)
• The study found teachers’ success at raising scores predictive of future success. (Washington Post)
• P.S. 12 could lose a promising after school tutoring program to budget cuts. (Daily News)
• Democracy Prep has parted ways with a school it ran in Rhode Island. (Daily Politics)
• Michelle Rhee visited Democracy Prep in New York City today. (Ed Reformer)
• Health magazine’s list of the 10 jobs most likely to cause depression includes teaching. (Gawker)
• A former teacher is troubled by students’ comments on the Bergtraum post. (Mildly Melancholy)
• One teacher’s advice: don’t try to break up your students’ fights. (Chaz)
• Ruben Brosbe: “Sometimes I feel less like a teacher, and more like a pull-string doll.” (GS Community)
• South Bronx students and their coach find new meaning in “Number the Stars.” (GS Community)
• A teacher catches his students’ plagiarism, but finds colleagues are letting is slide by. (NYC Educator)
• Two Washington Post columnists debate the merits of Teach for America. (Washington Post)
• After cheating allegations surfaced, Atlanta teachers are now saying they’re true. (Flypaper)

City officials are planning to unveil a new evaluation system for un-tenured teachers and have enlisted the help of a prominent educator.

The Danielson Group — run by Charlotte Danielson, the creator of a widely-used taxonomy of teaching called the Framework for Teaching — is consulting with the Department of Education to create measures of good teaching tailored for the city.

Sources said the new evaluation system will be used for probationary teachers — those who typically have fewer than three years experience — and will guide principals in making tenure decisions. The new evaluation system has yet to be unveiled to teachers and principals, but DOE officials have shown it to network leaders, who will be charged with training principals in its use.

Meant to be in place by the time tenure decisions are made this spring, the new framework is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s push to make tenure more difficult to attain. In a speech delivered on NBC in September, the mayor said that tenure should not be a “formality” for teachers and vowed that this year, principals would use a new evaluation system. (more…)

Yesterday’s riot at Murry Bergtraum High School was the culmination of tensions that have simmered in the school since the arrival of a new principal this year, students said today.

Teachers said hundreds of students began running through the hallways, screaming and pushing each other, after new executive principal Andrea Lewis told students that the schools’ bathrooms would be closed for the day. But students said the incident was fueled by frustration over changes Lewis has made since she became principal at the beginning of this year.

City officials placed Lewis in Bergtraum in July as a “superprincipal” charged with improving the struggling school. Lewis will receive a $25,000 bonus for agreeing to lead the lower Manhattan school for three years.

Bergtraum has struggled with safety and overcrowding issues and received a D on last year’s progress report. Lewis’ previous school, ACORN Community High School, repeatedly received high grades on DOE-issued progress report cards. (more…)

Sometimes I feel less like a teacher, and more like a pull-string doll. “What are you supposed to be doing right now? Are you doing your best? Let me see who’s listening?”

These are the phrases I’ve come to rely on in my classroom. I like them, because they frame things positively, but I have to admit it gets a little repetitive.

This week I added a new catch phrase to my repertoire. “We’re a team.” It’s become a simple, catchall statement to let students know they’re doing something wrong. Not showing me they’re ready for lunch? We’re a team. Talking during a read aloud? We’re a team.

Does it get repetitive? Hell yes. Like all the sayings I use, sometimes it’s hard to muster enthusiasm and it loses a bit of its poetry. But while it’s a struggle to stick to the script, it ultimately keeps me from lecturing and it keeps a positive tone. It might be boring or cheesy, but I’ll stick with my key phrases as long as they work. What phrases do you rely on in your classroom?

“Wait — what? I thought you were Buddhist, Ms. Q,” says Simone, a talented ninth-grade member of the theater program and speech team I coach at my South Bronx school.

“Nope,” I say. “I do a lot of yoga, but that doesn’t automatically make a person a Buddhist. Technically, I’m Jewish.”

Jewish. It’s still weird for me to say this.

“Wow, I had no idea,” says Simone. Then she gestures to the open paperback on the desk in front of her. “What a weird coincidence,” she says.

I’m sitting in a vacated classroom after school with Simone and her sister Sahirah, who are turning Lois Lowry’s classic young adult Holocaust novel “Number the Stars” into a 10-minute theater piece.

The whole situation is remarkable for a few reasons.

Number one, the sisters have taken the initiative to find their own piece of literature to adapt for competitive performance. (more…)

• With just two days’ notice, few parents attended a meeting about JFK HS’s closure. (Riverdale Press)
• The state named 21 more city schools that must be revamped. (GothamSchools, NY1, Post, Daily News)
• The city will spearhead development of a toughened high school equivalency exam. (NY1)
• The state might ask districts to pay $6 per student for Regents exams. (Daily News)
• Students rioted at Murry Bergtaum HS after the principal closed bathrooms. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• A Bronx middle school teacher miscarried after breaking up a fight. (Times, Post, Daily News, NY1)
• Harlem Children’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada is said to have turned down the chancellorship. (Times)
• Education Secretary Arne Duncan met with and endorsed Cathie Black. (NY1, Post, Daily News)
• IN-Tech Academy in the Bronx is the subject of multiple mystery investigations. (Riverdale Press)
• Nationwide, about 150 schools have replaced half their staffs to get federal aid. (Washington Post)
• The mayor of Los Angeles is stepping up his attacks on the city’s teachers union. (L.A. Times)
• Pressure-cooker communities are digging the anti-stress film “Race to Nowhere.” (Times)

• Mayor Bloomberg’s first choice to replace Klein was Geoffrey Canada, who turned it down. (NYT)
• Murry Bergtraum students rioted after the principal restricted bathroom access today. (GS)
• Cathie Black told the Daily News’s editorial board that there will likely be teacher layoffs. (WNYC)
• Assemblyman Hakim Jeffries joined a lawsuit to overturn Cathie Black’s appointment. (Observer)
• Arne Duncan came to town today to tout a pilot program to improve GED prep. (Observer)
• Many districts are opting for the more invasive “turnaround” improvement method. (Washington Post)
• Mike Petrilli posts a Twitter debate he had with Diane Ravitch about cost cutting. (Flypaper)
• The students in “Waiting for Superman” got to meet President Obama. (MSNBC)
• It will take more than a few lessons on bullying to really reach students. (GS Community)
• A Chicago union activist says a vote for Rahm Emanuel is a vote for Arne Duncan. (Fred Klonsky)
• British students protesting an increase in college costs rioted in London today. (NYT)