GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Four schools that the city tried to close last year will stay open after officials decided that they had shown enough improvement to earn a reprieve.

The schools — three of them high schools and one a middle school — were among 19 schools the city tried and failed to close last year after the teachers union sued to stop the closures. Given another year, but significantly fewer students and funding, most of those 19 schools were recommended for closure again this year. None of them are being considered for the other two school improvement strategies suggested by the federal government that the city will use in other struggling schools.

The four schools that faced closure last year, but will remain open, are the Choir Academy of Harlem’s high school grades, Maxwell Career and Technical High School, the Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence, and Business, Computer Applications, and Entrepreneurship High School.

City officials cited the schools’ improvement on their progress reports, which are given to schools annually and assign them grades from A through F. (more…)

The city announced plans to shutter an additional 14 schools this morning, making a total of 26 schools that may either close entirely or begin to phase out starting next fall.

Yesterday, city officials announced their plans to close 11 district schools and recommended that the state not renew the charter of Ross Global Academy, a Manhattan charter school.

The final list of planned closures includes most — but not all — of the schools the city originally proposed to close last year before it was blocked by a lawsuit brought by the city teachers union, the NAACP and other groups.

Citing improvements the schools have made over the past year, the city is sparing four of the 19 schools the city proposed closing last year: the Choir Academy of Harlem, W.H. Maxwell Career and Technical Education High School, the Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence and the Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship High School.

The city is proposing that most of the schools on its list stop admitting new classes next year and phase out over time. For two schools, KAPPA II and the Academy for Collaborative Education, the city plans to shutter all grades at once at the end of this year.

City officials culled the final list of 25 district schools to close from a larger list of 55 schools that they targeted for possible closure earlier in the fall. Of the 30 schools on that list that were spared today, 14 may still undergo one of two federally-approved strategies for school improvement.

One of those scenarios, known as the “turnaround” model, requires that the schools’ principals be replaced and its staff and teachers re-apply for their jobs; only half may be re-hired. The other model, known as “transformation,” relies on replacing the principal, bringing in outside support services and experimenting with new teacher training and school schedules.

The city and union are currently in talks over which schools might use each model.

Here is the final list of schools the city wants to close. The schools highlighted below were announced today.

While eating my lunch yesterday, I noticed the unmistakable sound of a wolf howling. Or rather, it was the unmistakable sound of a third-grader howling like a wolf. It wasn’t especially loud, but it definitely broke the code of silence of the hallway. To say the least, I was intrigued.

Why was this boy walking down the halls howling, oblivious to the world around him? Three possible, but hardly mutually exclusive, explanations:

1. The kid’s got issues: Maybe he’s one of those “problem kids.” I’ve known a few kids who seem almost powerless to control the noises coming out of their mouth. Beeps, horns, farts, you name it. His howling could be an actual learning disability, an ongoing behavior issue, a cry for attention, or a combination of the three.
2. The kid’s just being a kid: Kids make noises (see explanation 1). Sometimes they aren’t as reverent to the sanctity of the hallway as they should. Sometimes they just want to howl like wolf.
3. The kid is using his imagination for once: (more…)

• Cathie Black is researching the schools by talking to Hearst employees with children in them. (NYT)
• Shael Polakow-Suranky says his job won’t change much, though his boss and title will. (Daily News)
• The city named 12 schools that it plans to close, will announce about a dozen more today. (WSJ, Post)
• JFK students say the city helped new schools in the building, but not theirs. (Daily News)
• Ross Global Academy plans to fight the city’s determination that it should lose its charter. (NYT)
• The charter school’s founder, Courtney Ross, blames the low test scores on multiple relocations. (WSJ)
• The UFT defended its position that the city should not release teachers’ effectiveness scores. (GS, Post)
• Governor Paterson gave a $500,000 grant to Chess-in-the-Schools. (Post)
• Officials haven’t decided how to use space in Marine Park JHS, but parents say no high school. (Post)
• Removed from the classroom, a teacher is getting her full salary while writing her memoir. (Daily News)
• The Daily News backs Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s move to shutter under-enrolled schools.
• A global survey found Americans average in reading, below-average in math. (Washington Post)
• Shanghai students’ high reading and math scores are catching experts by surprise. (NYT)
• Michelle Rhee aims to raise $1 billion to lobby local and federal electeds. (New York Times)

• Leonie Haimson said the schools targeted for closure were set up to fail. (NYC Public School Parents)
• Michelle Rhee’s new project: a “grassroots movement” for better schools. (StudentsFirst.org)
• Rhee says she “fell down” when it came to letting good teachers know they were good. (Newsweek)
• Here’s video of Rhee’s big announcement, made on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show. (Oprah.com)
• Sometimes students just inexplicably hate their teachers. (Miss Brave)
• Auditions for the city’s screened arts schools can take forever, Liz Willen reports. (Insideschools)
• Mike Petrilli says Joel Klein’s farewell column suggests he didn’t learn much as chancellor. (Flypaper)
• City Councilman Charles Barron is planning daily anti-Cathie Black protests all week. (Daily Transom)
• Students from two Brooklyn high schools have a championship football game tomorrow. (DN)
• Chair of the State Senate Education Committee Suzi Oppenheimer held onto her seat. (DN)
• Most students will have a hard time meeting the new common standards, a new report says. (EdWeek)

Laying out its case for why the courts should stop the Bloomberg administration from releasing teacher effectiveness ratings, the city teachers union described the ratings as internal, incomplete, and riddled with flaws

The union is trying to block the city from releasing the names and ratings of nearly 12,000 teachers, arguing that releasing them would be an invasion of teachers’ privacy.

The bulk of the materials filed today were prepared by United Federation of Teachers researcher Jackie Bennett and are intended to show that the data reports are inaccurate.

“The UFT’s review of the TDR’s has revealed that a large portion of the reports received are materially flawed as they have been calculated based on errors in student lists,” Bennett writes.

“In addition, most of the flaws identified came from the most recent year’s TDRs, for which information was slightly less opaque and memories were fresher,” she continues. “Yet, the TDRs contain three more years of historical student lists and information, lumped in aggregate numbers. The UFT found it very difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate that information, even in a superficial manner.”

The union has been encouraging teachers to report errors on their reports since city officials announced in October that they intended to release the reports publicly. To support Bennett’s argument, the union filed nearly 20 examples of individual data reports that it says show errors. (more…)

City officials announced plans today to close 11 schools and said they will recommend that the state shutter a charter school for poor performance.

More school-closure notices will be handed down tomorrow when the city announces which of the remaining 44 schools on its endangered list will be phased-out. That list includes the 19 schools the city tried to close last year, but was barred by a union lawsuit, as well as others that were identified after progress reports for last year came out.

Officials said today that they will ask the state Board of Regents not to renew the charter for Ross Global Academy — the city’s lowest performing charter school. During the five years since it opened, Ross has gone through six principals.

City officials said they were already working on proposal for new schools to replace the ones they phase-out or close this year.

Of the eleven district schools named today, the city hopes to phase-out ten, meaning that next year they will keep their current students, but not enroll any more. One school, KAPPA II, will close at the end of this school year if the citywide school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, approves this proposal. Currently, it only has 36 sixth and seventh graders enrolled. (more…)

• Black gave her first sit-down interview on Friday. (WABC, full video: parts 1 and 2)
• She said that she’s in “complete alignment” with outgoing chancellor Klein’s views. (Times)
• Michael Mulgrew on Black’s remarks on tenure: “They’re not telling her all the facts.” (Daily News)
• A Brooklyn parent sued the state to block Black from becoming chancellor. (Times, NY1)
• Black’s introduction to the public has come very slowly. (WNYC)
• Mayor Bloomberg has privately expressed regret over the handling of the roll-out, sources say. (Post)

And in other news:

• The city let a deal that gave principals subsidies for hiring subs from the ATR pool lapse. (Daily News)
• More than 20 states are overhauling teacher evaluations, many using Gates-funded research. (Times)
• The Bronx’s P.S. 35 thanked private donors for replacing the school’s stolen computers. (Daily News)
• Parents are struggling to help their students who failed state exams last year catch up. (Daily News)
• Public Advocate de Blasio asked the DOE to help the 109,000 students who failed the tests. (Daily News)
• Newark schools’ advisory board found the district meets rules for ending state control. (Star-Ledger)
• Rising pension costs do the most harm to low-income kids, two budget advocates argue. (Daily News)
• A UWS PTA treasurer accused of theft is also a convicted murderer. (Post)
• Michelle Rhee has joined the transition team of Florida governer-elect Rick Scott. (Washington Post)
• Gay teens are 40 percent more likely to be punished at school, a study found. (Washington Post)

• In her first interview, Cathie Black says she’s a “strong, seasoned manager.” (ABC)
• A Brooklyn parent sued the state to block Black from becoming chancellor. (NYT)
• Joel Klein reflects on what he “learned at the education barricades.” (Wall Street Journal)
• Polakow-Suransky, the soon-to-be chief academic officer, is meeting State Island parents. (SI Advance)
• A middle school in lower Manhattan is having a hard time attracting students. (Tribeca Trib)
• Members of a Philly folk band performed with students from P.S. 171 in East Harlem. (NYT)
• The feds will be grading how well RttT winners have lived up to their promises. (Politics K-12)
• Are Valerie Strauss and Diane Ravitch the anti-elite Sarah Palin and Glenn Becks of the left? (Russo)
• Checker Finn critiques Ravitch’s call for a GOP push for more local control of schools. (Flypaper)
• A TN report on teacher training deems TFA grads the most effective. (Commercial Appeal via Eduwonk)
• If WikiLeaks had any dirt on NYC’s operations, Joel Klein and Cathie Black would make the list. (NYT)

For her first sit-down interview today, Cathie Black enjoyed a friendly softball toss with WABC 7′s Art McFarland.

In the first excerpt of the interview to air, Black defended her qualifications as a manager against critics who charge that she lacks the education credentials necessary to do a good job.

“We’re all human beings,” she said. “It is about people. After all, it is about people. They can be little people as young students or teachers or principals or any of the other organizations that surrounds it.”

McFarland then asked if Black expected the public outrage over her appointment.

“First of all, I’m not taking it personally,” she said. “They don’t know me. If they knew me and said this, that’s something different. But they don’t know me. So they’re venting their anger. I have three words: let’s go forward. None of this is going to change the outcome. So let’s go forward, together.”

This clip, the first excerpt of McFarland’s long interview with Black, did not include more details about how Black intends to move the school system forward. McFarland said that other sections will discuss Black’s plans.

GothamSchools has formally requested an interview with Black through the Department of Education. We don’t usually release our interview questions in advance, but we thought in this case we’d make an exception. Add your own questions for her in the comments.

• What is your theory of change for public education? Do you favor incremental change, as Randi Weingarten has, or do you endorse Michelle Rhee’s idea of radical change? What are the pros and cons of each?
• Can you be more specific about what you mean by good management? And who are the people that the chancellor is responsible for managing, in your mind?
• What factors will you consider when you decide whether to close a school? (more…)