GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Renaissance students take 90 minutes of English twice a week long after their peers have finished the school day.

At 4 p.m., long after most city high school students have gone home, a group of Bronx students trudge into two warm, sleepy classrooms and begin their school day.

For most of them, graduation is a long-shot. Some are 17 years old and have no more than six credits completed; they’ll need 44 to get a diploma. Others are new mothers or have to hold day jobs that make going to regular day-time classes impossible.

For its students on the brink of dropping out, Christopher Columbus High School has an unusual program: an after-hours school for its most at-risk students.

In many New York City high schools, when a student seems irrevocably off course — he’s failed so many classes that there’s no way he’ll graduate in four years — there’s a standard response.

If he’s over 17.5 years old, he might enroll in one of the city’s Young Adult Borough Centers, known as YABC programs, which offer classes at night for students who are a few credits shy of graduation. Alternatively, a counselor might recommend that he switch to a transfer school, where younger students who are falling behind are pushed toward a diploma. (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.

After my project-based learning experiment failed to produce significant gains in my students’ understanding of history, I changed course for the second semester. I adopted a highly structured curriculum, built around one-week mini-units, covering a chronology of world history from the Enlightenment through the Cold War.  My tenth-grade students would take the Regents exam in global history at end of the school year, and I needed to make up for a lot of lost time with them.

Each mini-unit focused on an era (the Enlightenment, World Wars) or a theme (industrialization, imperialism). I created a packet for each one, and handed it out to the students during class on a Monday. The students would have four class days to work through the packet before being assessed on Friday.

I spent hours creating those packets. Each one asked students to define and use key vocabulary, answer comprehension questions about main ideas, and reflect on connections between the topic and their own lives. I also offered “extension” exercises to higher-level students who finished early. The packets represented my best attempt to satisfy competing demands: differentiated instruction, student-centered learning, covering content, and forging the path of least resistance in terms of my own classroom management.

The students responded positively. (more…)

• The city will cut $4 million from the Department of Education’s technology consulting costs. (Daily News)
• The student play that criticizes Mayor Bloomberg’s school policies will be staged next week. (Daily News)
• Police arrested two Lehman HS students in the stabbing of teen from a nearby school. (Times, Post, NY1)
• State Sen. Ruben Diaz wants stronger penalties for soliciting a prostitute near a school. (Daily News)
• Millennium HS is vying for downtown space with an uptown school that’s set to move. (Tribeca Trib)
• Currently Los Angeles’s second in command, John Deasy is set to be its next schools chief. (L.A. Times)
• Gov. Cuomo will deliver a weekly online address to schools and students. (NY1, AP)
• N.J. Gov. Chris Christie signed a toughened anti-bullying law. (Times)

• Former Obama edu advisor Jon Schnur will devise a philanthropic strategy for Bloomberg. (EdWeek)
• Joel Klein gives himself an A for leadership, a lower grade for public relations. (Freakonomics/NYT)
• In an effort to keep tests secure, schools inhibit parents from helping their children. (Jay Mathews)
• The choir at Celia Cruz High School won a citywide chorus concert. (Bronx News Network)
• Peer evaluation of teachers may be difficult, but it needs to be given a try. (Steve Evangelista)
• Kentucky considers teacher bonuses for high AP exam scores. (EdWeek)
• Putting together a class seating chart is much harder than it seems. (Ruben Brosbe)
• Andrew Rotherham lists 11 people likely to “shake up” education in 2011. (Time Magazine)
• Here’s what you get if you apply the Tea Party movement’s principles to education. (Eduflack)
• A report gives 15 policies states can use to “do more with less.” (Fordham Institute)
• Language in ESEA’s reauthorization could change how we evaluate teachers. (Economist)

As journalists, we try to scrutinize education advocacy funding. But soon, the foundations and advocates may be turning the microscope back on us.

The Center for Education Reform — a Washington, D.C.-based group that pushes for the expansion of charter schools — is preparing to launch a new project it’s calling “The Media Bullpen.” The site will be designed to “monitor the daily flow of education news and respond to it in real time,” according to a preview of how the site might work posted on its website.

A six-point baseball-themed ratings system will determine whether stories are accurate, with facts “portrayed in the correct light” (“Home Run”), or  ”completely wrong,” drawing “invalid” conclusions (“Strikeout!”).

It’s not clear how the center’s advocacy positions and those of the funders of the project — several powerful foundations — will affect the ratings.The center declined to provide any details on the venture until closer to its release.

The project drew concern from Linda Perlstein, the public editor of the Education Writers Association. “Will ‘the correct light’ wind up meaning less about accuracy than about viewpoint?” she asked.

According to the preview, the venture is being funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Gleason Family Foundation, the Bradley Foundation and a $275,000 grant from the Gates Foundation.

The site first attracted attention last month, when the job posting for the site’s managing editor began to circulate. The job description includes two notable requirements. On one hand, the managing editor should be a “passionate advocate for education reform”; on the other, she should also practice “sound journalistic ethics.” Many journalists believe that ethics prohibit them from becoming advocates of particular policy positions.

The job description harkened back to a question that GothamSchools once tried to resolve with a contest: Though supporters of school choice like CER are often called “reformers,” education reform means different things to different people, and almost everyone involved in education would like to see change of some kind. (We eventually dubbed the pro-charter camp into which CER falls the “idealocrats.”)

So it matters whether the Media Bullpen project is looking for a passionate advocate of “reform” in the broad sense or in a much narrower one. Whatever meaning the project takes will likely make a huge difference in how it rates education coverage.

When a Brooklyn elementary school principal sunk her school nearly $180,000 in debt and was eventually removed from her post, teachers expected a fresh start.

Instead, they experienced the city’s typical solution for bankrupt schools: a payment plan.

P.S. 114 in Canarsie, Brooklyn was given four years to repay the city. Now that the city plans to begin closing the school next year, the teachers union, parents, and teachers are blaming the school’s decline on the debt left by a principal they asked the city to fire. City officials are calling this claim is unfair, since other schools manage to pay the city back while keeping their test scores up.

City schools can easily overspend if they don’t factor budget cuts and enrollment decreases into their spending plans. When this happens, the city doesn’t eat the loss and give the school a clean slate the next year. Instead, schools are put on payment plans in which they’re given several years to pay the city back. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said some schools emerge from this process unscathed, while others struggle with painful cuts.

P.S. 114 falls in the second category. In the last year, its students’ test scores have dropped. About 35 percent of its students tested proficient on the reading test, compared to 53 percent citywide. And 34 percent passed the math test, whereas citywide, that number was 61 percent. The low scores earned the school a D on its annual progress report and a spot on the city’s closure list. (more…)

It took three tries, but I finally rearranged my seating chart. It’s amazing how the seemingly simplest tasks can require so much thought. The goal is basic enough. I need to somehow seat 28 students in a way that they can all do their best work. The actual process is more complex.

A seating chart accounts for several factors. First, who are the top performing students? I try to spread them out so they can act as helpers at each table. Next, who are the behavioral problems? I try to spread them out too. Depending on your perspective, I do this to surround them with positive role models, or just to minimize their damage. Finally, who are the students who get along and who are the students who do not get along?

Once I’ve weighed each of these factors, I’m ready to create a seating chart. But, wait, did I make sure to put the students who don’t speak English near other students who will be helpful? Did I make sure I’ll be able to keep an eye on a student who is easily distracted while I’m doing guided reading? Did I do a decent job mixing girls and boys together?

In the end, it’s practically a miracle it only took me three tries to put my seating chart together. Then again, this was all theoretical. Tomorrow it will be really interesting when I get to see how the arrangements work out in real life.

• A Bronx teen was stabbed near his violence-ridden special needs school. (Times, WSJ, Daily News)
• Researchers and advocates are working to restore the role of play in children’s lives. (Times)
• Private schools routinely ask students with special needs to leave, which they can legally do. (Times)
• More school complaints were made but fewer were substantiated last year. (Post, NY1)
• Queens politicians are going to bat for Jamaica High School, which the city wants to close. (Daily News)
• Ross Global Charter’s petition to stop its closure says the city didn’t give it fair warning. (Post)
• School turnarounds depend on principals, who can halt improvement by leaving. (Boston Globe)

• More than 3,300 complaints were lodged against city schools last year, an 11 percent increase. (WSJ)
• Joel Klein’s lasting legacy may be the number of current superintendents he trained. (Learning Matters)
• Cathie Black accompanied Mayor Bloomberg to Albany for the Cuomo’s address. (Daily Politics)
• Black’s $47,600 Bulgari bracelet is on view at the Museum of the City of New York. (Abacus Mom)
• Early-2oth-century ed theories dictated the construction of the John Jay HS building. (Brownstoner)
• A researcher outlines pros and cons (mostly cons) of seniority-based layoffs. (Rick Hess Straight Up)
• A former teacher is starting a website to connect parents to teacher-tutors. (Beyond Teaching)
• Malia and Sasha Obama returned to school from vacation a few days late. (Russo)

Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School Principal Brian Rosenbloom was recognized by Gov. Andrew Cuomo during today's state of the state speech.

When Governor Andrew Cuomo wanted to make the case during his State of the State address today that it’s possible to transform education, he pointed to a familiar face as proof.

That face belonged to Brian Rosenbloom, whom followers of the WNYC/GothamSchools project The Big Fix might recognize as the principal of Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School.

Cuomo praised Rosenbloom for dramatically boosting Chelsea High students’ attendance and the rate at which students pass their Regents exams during his two years as principal of the school.

“That performance is what we want to incentivize, that performance is what we want to model,” Cuomo said.

In part because of the progress that Chelsea has shown under Rosenbloom, city officials spared the school from closure and instead opted to spend nearly $1 million in federal grant money to let the school experiment with extended day programs, new “master” teachers, and outside community support.

Cuomo overstated the gains the school has made, however. In his speech, Cuomo said that the school’s Regents pass rates have dramatically risen from 31 percent to 89 percent.

That’s not quite true, Rosenbloom confirmed to WNYC’s Beth Fertig after the speech. The numbers that Cuomo cited are the rates that sophomores passed the Global History Regents between 2008 and 2010 — still an impressive jump.

The overall Regents pass rates at the school are lower, though the progress is still substantial. According to the most recent data available from the state, 73 percent of all the Chelsea students who took the Global History exam passed in the 2008-09 school year, up from 48 percent the year before. The school posted an 80 percent pass rate on the Comprehensive English exam in 2008-09, up from 66 percent the year before.

Rosenbloom told Fertig that one of his teachers watched the speech with his class at the school; the students went “ballistic” when they saw him, he said.

“I was very humbled by the experience, and I must say that I think a lot of the credit should also go to my staff and the students who worked hard to see changes in their school,” he said.

Fertig profiled Rosenbloom and his efforts at Chelsea for The Big Fix back in October; you can listen to the piece here.