GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Remember those commercials we used to watch for cereal when we were kids? The sugary cereal would be bookended by bran toast, a glass of orange juice, a glass of milk, and a bowl of granola topped with a sliced banana. “Sugar Cereal X is a part of this nutritionally balanced breakfast!” the announcer would inform us.

I would never consider the arts as superfluous to a child’s education as sugar cereal to a breakfast, but I wonder if others do. Recently I posted a project on DonorsChoose requesting support for a project that will give my kids pastels, charcoal, water colors and picture frames. I posted the proposal on my personal blog, and I got this comment from “Mad Jack”:

The thought that occurs to me is that time in school would be better spent teaching your budding Picasso to read, write and speak English rather than fine art. But perhaps that’s an invalid opinion, since I’m not a certified school teacher.

Mad Jack pointed out that in my proposal I stated almost all of my students are below level in reading and math. With that in mind, does he have a point? I think a lot of us from “touchy-feely” backgrounds certainly embrace the role of the arts in education, but do my students have time for them when some of them are reading at a kindergarten level or can’t subtract basic minuends?

I want to say emphatically to Mad Jack, who I hope isn’t serving as too much of a straw man, YES. I am certain there’s research to support my claim, but for the purpose of this post, I’m going to speak from personal experience. (more…)

• Schools are closed today, Chancellor Black just announced via email.
• Principals took home $7 million in bonuses based on last year’s test scores. (Post, NY1, Daily News)
• A study found that black students and those with special needs are suspended more often. (Daily News)
• Chancellor Black attended the closure hearing for IS 195, which she visited last week. (NY1, WNYC)
• For better or worse, Educators 4 Excellence is creating a space in the debate for young teachers. (Post)
• E4E’s founders explain why they quit teaching to start an education policy group. (Post)
• Schools that are slated for closure have more high-needs students. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• Only a single parent attended a meeting about JFK High School’s proposed closure. (Riverdale Press)
• A senior at Frederick Douglass Academy is applying to college while living alone in a shelter. (Times)
• The high school in Ossining, N.Y., proves diverse schools can have high-level science programs. (Times)
• College freshman report being more stressed out than ever. (Times)

• The wind is howling and more snow is on its way. Check at 5 a.m. for news of an off-day!
• Miss the State of the Union? Here’s a round-up of Obama’s ed remarks. (Early Ed Watch)
• Michelle Rhee, Diane Ravitch et al. grade the SOTU speech on its education angle. (NYT)
• Rachael Brown calls the speech a “victory lap” with little news. (The Atlantic)
• The Denver school mentioned in the SOTU isn’t as great as the president let on. (NPR)
• IBO report: The schools slated for closure have the most challenging students. (GS, NYT)
• The Alliance for Quality Education put out a video about edu inequality in New York. (Ed Vox)
• Rick Hess: Obama’s education comments were cliched, but not in a bad way. (EdWeek)
• A federal report sees hope for a “golden age” in science education. (Hechinger)
• Bill Gates says the hardest part of the MET study has been finding the right districts. (EdWeek)

A high school’s size and its concentration of low-achieving and overage students strongly predicts its graduation rate, according to an internal Department of Education study obtained by GothamSchools today.

The 20-page report, prepared for the city by the consultant firm Parthenon Group in 2008, gives fodder for both supporters and critics of the city’s strategy of closing low-performing large high schools and replacing them with new small schools.

The presentation shows that large schools struggle to serve large concentrations of challenging students. But it also suggests that the Department of Education knew about this problem years ago but continued to allow many large schools to be flooded with low-performing students.

Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters and an outspoken critic of the city’s school closure efforts, provided the report to GothamSchools.

The report examines how a students’ chance of graduation varies widely depending on the type of high school he or she attends.

For example, a hypothetical black or Hispanic girl with the median city test scores and middle school attendance and no special needs would have an 83 percent chance of graduating from a small school with a low concentration of challenging students. The same student would have just a 55 percent chance of graduating from a large high school with much higher percentage of students with special needs. (more…)

The city’s teachers union doesn’t spend much time fighting opposition from factions within itself, but a new group of teachers critical of many of the union’s work rules are garnering unusual attention from its president.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew spoke at a meeting of Educators 4 Excellence last night, a group started last March by two elementary school teachers in the Bronx. Founded with the goal of injecting teachers’ voices into citywide education policy debates, the organization has attracted Gates Foundation funding and support from prominent groups like Education Reform Now, which is pushing for an end to seniority-based layoffs. (more…)

The 25 schools the city is trying to close are low-performing, but their students are among the city’s most challenging — and are only getting needier over time.

Those are the findings of a report released today by the Independent Budget Office, the city’s data watchdog.

City officials argue that these low-performing schools should be closed because other schools serve similar student populations with better results. But critics of the closures often counter that the schools were set up to fail after the city sent them comparatively larger numbers of under-prepared, special needs and English language learning students.

The report confirms that many of the schools slated for closure have been enrolling increasingly high percentages of the city’s most challenging students since 2005.

In 10 of the 14 high schools on the closure list, for example, ninth-graders who entered the school in 2009 arrived with lower scores than their predecessors in 2007. The percentage of students entering the schools overage has grown to more than double the citywide average. (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.

In my first year at the Brooklyn Arts Academy, I never once was able to command sustained, attentive silence from my 10th-grade students. So I’ll never forget the way a guest speaker walked into my classroom and engaged their rapt attention.

The speaker, Mr. G, was a middle-aged Dominican man who’d had a troubled youth but turned his life around, becoming a pastor and teacher of incarcerated teenagers. One of our school aides attended his church, and subsequently invited him to speak with our students about his experiences teaching in a juvenile detention center. He talked about the consequences of making bad decisions, the hard work it takes to build a successful life, and the grace of second chances. His speech clearly resonated with my students, as they hung on his every word and peppered him with thoughtful questions.

Watching them watch him, I thought to myself that this man could turn our school around. Unlike most teachers at our school, he could speak authentically about living in and overcoming poverty as well as turning away from a life of crime. He had a commanding physical presence as well, yet never once raised his voice. Most importantly, he balanced his intimidating persona with charisma and a sense of humor that let students know he cared.

My principal recognized that Mr. G would be a huge asset to our staff, and set about negotiating to hire him for the next year. (more…)

Wendy Kopp says she doesn't want to be schools chancellor, but it's a great job. Photo courtesy of Tulane Publications.

The occasion of Teach For America’s twentieth anniversary, along with a new book by founder Wendy Kopp summarizing the lessons she’s learned, is pulling the usually low-profile don out of her shell — and leading her to say some interesting things.

Yesterday, the Daily Beast’s Dana Goldstein published a profile in which Kopp said she would love to run the New York City schools.

Or, at least, she seemed to say that. When I asked her to follow up yesterday afternoon, Kopp dismissed the idea.

Education writer Goldstein writes that it is “fair to wonder if Kopp, 44, has her own political ambitions”:

In an interview at TFA’s loft-like headquarters near New York’s Penn Station, she smiles when asked if Mayor Mike Bloomberg spoke to her about replacing former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. Despite a long relationship between TFA and the New York City schools, he did not, she says.

The job went to former Hearst magazines chief Cathie Black, who had no professional experience in public education, and who sent her own children to private boarding school. Kopp, whose four kids attend public schools on Manhattan’s West Side, says running the city’s schools would be a dream job, far more attractive than heading to Washington, D.C. to succeed Arne Duncan as the secretary of Education.

Goldstein also quotes Kopp calling the chancellor job “the best job in the world.”

“I think it’s just awesome,” she gushes. Then she catches herself. “That being said, other than my job. I’ve really drunk all the Teach for America Kool-Aid myself.”

When I asked Kopp if she was actually trying to signal her interest in the position, she gave a firm no. “I really do think the Chancellor job is a great job — but I don’t want it myself!” she wrote in an e-mail. “I was trying to make the point that so much of the critical work happens at the school district level. This is one of the highest impact and most important jobs in the country.”

Kopp also told the Daily Beast that she opposes the Bloomberg administration’s push to publish individual teachers’ value-added effectiveness scores, calling the idea “baffling.”

“The principals of very high performing schools would all say their No. 1 strategy is to build extraordinary teams,” Kopp said. “I can’t imagine it’s a good organizational strategy to go publish the names of teachers and one data point about whether they are effective or not in the newspaper.”

• A third of fourth-graders and a fifth of twelfth-graders passed a nationwide science test. (Times)
• N. Y.’s fourth-graders scored just below the U.S. average and eighth-graders just above it. (DN, Post)
• As city schools close, more students graduate, but more also drop out, officials said yesterday. (WNYC)
• Michael Mulgrew told members of E4E that the city pits young teachers against older ones. (Post, NY1)
• UWS parents protested a proposal to move a Success Academy charter school into Brandeis HS. (NY1)
• Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee lobby for ending the “last in, first out” layoff method. (Daily News)
• Brownsville police are helping teens busted for robbery go back to school and get job training. (DN)
• PS 290′s PTA was rocked after a parent promoted a book that questions the Holocaust. (Times)

• “Become a teacher,” President Obama says in SOTU address. (Edweek)
• 70 groups have submitted letters of intent to open charter schools in NYC next year. (Centerpoint)
• TFA founder Wendy Kopp doesn’t want teachers’ value-added scores released to the press. (Daily Beast)
• Critics of edu doc Waiting for Superman are thrilled it didn’t make the Oscars cut. (NYC Parents)
• Most students didn’t meet the proficiency bar on a nationwide science test. (NY Times)
• Rahm Emanuel: The choice between an educator and a manager is a false one. (Fox Chicago)
• With the Office of School Food taking a budget cut, non-profits are stepping up. (GS Community)
• The Bloomberg administration is pushing hard against last-in first-out in the press. (City Room)
• An NYC transplant in Beirut describes her school during “The Day of Anger.” (Present Perfect)
• The US DOE unveiled an education dashboard that shows the latest edu data. (Eduflack)
• Wyoming lawmakers want to monitor teachers with videos in their classrooms. (Flypaper)