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A top advisor to former Chancellor Joel Klein who resigned shortly after Cathie Black took office is embarking on a new career as a professor to principals.

Former Deputy Chancellor Eric Nadelstern, who hinted last month that he’d been offered a teaching position, is taking a job at Columbia’s Teacher College as a professor of practice in educational leadership. Nadelstern told me today that he also has plans to author two books — one about the lessons he’s learned in urban education reform and one about his time as a principal and deputy chancellor.

Nadelstern, who left the Department of Education last month, was the most senior educator among Klein’s top advisors. He began teaching in 1972 at Dewitt Clinton High School, the high school from which he graduated, and has since worked at almost every level of the city’s education system.

He was also the subject of much speculation when Klein stepped down last year, as many thought Nadelstern would be named chancellor. But when Mayor Bloomberg appointed Black and and Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky was named her second in command, Nadelstern’s departure seemed inevitable to many observers. (more…)

City principals might be well advised to go on spending sprees — or else pay a price for planning ahead.

For the second time in two years, the Department of Education is trying to counter budget cuts by limiting the amount of money principals can roll over from this year’s budget into next.

Typically, a program known as the “Deferred Budget Planning Initiative” allows principals to stash unused money in a rainy-day fund that they can raid in the case of unexpected expenses or midyear cuts. But this year, principals are being asked to hand over half of their unused funds to the department’s central administration.

“This year, considering the current budget climate, the Deferred Program Planning Initiative is not a prudent option as it was originally designed,” said Barbara Morgan, a DOE spokeswoman. (more…)

Last weekend Teach For America held its 20th Anniversary Summit in Washington, D.C. It’s hard to imagine this program which started as a graduate thesis idea is now one of the most prestigious and exclusive pathways for college grads to enter the classroom. In honor of this milestone, there has been a lot written about TFA and its rise to fame and fortune.

TFA alum Robert Schwartz’s column from The Huffington Post is especially potent. As a TFA corps member, former principal and Chief Academic Officer of a charter network, Schwartz seems to know the ins and outs of TFA pretty well, which makes his criticism of TFA pretty valid.

Schwartz outlines several ways that TFA has drifted from its core mission of putting good teachers in the hardest to staff schools. The point that stuck with me was his first: “More and more, corps members are placed in high performing charter networks who have little trouble filling teaching positions.” This runs totally counter to TFA’s founding mission of placing teachers in hard-to-staff schools.

The problem was illustrated to me firsthand when a friend’s sister who has just been admitted to TFA e-mailed me asking for advice getting a job. She told me that TFA will be distributing her resume to charter schools and on a map of schools TFA is in contact, about half were charters. She also expressed her desire to find a job in a “supportive charter school environment” because she wants to be a career educator.

I did my best to answer some of her questions, and then added an unsolicited plug for teaching at a traditional district school. Based on personal experience and countless horror stories out there, it’s hard to argue that a district school would be better or more “supportive” for her. But it is where she’s needed. Twenty years ago, that’s where TFA would have told her to go and it still should today.

• The city says it found $2 billion but still needs to lay of 4,666 teachers. (Times, Daily News, NY1, WSJ)
• A group of teachers say “last in, first out” layoff rules are too blunt but not all bad. (WNYC)
• N.J. Education Commissioner Chris Cerf unveiled a plan to limit, but not eliminate, tenure. (Times, Post)
• PS 308 is decrepit and can’t fit the charter school that’s slated to move in, people there say. (Daily News)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan said districts should lay off neither all young nor all senior teachers. (Post)
• The Daily News says Paul Egan’s restaurant meltdown highlights the teachers union’s foibles.
• Andrea Peyser: Cathie Black’s appointment is turning out to be a political mistake for Bloomberg. (Post)

• Madison, Wis. cancelled school today after teachers staged a “sick-out” to protest cuts. (Times)
• The UFT official thrown out of an Albany restaurant complained about its bad service. (Daily Politics)
• The official, Paul Egan, was implicated in a cheating scandal as a teacher in 2000. (DN, Post)
• Foes and defenders of the seniority-based layoff system have taken to the airwaves to battle. (City Room)
• Common Cause said Ed Reform Now’s ad represents an “alarming trend” in politics. (Cap Confidential)
• In an open letter on education cuts, Gov. Cuomo argued New York should “spend smarter.” (LoHud)
• Upstate superintendents argued budget cuts hurt small, less affluent districts the most. (WHEC)
• A Hudson Valley assemblyman called the teachers union “despicable beyond belief.” (State of Politics)
• A union member says Bloomberg is manufacturing a crisis with his layoff predictions. (Ed in the Apple)
• New research may point to more accurate ways of diagnosing ADHD. (Inside School Research)
• The Hebrew Charter School Center hopes to open 20 schools in the next five years. (Forward)
• Rick Hess says that D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray seems to be scrapping school reform. (EdWeek)
• But Andy Rotherham says the jury is still out on Gray’s plans for schools. (Eduwonk)
• Applications for the city’s new high schools are due at the end of this month. (InsideSchools)

The vast majority of city principals say they’re happy with the support they get from the Department of Education, according to the latest results of the city’s survey of school leaders. But the number of contented principals has slipped.

Nearly three-quarters of principals reported feeling satisfied or very satisfied with how the city helps them do their jobs on the most recent survey, which was given in November. That’s a six percentage point drop from last April, the last time the survey was administered, and it’s the lowest level since the city began surveying school leaders in 2007.

The survey also shows a dip in principals’ satisfaction with former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein during his last year in office. The number of principals happy with Klein’s leadership in boosting student achievement fell by 10 percentage points between November 2009 and 2010, with smaller numbers reporting satisfaction with his record with regards to school resources, oversight and curriculum as well.

Principals answered the questionnaire in November and December 2010, just after Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Klein’s surprise resignation from the DOE and the appointment of new Chancellor Cathie Black. (more…)

After several years of mixed reviews and a decision by its authorizer to give it an abbreviated charter, a charter school run by the city’s teachers union is losing its principal.

Sources close to the school said that Danny Wilcox, the principal of the United Federation of Teachers’ secondary charter school is stepping down. Wilcox, who would not comment on his departure, is the third principal to leave the secondary school since it opened in 2005.

It’s not clear if Wilcox is leaving of his own volition or if his departure is part of a top-down effort to change the school after its latest round of disappointing test scores. A spokesman for the union refused to comment on Wilcox’s leaving.

Most schools saw their scores suffer last fall when the state made its annual math and English exams more difficult to pass, but the UFT Charter School’s results were low enough to earn it a D on its annual progress report. For the second year in a row, it was in the bottom five percent of schools. On average, a little over 19 percent of its students in grades 6-8 were proficient on the English exam and about 25 percent met the proficiency bar on the state’s math exam.

Last June, after SUNY’s Charter School Institute decided to not to renew the school’s charter for five years, but rather to give it a three-year trial period, the union brought in former Associate Commissioner of the State Education Department Sheila Evans-Tranumn to be the school’s executive director. (more…)

I had just yelled in fury at a student who was engaged in bullying another student — the one behavior that I absolutely will not tolerate, and out of the myriad maladjusted behaviors I deal with daily the one that will get me the most angry. One of my most explosive and constantly challenging students (e.g. will curse at me and throw things if I do not immediately call on him each and every time he raises his hand) came up to me and softly said, placing his hand on my shoulder, “It’s okay, Mr. Anderson, you just have to let it go. It’s not worth it.”

Despite the fact that I was fuming at the moment, I stepped away from the conflict cycle I had been engaged in, and almost laughed outright. My anger began to dissipate as I breathed, thanked my concerned student, and thought, “Guess I must be teaching them something!”

I sometimes find (on the good days — the days when my heart and mind are still open and not bludgeoned shut from lack of sleep, constantly shifting schedules, paperwork, etc.) that I am the student in my own classroom, and that my students are the ones teaching me. They are teaching me how to teach them and what they most need. I just need to listen.

I am a second-year teacher in a self-contained special education fifth-grade classroom in the Bronx. As a Teaching Fellow, I am a career changer, inducted into the teaching ranks through an alternative certification route — I worked previously in both retail and hospitality management. Now just to clarify, when I say “management,” I don’t mean that I sat in some office and delegated underlings as I drank tea. I mean management as in I not only delegated workers to perform oft unsavory tasks such as cleaning bathrooms or stocking shelves, but I then performed that work alongside them. I’m happy to say that I may produce some of the cleanest bathrooms in the world (unfortunately, there’s no standardized test for that at the moment). And one of the central tenets I have learned from this management experience is that: 1) you have to work harder than those whom you ask to perform work; and 2) you have to be able to actively listen to those you work with in order to truly motivate them. (more…)

• The intensifying battle over teacher layoffs could be fueled by revised layoff predictions tomorrow. (WSJ)
• Chancellor Cathie Black told legislators that proposed budget cuts are unfairly large. (WNYC, NY1)
• David Steiner said new teacher evaluations will make “last in, first out” worries “moot.” (Daily News)
• Cathie Black and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott said the two issues are totally separate. (Post)
• The founders of Educators 4 Excellence explain their plan for a “last in, first out” alternative. (Daily News)
• The city is also mulling a plan to freeze the way schools pay for teacher salaries if layoffs happen. (Post)
• The Post says Steiner’s point is a problem because it doesn’t address this year’s layoffs.
• A new report says most city charter schools receive more pupil funding. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• Potential mayoral candidate Bill Thompson is currying favor with charter school supporters. (NY1)
• City union officials were ejected from an Albany restaurant after contesting their check. (Daily News)
• The city wants to build a school in Kensington, but a private developer wants the space. (Brooklyn Paper)
• Two female students compete on the wrestling team at Brooklyn’s Wingate High School. (Daily News)
• Michael Goodwin: Asian students’ specialized high school success shouldn’t be ignored. (Daily News)
• Labor and management from more than 150 districts sought detente in Denver. (Times, WSJ)
• Arne Duncan appears to have planned to attack “last in, first out” policies in his speech but did not. (Post)
• The Post says Duncan’s omission proves that the teachers unions control what he says.

• Chancellor Black received pointed questions as she protested budget cuts in Albany today. (City Room)
• Less than a third of city students take free breakfast and more from a council hearing. (GS Community)
• President Obama threatened to veto a House budget that would cut education spending. (Politics K12)
• Obama’s budget is a policy document; it includes a DARPA-like plan for ed research. (Politics K12)
• Many of stimulus-stimulated policy changes are already endangered across the country. (Hechinger)
• Diane Ravitch calls Teach For America a “huge success story,” but a “scary” one. (Bridging Differences)
• Philly’s superintendent will take 20 days of furlough, saving $31,000 in salary costs. (Notebook)
• Duncan: “We reject the idea that ‘collaboration’…is a codeword for cowardice.” (Teacher Beat)
• John Merrow, PBS’s education correspondent, has a book out about teachers. (Influence of Teachers)