GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Budget cut protests roiled the State Capitol all night, despite an attempt to keep protesters out. (EdVox)
• Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says the new state budget isn’t so bad for the city. (Daily Politics)
• The student who won Facing History School’s Pi Day competition memorized 162 digits. (New Yorker)
• The father of the 12-year-old charged with a hate crime points out that his son is Muslim, too. (Reuters)
• Sibling preferences mean 18 percent of PS 107′s new students will be nine sets of twins. (City Room)
• We’re just 10 days away from Cathie Black’s hundredth day as chancellor. (FlashGordon, GS Comments)
• Cheating, or “testing irregularities,” predate No Child Left Behind, Rotherham says. (School of Thought)
• A high-design entrant into the field of rapid-response testing instruments. (Fast Company Design)
• A nonprofit that provides eco-friendly binders for low-income schools is thriving. (GS Community)
• Deborah Meier parses the president’s controversial, recanted testing comments. (Bridging Differences)
• Two dozen luminaries are contributing to a blog series called “Futures of School Reform.” (EdWeek)
• Many, but not all, of the people contributing to the “Futures” blog are kind of, well, old. (Russo)

The last two years have been disastrous for public opinion of Mayor Bloomberg’s school policies, according to a new poll.

The poll, conducted last week by Marist, found that just 27 percent of New Yorkers approve of how Mayor Bloomberg is handling the city’s public schools. That’s down from 53 percent in June 2009, the last time the question was asked. Since then, longtime chancellor Joel Klein resigned and was replaced with education newcomer Cathie Black; test scores plummeted after revelations about the quality of state tests; and Bloomberg has waged high-profile battles over school closures, charter schools, and teacher layoffs.

Black’s own poll numbers have been abysmal. Just 17 percent of New Yorkers approve of her performance, according to a Quinnipiac poll earlier this month, and 34 percent said they didn’t know who she was or couldn’t judge her. (In contrast, Klein’s approval rating, always the lowest among public officials, bottomed out at 33 percent in 2007 after he cut school bus routes in the middle of winter.)

Today’s poll also probed New Yorkers’ views on the fight over “last in, first out” layoff rules, which Bloomberg wants to end, and found that half see the mayor’s position as a power grab. (more…)

More eighth-graders applied to New York City’s highest-performing high schools this year, forcing the city to deny more students their top choices than in the past.

Data released on high school admissions by the Department of Education today shows that while fewer eighth-graders applied for seats in public high schools — down from 80,412 last year to 78,747 this year — the process has become more competitive. Fewer students were matched to one of their top five choices and more of them weren’t matched to any schools at all.

City officials’ explanation for this shift is that more eighth graders’ top choices were concentrated in the same set of schools. With so many students vying for the same schools — many of them among the city’s top-performing — fewer students got what they wanted.

This year, 83 percent of students landed one of their top five high school choices, down from 86 percent last year. The number of unmatched students — eighth-graders who weren’t paired with a high school and who will have to reapply to schools with open seats — swelled from 6,694 last year to 8,239 this year.

DOE officials attributed the sudden popularity of some schools to the city’s decision to include schools’ graduation rates in the high school directory. Schools with graduation rates above 90 percent saw a 30 percent rise in applications, while schools whose graduation rates are below 50 percent received 34 percent fewer applications. (more…)

Teachers who are concerned about bedbugs in their schools have a new way to seek relief.

The Department of Education has set up a new email address —bedbugconcerns@schools.nyc.gov — to receive complaints about bedbugs in city schools. School officials can also send photographic evidence of suspected bedbugs to the address so the department can identify, and try to end, infestations.

The new procedure was made public today by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who is counting the address’s creation as a personal victory. Stringer asked the city last year to let school personnel submit bedbug evidence by email, according to a press release from his office. Until now, school officials had to send physical specimens by mail to a department office in Queens in order to initiate treatment, according to Stringer’s announcement, a process that cost precious time in the fight against the invaders.

The city has long maintained that bedbugs are not a major problem for schools, but parents and school personnel continue to complain about the pests — often without getting a response.

“Several teachers in my school have found bedbugs in their classrooms. At least one has given a bedbug sample to the principal. A student even complained of being bit by bedbugs in the classroom,” a teacher wrote to GothamSchools today. “My principal is not remotely interested in the issue and does not respond to staff emails about our concerns. What can we do?” (more…)

Last July I wrote about Dennis Kitchen’s amazing non-profit organization, Getting Tools to City Schools, which provides free school supplies to low-income New York City students by selling recycled, reusable binders to schools.  I thought I’d check in with Dennis to see how sales of his eco-friendly binders were going and to learn more about the free educational component of his work.

Since last year donations to Getting Tools to City Schools have risen threefold due to an increase in corporate grants and in sales of the binders to schools. The response to GTCS’ eco-friendly binders has been so positive that Dennis is considering expanding his line of products to include 100 percent recycled tabbed pocket folder/dividers as well as custom-printed, eco-friendly binder labels of school logos. Although most schools don’t commit to buy binders until the summer, over the last few months Dennis has met with over a dozen public school principals who have verbally committed to buying the binders, which, if all goes according to plan, would result in the sale of about 10,000 binders. With that money Dennis anticipates providing over 3,000 public school students this coming September with free school supplies; last year his organization served 1,000 kids. (more…)

• After three months on the job, Chancellor Cathie Black says her goal is college-readiness. (WNYC)
• About a third of students admitted to specialized high schools last year enrolled elsewhere. (Daily News)
• Lawmakers finalized a budget that will cut at least 3.42 percent of city schools’ funding. (Daily News)
• Kindergarten wait lists are longer than ever. (GothamSchools, Times, WSJ, NY1, Post, Daily News)
• A 12-year-old student was charged with a hate crime after pulling on a classmate’s hijab. (Daily News)
• The parent coordinator at PS 107 in Park Slope roots out students enrolled with false addresses. (Post)
• Pedro Noguera: Bloomberg and Black are not doing enough to help black students. (Daily News)
• School districts across the country are bracing for massive teacher layoffs threatened this year. (Times)
• A study says donations and student attrition help KIPP charter schools. (Times, Washington Post)
• Detroit is considering turning 45 schools over to charter school operators this year. (WSJ)

• Mayor Bloomberg accidentally stopped by a protest against school budget cuts. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• Did he listen to parent activists? Leonie Haimson says no; his office says, “Yes, but.” (Daily Politics)
• Some say Cathie Black is in Europe, but Norm Scott says he’s heard she’s in Brooklyn. (Ed Notes)
• Stephen Lazar responds, with anger, to Ruben Brosbe’s EduSolidarity contribution. (Outside the Cave)
• A teacher-activist: I support teachers unions, but not the leadership of the city’s. (GS Community)
• A defense of New York City’s controversial technology investments. (Flypaper)
• Breaking down the online learning contracts the city has entered into so far this year. (City Room)
• A look at Williamsburg’s PS 84 four years after racial tensions flared there. (Capital NY)
• An examination of the city’s bid to close non-failing schools with many high-needs students. (Edwize)
• Applications to charter schools are due on Friday, the first legally allowed deadline. (Insideschools)
• Michelle Rhee says she was “stupid” to argue against test-tampering investigations. (Class Struggle)

Maura Walz, far right, and the rest of the GothamSchools team at associate editor Philissa Cramer's wedding last fall. Photo by One Love Photo.

Here’s a small piece of news for New York, and a big one for GothamSchools: This will be my last post here.

Later this week I head to Atlanta, where I am about to begin covering education for Georgia Public Broadcasting. (That’s why we’re hiring.) In Georgia I’ll be part of a really exciting new project that will report on schools all around the South and will let me fulfill a long-time dream of working in radio.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, you’ll see links to some of my stories in Rise and Shine. If you know anyone who works in Georgia’s public schools, definitely let me know!

I’m excited to get to know a new school system with entirely different challenges and accomplishments. But I will miss New York and its byzantine system and impassioned parents, teachers, students and policy wonks.

I don’t want to leave without thanking you — GothamSchools’ readers, commenters and tipsters. Thanks for helping me learn something new about the New York City public schools every day I’ve been on this job. Thanks for holding me accountable when I’ve erred. And, most of all, thanks for being such curious and passionate readers with an intense interest in bettering schools.

No matter how much you can argue about the solutions to the problems of public education here — when you even agree on what the problems are — New York City is filled to the brim with people who care deeply about creating excellent public schools for every student. No matter what happens, your quest for better schools will make for a fascinating story. And it’s a story I will continue to follow as I transition from GothamSchools reporter to one of its many dedicated readers.

So farewell, and good luck to you all.

Over 3,000 soon-to-be kindergarteners are on wait-lists for elementary school this year — a marked increase over last year and one that’s hitting schools in Queens and Manhattan particularly hard.

Every spring, in what has become a ritual in recent years, parents register for kindergarten at their nearby elementary schools for the following year ,and every spring, thousands are wait-listed. Department of Education officials said they received 8,000 more kindergarten applications this year than last year. While more than 92 percent of those families have been accepted to their zoned schools, 3,195 of them are still waiting for a placement.

DOE officials emphasized that between now and the end of May the wait list numbers could fluctuate. During the intervening months, some families will move away, enroll their children in private or parochial schools, or win lotteries for charter school admission. Officials said they would open more kindergarten classes where they could find space.

But come the end of May, families who still don’t have seats in their zoned schools will be sent new schools to choose from. Last year, nearly 1,000 kindergarteners did not get spots in their zoned schools. Some of the new assignments sent families to less-coveted schools just down the block. Others sent the 5- and 6-year-olds on treks as arduous as a nearly 3-mile hike from Sunset Park to Red Hook, in the case of four unlucky Brooklyn families. (more…)

There is no shortage of fights to be fought on the education front here in New York and nationally. The Panel for Educational Policy continues to vote to close public schools and to colocate them with privately run education entities known as charter schools, whose backers often come from the business world. There is an intense national push for more teacher accountability, which translates for me and many of my fellow teachers into an increased focus on test scores, data, and merit pay. And there’s the attack on public worker unions, which provide one of the few venues in which workers can still have a collective say in governmental policies and in their working conditions, working hours, and job security.

While we teachers often find ourselves fighting against misguided reforms, there’s also a lot to fight for. As the largest local teachers union in the country, the United Federation Teachers here in New York has the ability to have an incredible impact on education and the direction of education reform. We could be building grassroots support for reforms that would transform education, including culturally responsive curriculum, smaller class sizes, parent and teacher empowerment, the alleviation of poverty-related factors that affect learning, and creating classroom environments that put critical thinking instead of test prep at the forefront.

Research and analysis have repeatedly demonstrated that the reforms listed in the first paragraph do not benefit students. It should seem obvious then, to most informed individuals, that teachers unions would be doing serious work on the ground to mobilize teachers in the fight against them. And of course they would be clearly presenting a positive alternative that could actually transform teaching and learning. This is why I love unions: They provide an opportunity for working people to have a significant voice in these matters, and they can organize their members in support of good policies and against bad ones.

And yet for some reason the Unity Caucus that leads the UFT, which has had practically unchallenged control over the union for decades, is not fighting in a way that so many people wish they would. (more…)