GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Responding to principals’ ire, the Department of Education is reducing the portion of funds it plans to recoup from schools that save for next year.

Schools will now get to keep 70 percent of the money that principals elect to roll over to next year’s budget, according to an email that Chancellor Cathie Black just sent to school leaders. That’s up from the 50 percent that the DOE originally announced last month it would reclaim for administrative spending. Principals still have until March 18 to decide whether to participate in the rollover program, known as the Deferred Program Planning Initiative, or go on a spending spree right now.

The take-back plan angered principals and parents who felt penalized for budgeting prudently in tough times. It was in response to their “thoughtful feedback” that the change was made, Black wrote.

Last year, then-Chancellor Joel Klein also made a bid to take back every cent principals set aside in rainy-day funds for the subsequent year. After protests, Klein reversed his decree. Mayor Bloomberg yesterday suggested that he favored a similar change this year, saying during a radio interview that criticism of Black’s plan contained “some merit” and that he would be discussing the plan with Black early this week.

Today, Bloomberg said in a statement, “The chancellor came in this afternoon and briefed me on her plan, and I immediately signed off on it.”

Black’s complete email to principals is below: (more…)

New York City’s heralded $75 million experiment in teacher incentive pay — deemed “transcendent” when it was announced in 2007 — did not increase student achievement at all, a new study by the Harvard economist Roland Fryer concludes.

“If anything,” Fryer writes of schools that participated in the program, “student achievement declined.” Fryer and his team used state math and English test scores as the main indicator of academic achievement.

Schools could distribute the bonus money based on individual teachers' results, but most did not. Most teachers received the average bonus of $3,000.

The program, which was first funded by private foundations and then by taxpayer dollars, also had no impact on teacher behaviors that researchers measured. These included whether teachers stayed at their schools or in the city school district and how teachers described their job satisfaction and school quality in a survey.

The program had only a “negligible” effect on a list of other measures that includes student attendance, behavioral problems, Regents exam scores, and high school graduation rates, the study found.

The experiment targeted 200 high-need schools and 20,000 teachers between the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 school years. The Bloomberg administration quietly discontinued it last year, turning back on the mayor’s early vow to expand the program quickly.

The program handed out bonuses based on the schools’ results on the city’s progress report cards. The report cards grade schools based primarily on how much progress they make in improving students’ state test scores. A so-called “compensation team” at each school decided how to distribute the money — a maximum of $3,000 per teachers union member, if the school completely met its target, and $1,500 per union member if the school improved its report card score by 75%. (more…)

Stacey Gauthier, principal of Renaissance Charter High School, and Marc Waxman, who is opening a charter school in Denver, are corresponding about school policy. Read their entire exchange.

Dear Marc,

I really enjoyed reading your last letter. As you know, I have a background in anthropology and so I particularly enjoyed the way you wove a reference to Alvin Toffler into our conversation. As an information-age society we can and should expect our educational system to support the changing needs of society. I would further add that the information age brings the need to nurture globally-minded citizens who will be working either actually or virtually around world. Global education includes second- and third-language mastery, geography, economics, environmental science/agriculture, and other relevant social sciences. And while I hesitate a bit jumping into a discussion that is more political philosophy, the need for a system that fosters humanistic education seems to be screaming to be heard. To quote one of my mentors, Dr. Monte Joffee, founding principal of Renaissance Charter School, “We will know we are successful when we are able to have both high student achievement and humanistic education in all of our schools.” The attributes you listed in your post seem to indicate you share this belief.

Unfortunately, I often feel that our efforts as school leaders do tend to fall much more into the “piecemeal” change category. I think this is both because we are too busy trying to work within the existing system and thus don’t have the time to be revolutionaries and also that the kind of change you are talking about requires a real movement. Clearly, there is an educational reform agenda being pushed by some very influential people and some of their agenda does seem in line with your Info-Age paradigm shift, but not all does. So I gather that we are both looking at creating a different movement.

Given all this, I decided to do some really quick research on Finland and its education system. The country is often raised as a model and interestingly, for New York at least, is fully unionized. I found  an interesting blog post by Bert Maes, who writes about industry and education, titled, “What makes education in Finland that good? 10 reform principles behind the success.”

By now you know I have a thing for lists, so here is my summary of what I read (more than 10): (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.

Track meets were trying experiences for the students and coaches of Brooklyn Arts Academy, a small school with no prior PSAL (Public School Athletic League) teams. The PSAL does not differentiate between big schools and small schools in track (meaning our tiny team had to go up against powerhouse schools like Boys and Girls High School). Moreover, there is only one venue for the entire city. So on almost every Saturday in February and March, our kids had to bring themselves from Brooklyn all the way to the 168th Street Armory (easily an hour commute) only to sit around most of the day before they got their chance to race.

A single track meet might have 40 teams and a single event, such as the 300-meter dash, could have up to 500 participants. (By contrast, meets I participated in as a high school student typically had no more than 10 teams, and a single event would rarely have more than 50 participants.) At the Armory, athletes were lined up around the track and then brought forward to race, six at a time, as if they were bullets being loaded into the chamber of a gun. Because our students were new to the sport, and those with faster recorded times ran first, they were usually at the end of the line, standing around the track upwards of 45 minutes for their turn at a race that would be over in less than 45 seconds.

The system infuriated me, but I gamely told my students not to worry about their place in the results and race against the clock instead. Our kids ran hard, but it was not lost on them that they were out of their league. I believe the students would have had a more positive experience if they competed only against the athletes of other small schools.

A few students dropped out of the team as the season progressed. Others expressed deep apprehension every time we had a track meet. We had to do everything in our power to cajole some of them into racing. The stress of the meets finally came to a head one Friday evening when we took the team to compete in the relays-only meet that the PSAL required us to participate in.

Things went wrong that day from the beginning. (more…)

News from New York City:

• A prized teacher’s low “value-added” score raises questions about the city’s complex algorithm. (Times)
• Ongoing debate over the city’s teacher evaluation system suggests going statewide could be hard. (Post)
• Mayor Bloomberg said the city might change plans to take back half of schools’ savings. (Daily News)
• The city had 135 fewer arts teachers last year than before, and layoffs could cost 356 more. (Daily News)
• The city said it wants to close two more schools, both transfer schools. (NY1, Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
• City teachers colleges are adapting as they continue to enroll students even as jobs evaporate. (NY1)
• In many ways, New York City was ahead of the curve in the move to healthier school lunches. (Times)
• Applications to city private schools rose by 10 percent this year. (WSJ)
• City parents and principals are worrying about the class size implications of this year’s budget cuts. (AP)

On layoffs:

• Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo’s fight over teacher layoffs reflects their battle over power. (Times)
• Behind their grappling is a widespread assumption that Bloomberg is bluffing on layoffs. (WNYC)
• Bloomberg repeated his claim that the city has no choice but to lay off thousands of teachers. (Post)
• Parents, teachers, and elected officials protested Friday against the mayor’s layoff plan. (NY1)
• Just three state senators from New York City voted to end “last in, first” out layoff rules. (Post)
• The many junior teachers at a Staten Island school are facing deep layoffs. (Post)
• Pictures and profiles of teachers facing layoffs at the Academy for Language and Technology. (Times)
• Public Advocate Bill deBlasio: The city should use its consultants budget to pay teachers. (Daily News)
• Joel Klein and some of his allies have written to Cuomo to ask him to end “last in, first out” rules. (Post)
• A suit that protects needy schools could make Los Angeles the first place to end seniority layoffs. (Times)

Elsewhere:

• Statistical anomalies in test scores nationally suggests widespread test improprieties. (USA Today)
• A coalition of educators and business leaders has formed to promote a national curriculum. (Times)
• Class sizes are rising in many cities and states as school budgets are repeatedly cut. (Times)
• Increased class time is still seen as a boon to students, but longer days are hard to fund. (L.A. Times)
• Angry about state control, Newark parents railed against N.J. schools chief Chris Cerf. (N.J. Spotlight)
• Kaya Henderson will soon be named Michelle Rhee’s permanent replacement in D.C. (Washington Post)
• A study of Rhee’s reforms finds test scores don’t support school improvement claims. (Washington Post)
• Suburban Syosset’s schools chief makes more than $500,000 a year including benefits. (Post)
• The Washington Post praises Arne Duncan’s promise that ESEA will focus on early childhood education.

• Report: Legally mandated planning for special ed students isn’t happening. (Insideschools)
• Two teachers debated last-in-first-out layoff rules on Inside City Hall. (NY1)
• National Research Council: Judgments on Rhee’s success are premature. (WashPost)
• Some public pre-K programs in Manhattan are ridiculously hard to get into. (DNAInfo)
• On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart and Diane Ravitch agreed about education. (Daily Show)
• Matt Damon isn’t happy with Obama, and one of his beefs is education. (CNN)
• A teacher discovers that a colleague didn’t read students’ work. (Pissed Off Teacher)
• District 25 needs a new superintendent, and CFN’s have lots of openings. (Simply Hired)
• Senate Democrats’ budget restores Race to the Top and other ed funding. (Politics K12)
• A challenge emerges to the argument that teaching can be taught. (Joanne Jacobs)

What you can no longer find on the DOE's website: nutritional information, including sugar content, on the chocolate milk served in city school cafeterias. This screen shot was taken earlier today, before the site was blocked.

The ingredients inside the city’s school cafeteria food are once again a mystery.

Hours after GothamSchools published a link to a list of school cafeteria food ingredients today, the city removed it, claiming that the list was never meant to be public.

The fact that the public could briefly bypass a city firewall to reach a nutritional directory was first reported today by GothamSchools Community section contributor Elizabeth Puccini and WE ACT for Environmental Justice’s James Subudhi. (Puccini previously posted the link on the site of NYC Green Schools, a group she founded.) The directory revealed that some food served in cafeterias does not meet the city’s own nutrition guidelines it set last year for bake sale snacks.

The directory included ingredient lists and nutritional information for more than 300 items served in public school cafeterias. The link now directs to a message that reads, “The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”

Department of Education spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said the directory was an internal link to a website the city is building that will eventually publish nutrition information, but that it will not release the information it has already collected now.

“There is no list and never was,” Feinberg said. “We are creating one.” (more…)

A long-time educator known for quietly challenging the Bloomberg administration even when she was a part of it, and for doing so with success, is expected to join the state’s governing board of education.

Kathleen Cashin, a professor at Fordham University and former school support network leader, has been nominated for the Brooklyn position on the New York State Board of Regents, according to several Brooklyn members of the State Assembly. The 17-member board acts as a powerful school board for all of New York State, setting policy on graduation requirements and, more recently, commissioning an overhaul of the state’s standardized tests.

It’s not clear how Cashin’s likely appointment — she is expected to be confirmed at a joint session of the Senate and Assembly next week — will affect the board’s dynamics. Led by Chancellor Merryl Tisch, the board has sometimes infuriated city officials by calling their test scores and graduation rates into question while, at other times, it has validated some of former Chancellor Joel Klein’s efforts to link students’ data to their teachers.

During her decades of working in the city schools, she rose from being the principal of P.S. 193 The Gil Hodges Elementary School to the leader of the Knowledge Network Learning Support Organization, one of the groups that schools hire for support. She became especially well-known for her success as the superintendent of region five — a now-defunct version of a school district — where her schools posted some of the largest gains on the state tests. (more…)

Last week, I shared story ideas for journalists generated at the Education Writers Association seminar on “The Promise and Pitfalls of Improving the Teaching Profession” that I attended. Today, I’m sharing three lessons-learned that are still with me two weeks later.

For full narrative accounts or summaries of the seminar, see those offered by Stacey Snyder, Ken Bernstein, Mark Anderson, Mark Roberts, and Dan Brown. (Ken’s take on things most matches my own.)

Here’s what I took away from the day-long seminar:

• There is no reason ever to have a panel on teaching without teachers on the panel. It’s simply inexcusable. The clearest moment where there was a need for teachers came during the third panel on professional development, when the panelists were asked about the value of National Board Certification. All three panelists said they didn’t know much, but offered the limited anecdotal evidence they knew, and this is where the question died. Yet there were multiple National Board Certified Teachers, myself included, in the room. Why not ask the teachers?
• Luckily, whenever the journalists had the chance to talk to teachers, be it in the hallways, over lunch, or at the formal roundtables that ended the event, I found I was asked good, tough questions and I was genuinely listened to. I was extremely impressed with nearly every interaction I had with members of the press in the room, even those with whom I’m certain I disagree on every educational issue. (more…)

Parents who are interested in knowing the exact ingredients or sugar content of the food their children encounter in the school cafeteria often run up against a brick wall: the Office of SchoolFood’s public website.

The site site lists nutritional information like calories, fat, sodium, protein and dietary fiber. It also assures parents that there are no trans fats or additives like artificial sweeteners and MSG in the food. But the site doesn’t tell parents what is in their children’s meals.

Until now. The Community Section’s “NYC Green Schools” columnist, Elizabeth Puccini, recently learned that James Subudhi, the environmental policy and advocacy coordinator at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, had discovered a back-ways route to the Office of SchoolFood’s directory of ingredients that is not accessible to the public from its main website. Puccini asked Subudhi to share instructions on how parents can access the information:

Because NYC Green Schools believes strongly that parents and students have a right to know the ingredients of the food served in our city’s schools —  that this transparency is a must to ensure the food in our schools is safe and nutritious — we invited James to write about his discovery.

Puccini told us that when she looked at the lists, she was startled to find potential allergens hiding in surprising places. For example, the city’s “fully cooked boiled beef patty” contains textured vegetable protein and caramel color — a problem for unsuspecting students who are allergic to soy. The city’s allergy policy is to offer students a variety of meals in component parts, so that students with allergies can pick and choose from foods that they can eat.

A quick look through the ingredient lists and nutritional food shows that there is a lot of healthy food offered. But it also shows that some products on the city’s cafeteria menus do not meet the nutritional guidelines the city established for bake sale goods last year. (more…)