GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• International comparisons suggest boosting U.S. teachers’ skills and status could help schools. (Times)
• MS 391 in the Bronx faces closure for the third time, but supporters say it has made gains. (Daily News)
• The new technology-themed school that IBM is planning to open has steep ambitions. (Gotham Gazette)
• Both budget proposals in Albany reduce cuts to schools, but not by enough, advocates say. (WNYC)
• State Senate Republicans’ bill rolls back some of the grounds for layoffs from the original bill. (Post)
• There’s no middle school extension for Staten Island fifth-graders in an autism program. (Daily News)
• Retired Yankee Bernie Williams is donating musical equipment to the South Bronx’s IS 162. (Daily News)
• It’s not exactly true that 82 percent of schools will be labeled “failing” under No Child Left Behind. (AP)

• The Assembly might compromise with Gov. Cuomo, but not on school budget cuts. (Capital Tonight)
• The Alliance for Quality Education named its donors and wants Cuomo to do the same. (Daily Politics)
• Principal Jason Levy on what to do if a student throws a chair: “First, do no harm.” (GS Community)
• Innovation Zone schools are using trial and error to figure out new ways to teach and learn. (Ed Week)
• East Bronx Academy for the Future is putting its iZone initiatives on display. (Teaching Matters)
• A class makes a new-kid-survival-guide for the girl transferring in, complete with directions. (Mr Foteah)
• The good, the bad, and the intriguing about American students’ scores on international exams. (Flypaper)
• Connecticut’s achievement gap spans the cities and the suburbs. (CT Mirror/Hechinger Report)
• While seniors wait for college news, it’s a good time for them to thank their supporters. (Insideschools)
• Diane Ravitch: Wisc. Gov. Scott Walker is as bad on human rights as Saudi Arabia. (Bridging Differences)
• Resources for teachers looking to bring Wisconsin into the classroom. (Rethinking Schools via Edwize)
• Another look at Kathy Cashin, the former city superintendent and the newest Regent. (City Room)

The city is putting in new measures to help the schools that it is closing, the Department of Education’s top deputy said yesterday.

Those measures, which include formalizing the city’s plans to support the schools and developing best practice guidelines for closing schools, come in response to criticism from the Panel For Educational Policy and others, Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky told GothamSchools.

But parents and teachers should still monitor the city’s progress and hold the department accountable, he told people attending a public meeting in Brooklyn last night organized by City Councilman Brad Lander.

The exchange took up just a few minutes of a two-hour meeting that focused on the effect of testing on city classrooms and on Polakow-Suransky’s hopes for new tests based on national standards.

At the meeting, Ann-Marie Henry-Stephens, an assistant principal and English teacher at Paul Robeson High School, one of the schools that the city plans to phase out, asked Polakow-Suransky how the city planned to better support teachers.

“The teachers who are at my school or at any school really don’t feel supported by the DOE — when is the DOE going to treat us as equals and treat us with some professional courtesy?” Stephens asked, prompting applause from the audience of teachers and parents. She continued:

Right now, we have a new evaluation system, we are hearing about layoffs, the Teacher Data Initiative. A lot of what you are doing and saying to teachers is punitive, and we want support because it’s really hard, there’s so much to learn, so much to do…. So really, when are we going to get the support especially in schools that are struggling?…Schools are struggling and they’re crying out for help, but we don’t get the help, we get evaluated.

Polakow-Suransky responded:

I think you’re right that there’s not been consistent set of supports for the schools that are phasing out as part of the process of creating new schools. (more…)

A search for P.S. 321, an A-rated school in Brooklyn, shows market rate rents and home prices in the area and a link to the nearest Starbucks.

A founding board member of two New York City charter schools has started his own website to help parents find good elementary schools in neighborhoods they can afford.

Called SchoolFisher, the site grades elementary schools according to its own criteria — mainly students’ scores on the state’s tests — and only includes the top 200. Of those, a group of 50 are highlighted in gold for posting the highest scores of all.

“Like Lake Wobegon’s children, all of the schools on this site are above average,” the site reads.

SchoolFisher’s creator is Eric Grannis, who sits on the board of the Public Prep charter school network and is married to Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Success Charter Network. A longtime charter school supporter, Grannis said he wanted to show parents that they didn’t have to live in the poshest neighborhoods to win entry to the best schools. (more…)

GothamSchools is hiring. We’re looking for a new staff reporter to join our team in covering the best beat in America: New York City’s public schools.

Read the full job description here, and contact associate editor Philissa Cramer if you’re interested.

From the description:

The position requires a self-starter who is hungry to break news; eager to dive into one of the most important public policy debates of our time; and enthusiastic about creating new models for sustainable journalism. In just two and a half years, GothamSchools has established itself as a leader in education journalism, and GothamSchools staff members have published articles in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, and Fast Company magazine. Knowledge of and passion for urban K-12 education issues is a strong plus.

What should I do when a student throws a chair or a desk? — Anonymous, NYC
Submit a question for Principal Levy.

To paraphrase medical ethics, first do no harm. This means that in most school safety situations, the primary goal should be to keep a bad situation from getting worse. This means to look for de-escalation opportunities at every possibility.

Prevention

The best way to prevent this incident from happening is to look for the warning signs before the explosion. Typically, a child will throw (or shove over) a desk or chair because of a deep-felt anger. That means that preceding the event, there may be “early warning signs”: heated words, an argument, or hostile body language. As you move around your classroom, keep your line of vision on your students. If you confer with a group at the side of the room, keep your back to the wall so you can check on your class. Look for those signs, but be optimistic — they might not be there!

Response

When a student throws or shoves furniture in a violent manner, your immediate goals must be to determine whether anyone has been hurt and to prevent any more chairs or desks from being thrown. Finally, you’ll want to get assistance from school personnel. Remember: You must document every situation that occurs. Take notes immediately afterwards and record all relevant information while it is fresh in your mind. As soon as possible, write the formal report.

If someone is injured, you need to send a student to track down a school administrator and/or the school nurse.

If no one is injured, you need to do a quick risk assessment. Is this child likely to repeat this behavior? (more…)

• Eva Moskowitz argues in a report that the city doesn’t help English language learners fast enough. (WSJ)
• At the iSchool, students receive virtual instruction from teachers who are on staff elsewhere. (NY1)
• The DOE will use a private firm to communicate its Innovation Zone messaging to teachers. (Post)
• City teachers say current events could be teachable moments if there weren’t Regents exams. (WNYC)
• A mom is suing her daughter’s preschool for not focusing on test prep. (Times, Post, Daily News, WSJ)
• State Senate Republicans will vote on their layoffs bill today. (GothamSchools, WNYC, NY1)
• Gov. Cuomo didn’t embrace the bill, which incorporates his layoffs proposal. (Post)
• Lower Manhattan is getting a new elementary school after all. (City Room, NY1, Post)
• President Obama called for a quick, thoughtful revision of No Child Left Behind. (Times, WSJ, Post)
• Susan Engel: Maybe the best people to redesign public education are the students. (Times)
• Rhode Island’s labor board says the state’s schools chief created a climate of fear. (Providence Journal)
• The new GED exam will be aligned with new national standards and be taken on computers. (Times)

• Mike Petrilli: We can end the “last in, first out” fight by paying new and old teachers the same. (Ed Next)
• As account holders, can teachers run banks as well as politicians can run schools? Maybe. (Daily Kos)
• Or maybe we need an “Education Bank,” half-charity and half-bank, to fund school reform. (Atlantic)
• Leonie Haimson ends her Chris Cerf silence to say history shows he can’t be trusted. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• A teacher who watches the rubber room questions the city’s definition of “cleared.” (Chaz’s School Daze)
• Teachers say Reginald Landeau, principal of MS 216, is reigning with terror. (New York Teacher)
• Teachers spent hours on the robotics tournament; Cathie Black spent a few minutes. (Pissed Off Teacher)
• President Obama said today he wants an overhaul of No Child Left Behind by September. (Politics K-12)
• A mom is suing her daughter’s former preschool because the elite school ignored testing. (Daily News)
• A dad who has sat out of budget cut protests so far says he’s on board for the future. (Insideschools)
• Joel Klein’s op/ed about the teacher wars echoed themes expressed last month. (Connor Williams)
• Richard Rothstein fact-checks a recent column by Bill Gates and documents some errors. (EPI)
• Watch the “60 Minutes” report on The Equity Project Charter School and its highly paid teachers. (CBS)

Students with war paint, colorful t-shirts, and hand-built robots flocked to the Jacob Javits Center this past weekend for New York City’s 20th annual robotics competition.

Students in grades four to eight competed against each other for the best robot design, presentation, research, and teamwork. Their robots had to complete a series of tasks and winners took home trophies made of LEGOs. At the the high school level, students directed their robots around a playing field strewn with inner tubes, which had to be retrieved and hung up on metal poles (video here).

Winning high school teams will move onto the national championship in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo agree that the state should abandon the “last-in, first-out” layoff system — they have just differed about the appropriate time. Over the weekend, state Republicans who support Bloomberg’s plan proposed a compromise: use their criteria for layoffs now and the governor’s for layoffs starting next year.

The new language was included in a budget proposal that Republicans introduced in both the Senate and the Assembly on Saturday. It incorporates Cuomo’s proposal to speed up implementation of the state’s new teacher evaluation system and proposes to use that system to determine layoffs beginning next year. But if layoffs happen this year, then they would proceed according to criteria that are very similar to those in the original Senate bill, which was introduced by State Senator John Flanagan.

The bill addresses two perceived shortcomings of both Cuomo’s plan and the original bill that the State Senate passed two weeks ago. City officials attacked Cuomo’s proposed bill — which relies on new evaluations that would have to be negotiated in part by local districts in their unions — arguing that stalled negotiations could delay implementation of a new layoff system for months if not years. The new proposal calls for an arbitrator to rule if the district and union have not agreed on a plan 90 days before the start of the school year. (more…)