GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A teacher-blogger explains what he believes and why he sounds angrier online. (Reflective Educator)
• Fourteen easy steps to better student blogging, starting with picking an easy platform. (Mrs. Ripp)
• Breaking a blogging silence to rave about how great things are at school. (They Call Me Teacher)
• Demolition starts soon on the future Gowanus site of Brooklyn Prospect Charter School. (Brownstoner)
• City teachers and wonks weigh in on the city’s plan to add more testing. (Room for Debate/Times)
• A Fort Greene mom, Nancy Bruni, says good attendance shouldn’t be rewarded. (The Local)
• Three-quarters of this year’s Intel Science Search finalists are children of immigrants. (Joanne Jacobs)
• Efforts to stop school budget cuts are plentiful and range from the official to the grassroots. (City Room)
• Hilary Lustick on teachers’ delicate balance between big questions and control. (GS Community)
• Evaluations, not principals, will now decide whether foreign teachers’ visas are terminated. (Go Jamaica)
• A satirical look at how charter school backer David Einhorn could influence the Mets. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• Test score gains in New Orleans’ schools should be weighed against population changes. (Kevin Drum)
• Knowing more about student performance doesn’t tell us how to improve instruction. (Ed in the Apple)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott will take the hotseat tomorrow morning before a City Council whose members are growing increasingly restive about the city’s proposed teacher layoffs.

According to the city’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, the department is $350 million short of being able to fund its teaching spots. Mayor Bloomberg is pushing to close that gap by eliminating more than 6,000 teaching spots, 4,100 by layoffs.

Insiders say council members are likely to grill Walcott on why the city’s layoff estimates haven’t wavered, despite two changes in chancellors since Bloomberg first unveiled them in November. They are also likely to demand why the city didn’t cut other parts of the department’s budget that doesn’t directly affect the classroom, such as transportation and special education, both of which are projected to see a big spending boost next year.

Many council members have said they don’t think layoffs are necessary to balance the city’s budget, and a few say they won’t vote for a budget that includes layoffs. Robert Jackson, chair of the council’s education committee, is among the elected officials set to appear at a rally against the layoffs proposal an hour before the hearing’s 10 a.m. start. He’ll be joined by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who has been lobbying against the proposed layoffs on his own; Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who advocates cutting contract spending to boost the staff budget; and other officials.

But most council members haven’t stated where they stand so clearly. Tomorrow’s hearing is a chance for them to signal their intentions, offer suggestions for alternative cuts, and construct a roadmap for a month of political jockeying over the city’s spending plans. (more…)

Classroom management decisions are all about timing, and time waits for no one — not even a white teacher striving to capture the sophisticated racial commentary her students are never shy to espouse. I am often forced to choose between my established parameters — learning objectives and the rules of my classroom — and a teachable moment that, if done right, my students will remember long after those parameters have stopped mattering.

In my second period 10th-grade world literature class, which tends to be the most precocious and defiant of my three classes, a restless energy fills the air. We are concluding a human rights unit in which students focused on how survivors of human rights violations demonstrated courage, and I’m trying to psych them up to write the final project: an essay about someone they know who demonstrates great courage. As we are brainstorming potential people we could interview, a student named Joseph blurts out, “I want to interview you, Ms. Lustick! You got the courage to come in and teach us black kids every day.” I wait a beat, for a burst of laughter or some other response, but rest of the class waits silently for my reply.

When a student calls out, two sides of a teacher’s brain light up. The content-driven side of my brain gets excited: wow! That student made a fascinating point! I’d really like to hear more! I bet other people do too!  Listen to the content-driven side of your brain and students will learn very quickly how easy it is to get you off track. So a teacher quickly learns to beef up the management-driven side of her brain. The management-driven side of my brain can hear a student call out just about anything and it will compel me to do one of two things: repeat, flatly, that I’m only calling on students with their hands raised, or show this by flat-out ignoring the comment in favor of a student whose hand is up. It’s usually this latter strategy that I employ. It’s less disruptive to the lesson, while sending the same message: I will take your comment as soon as you raise your hand. I always feel it’s the more impartial and professional of the two strategies. It says, “I don’t discriminate against specific students or their opinions; I simply only acknowledge those with their hands raised.”

But there’s a layer to this particular comment that complicates that. (more…)

News from New York City:

• The city could lose $44 million for needy schools if it can’t make a teacher eval deal. (NY1, Daily News)
• Some parents say schools call children’s services on them to retaliate for complaints. (Daily News)
• The city has fined 10 teachers for inappropriate comments about gender and race. (Post, Daily News)
• Michael Goodwin: Many teachers have written to me to share evidence of cheating in their schools. (Post)
• The street in front of Murrow HS has been renamed for the school’s longtime principal. (Daily News)
• Controversial principal Andrew Buck used DOE supplies to ask parents for tenure support. (Daily News)
• Two charter high schools run by New Visions are among those that might not open. (Daily News)
• Two months into his chancellorship, Dennis Walcott is keeping a blistering pace. (WNYC)
• Students who were shut out of city high schools at first found out last week where they’ll go. (Times)
• David Einhorn, the man who might take over the Mets, is a big charter school supporter. (Post)
• One of the DOE’s food suppliers bought a lot of applesauce from China last year. (Crain’s NY)
• Tribeca parents are upset that some kindergartners are assigned to a Chinatown school. (Tribeca Trib)
• Parents have lost hope after their Bronx charter school was ordered closed after one year. (Daily News)
• Eric Grannis, charter board member & Eva Moskowitz’s husband: Charters should integrate. (Daily News)
• Charter school parents rallied against the NAACP. (GothamSchools, Daily News, CNN)
• The Daily News praises a charter school parent for condemning both the NAACP and UFT.

And beyond:

• A proposed state law would require those attacking school budgets to identify themselves. (Times-Union)
• As Detroit turns more schools into charters, some wonder if the district will survive at all. (Free Press)
• Los Angeles’s new schools chief, John Deasy, aims to start an anti-poverty nonprofit. (Bloomberg)
• Los Angeles is going to start donating uneaten school lunches to hunger nonprofits. (L.A. Times)
• Some states are considering pushing back age cutoffs so children are 5 in kindergarten. (Times)

• Bronx students seek support for a project to raise awareness about human trafficking. (Ruben Brosbe)
• A run-down of bad news for the Bloomberg administration’s consulting practices. (NYCPSP)
• A push to kill a school data system in California raises questions about data systems. (Quick and the Ed)
• Reasons to be optimistic and also cautious about the Race to the Top for early learning. (Early Ed Watch)
• A new documentary about teachers urges for salaries that match the challenges of the work. (ACSD)
• Researchers in Houston are asking whether students can give teachers post-traumatic stress. (Ed Week)
• Enrollment at charter schools and for-profit colleges is growing, new data show. (Hechinger Report)
• A teacher argues that a federal turnaround of an Oklahoma City high school won’t help. (Thompson)
• Mayor Bloomberg’s recent comments about parents are part of a disturbing legacy. (Bridging Differences)
• We’re adding an extra day to the long weekend. Enjoy the holiday and see you on Tuesday.

Students at Samuel Gompers High School in the South Bronx held a protest march today to ask for more support for their struggling school. (Patrick Wall)

Students at a South Bronx high school staged a march today to demand that the city seek more federal support to improve their school.

The students, who attend Samuel Gompers High School, have a specific improvement model in mind: the “re-start” option that is one of four models districts can follow in order to receive federal school turnaround funding.

Gompers is one of nine poorly performing high schools that are eligible for the federal help, but are not part of the city’s application for federal turnaround grants. Twenty-two other schools are receiving the grants, and 11 schools are already working with federal grants under the “transformation” improvement model.

“Why hasn’t the DOE given the grants to all the schools?” Gompers sophomore Sony Cabral asked at the rally. “They’re setting us up for failure.”

The students ended their march, which attracted about two dozen students, at the nearby Banana Kelly High School, one of the schools slated to receive the restart funding.

The city chose schools for the restart plan that it felt showed signs of improvement and enough leadership capacity to work with outside organizations to make serious adjustments, said Department of Education spokesperson Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld.

“The schools we didn’t choose for restart just did not have the type of leadership and staff in place that we felt could effectively team up with an educational partnership organization,” said Zarin-Rosenfeld.

School officials said that the nine schools that are not part of the city’s turnaround application will still get some support. The city Department of Education is adding an extra $300,000 to their budgets and offering help from teams in the Children’s First networks, which support schools with a range of needs from professional development to budgeting. (more…)

Students and families protested today in Harlem against the NAACP's involvement in a lawsuit against school closures and charter school co-locations with district schools. (Chris Arp)

About 2,500 people rallied in Harlem this morning, calling on the NAACP to withdraw from its lawsuit with the teachers union against the city Department of Education. That lawsuit seeks to stop the closure of 22 schools as well as the placement of several charter schools in district school space.

Speakers at Thursday’s rally included charter school parents and teachers, Harlem Children’s Zone president and CEO Geoffrey Canada, and the actor Seth Gilliam from “The Wire,” whose child is a on a waiting list for a charter school. Speakers and attendees denounced the NAACP’s participation in a lawsuit they said would harm charter schools primarily serving students of color.

“Ms. Dukes, turn your back on this lawsuit,” said Kathy Kernizan, the parent of a student at the Uncommon Schools charter network, referring to Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York State Conference.

A letter to Dukes with signatures from charter school advocates was circulated through the crowd asking the organization to withdraw from the suit. A spokesperson for the New York City Charter Center, which helped organize the event, said that more than 2,000 signatures had been collected this week.

“We gotta demand quality education,” Canada told the crowd. “We have to be prepared to fight for that.” The city Department of Education’s proposal calls for two of the charter schools associated with the Harlem Children’s Zone, the Promise Academy charter schools, to be co-located inside district schools.

The charter center spokesperson said the protest, held outside the Harlem State Office building at 125th Street, was not the work of any one organization. But at least two groups appear to have taken leading roles: the charter center, an advocacy and support organization for charter schools in the city, and the Success Charter Network created by Eva Moskowitz. Many of the families at the rally had children at one of the Success network’s nine schools. (Seven of the network’s schools are named in the lawsuit.)

Click here for a slideshow of photographs from the rally.

(more…)

The Obama administration’s $3.5 billion effort to turn around the country’s lowest-performing schools has had a bumpy start in New York City.

The first schools to participate in the program here used one of the less dramatic of the four models laid out by the Obama administration for how schools can be overhauled. To comply with a requirement that the principal of the school be removed, one set of schools played a game of musical principals. And officials’ efforts to reach an agreement with the teachers union on how to use a more drastic model — one that requires removing teachers as well as the school principal — faltered. Late in the school year, officials to turned to the “re-start” model instead.

A new package on Education Week’s web site suggests that New York’s rocky experience is not entirely unique. The package showcases reporting on other cities’ turnaround efforts, including reporting from GothamSchools. It also shows that a wide majority of schools receiving the turnaround funds opted for the less dramatic “transformation” model that was the first city school officials turned to.

In Denver, a turnaround plan for a group of schools became so contentious that it was a top issue in a recent school board election, according to coverage from Education News Colorado.

In Philadelphia, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman has embraced the restart model, welcoming charter school networks to take over 15 schools. She’s invested additional resources in another group of 18 schools called “promise academies.” But her efforts have faced resistance, too, including a lawsuit by the teachers union protesting the removal of a teacher who challenged the turnaround plan, the Philadelphia Public School Notebook reports.

And in Kentucky, a principal has removed half of the original teaching staff and changed the name of his school altogether. It’s now called the “Academy @ Shawnee,” Education Week reports.

Read the full package here.

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 mid-November 2008, the Brooklyn Arts Academy received notification that it would undergo its annual “school quality review” in about 10 days. Every public school in the city of New York is subject to a SQR. The results, published online, provide feedback to school leaders and information to the public. The SQR specifically focuses on how schools gathered and analyzed data in order to improve instruction. During the 2008-09 school year, a school could be rated as underdeveloped, underdeveloped with proficient features, proficient, or well developed. Our administrators believed the school met the criteria for proficiency, but our reviewer saw things differently.

In the days leading up to the SQR, school administration made a hasty but concerted effort to prepare Brooklyn Arts Academy to receive the best rating possible. First, teachers were required to attend a meeting in which we were informed about the process and asked to plan particularly engaging lessons during the days of the review. Six of us, myself included, were selected to meet with the reviewer. We were told to familiarize ourselves with the principal’s “school self-evaluation statement” and also given a list of possible interview questions from which to prepare.

Additionally, the assistant principal emailed all teachers five days before the review requesting that we submit 3-8 “learning targets” from our classes to her, ASAP. We were told to phrase these learning targets in the form of “I can” statements, and that each target should reflect what we hoped our students should know and be able to do by the end of the semester. I hadn’t previously articulated specific learning targets, but I took a look at my curriculum, wrote some up based on my assessments, and submitted them.

Three days later, I received another email from the assistant principal. This time, my learning targets had been entered across the top of a spreadsheet. The names of my students were written in the left-hand column. I was to rate each student, for each learning target, as having demonstrated mastery (M), proficiency (P), or as “not yet” having demonstrated proficiency (NY). So I retroactively went back and translated my students’ grades on different assessments from As to Ms, Bs and Cs to Ps, and Ds or Fs to NYs. The AP admitted freely that the SQR motivated her request, but she also explained that filling out this chart now would help us monitor student progress in the future.

A day before the review, we received one final email from the assistant principal. (more…)

• To prevent cheating, the state won’t let schools rescore students’ barely-passed exams. (Times, WSJ)
• The city quietly decided to increase class sizes for some special education students. (Daily News)
• Charter parents want the NAACP to withdraw from the UFT’s school closure suit. (GothamSchools)
• Parents worry that toughening standards at a Queens gifted program will shut local kids out. (Daily News)
• The Lehman HS and Kennedy HS buildings will collect solar energy as part of a city project. (Daily News)
• Mayor Bloomberg isn’t alarmed that a diplomat’s daughter is suing over her school treatment. (Post)
• The Daily News: The teachers union should not block the city’s new tests meant for teacher evaluation.
• An East Harlem private school now serves exotic vegetarian lunches, which kids like. (Daily News)
• Nationally, growth in education spending slowed tremendously in 2009, amid budget problems. (Times)
• Still, New York outspent every other state per student in 2009, even with fiscal woes. (WNYC)
• Last year’s non-winning finalists will take home most of this year’s Race to the Top funds. (Times)