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United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said the mayor should not have to lay off teachers given that Wall Street rebounded this year.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the size of the rally. Thousands of people attended this afternoon’s rally, according to multiple people who attended and other press accounts. Protesters came from multiple locations and then converged near Wall Street.

Thousands of teachers joined elected officials in a symbolic march from City Hall to Wall Street this afternoon to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed budget cuts.

“You took the money from us, now we’re going to where you sent the money,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped lead the march along with national teachers union president Randi Weingarten and half a dozen City Council members.

The march was designed to dramatize the argument that opponents of Bloomberg are making in response to his budget, which calls for laying off more than 4,000 teachers. In a year when Wall Street’s recovery contributed to a citywide surplus, they ask, why are teachers being laid off?

“I never expected to come home to see New York act like Wisconsin,” Weingarten told the screaming crowd.

Bloomberg has blamed the draconian budget on state cuts and pointed out that the surplus this year is not large enough to plug projected gaps next year — an assessment the Independent Budget Office seconded in a recent analysis. (more…)

Unable to convince the teachers union to let school officials fire principals and teachers at a group of low-performing schools, the city is resorting to a another option: changing the schools’ management.

The so-called “restart” option is one of four programs districts can take on in order to win federal grants aimed at improving the country’s lowest-performing schools.

City officials announced today that nine public schools will undergo the restart model next year. The plan putting a school under new management — for example, under the guidance of an education management organization like New Visions. A major, and so-far unanswered, question is how this plan will differ from the relationships schools already have with support networks, whose job it is to offer academic and operational guidance. Another question is what organizations would apply to partner with these schools on such short notice.

Three other schools that are eligible for the federal improvement grants will not receive them next year. Plans to overhaul the High School of Graphic Communication Arts, Harlem Renaissance High School, and W.H. Maxwell Career and Technical High School, all of which could begin any of the improvement models next year, will be put on hold for another year while the city decides whether to close them or improve them as they are.

Department of Education officials said they intend to announce their plans for 31 other schools that are eligible for the grants tomorrow. Some of those schools will undergo the restart strategy, but the officials did not say how many. (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.

Of all the students I taught at the Brooklyn Arts Academy, one in particular stands out. I don’t remember noticing anything special about V. at first. For her first couple months in my class, she showed herself to be a bright young woman with an attendance problem. She could ace my tests but within the first six weeks of the school year she’d already been absent seven times and late six (in her freshman year, she missed something like 40 days). But her response to a class reading changed my impression of her, and set in motion a relationship of mutual appreciation that continues to this day.

The reading was from a young adult novel called “The Year of Impossible Goodbyes,” which tells the story of a Korean girl’s memories of the Japanese occupation. The excerpt I chose recounts the girl’s first day at a school, and the rage and humiliation she felt at being treated as an inferior and forced to speak Japanese. After the lesson, V., who is Mexican-American, asked if she could borrow the book. She returned it days later, gushing about how interesting she found it and how the story touched her.

After that, I had her hooked. She re-engaged in my history lessons and became my star student. She was not your traditional teacher’s pet, though. She didn’t raise her hand with the correct or thoughtful answer to every question. Instead, much of her intellectual work took place behind the scenes. In class, she sat wide-eyed when we watched scenes from “Ghandi” during a lesson about post-colonialism. Later on, she showed me a journal entry reflecting on the merits of civil disobedience as a mechanism for confronting injustices in her own life.

During a unit about World War II, she became fascinated by stories of holocaust resisters. On my recommendation, she read “The Book Thief,” by Marcus Zuzak, a story about a young girl in Nazi Germany who simultaneously learns to read while developing an awareness of the holocaust going on around her. (more…)

• A vote on whether to ban high school teachers from grading their own Regents exams is soon. (WSJ)
• New York’s John White is now a front-runner for state superintendent of Louisiana. (Times-Picayune)
• Mayor Bloomberg’s approval ratings did not rebound after he replaced Cathie Black. (Post)
• Chancellor Walcott appointed two new deputy chancellors after a ton of turnover. (GS, Times, WSJ)
• Two city councilmen want laws that would force the city to open up about its PCB clean-up. (Daily News)
• In the latest census, Manhattan was the only borough to have an increase in children under 5. (Times)
• Students at an East Harlem charter school are retracing the route of the original “freedom riders.” (NY1)
• A sports equipment company is charged with defrauding more than 100 New Jersey schools. (Times)
• Bel Kaufman, the author of a play about teaching in the NYC schools, turned 100. (Times)
• Advocacy groups want Scholastic to stop publishing curriculum paid for by the coal industry. (Times)
• Test-prep companies are developing apps that help teenagers study for the SAT. (Times)
• Gail Collins: alternative certification programs in Texas are redefining lack-of-experience. (Times)
• The Times says we need tighter regulation of for-profit colleges that leave students drowning in debt.

• Firing Cathie Black didn’t boost Mayor Bloomberg’s numbers; Walcott’s still unknown. (Metropolis)
• A rundown of ways to protest teacher layoffs, both online and in the streets, tomorrow. (Insideschools)
• City Council ed committee chair Robert Jackson: Bloomberg’s budget cuts will be long-lasting. (EdVox)
• Bel Kaufman, author of the classic teacher-lit “Up the Down Staircase,” is still dancing at 100. (Times)
• The Democracy Prep charter school once known as Harlem Day got 1,100+ applications. (DNAinfo)
• Happy first birthday (next week) to the politically charged acronym “LIFO.” (Dana Goldstein)
• Journalists will meet at Columbia this weekend to talk about how foundations affect reporting. (Russo)
• Jay Mathews confesses that he finds the battle over common standards to be “a big bore.” (WaPo)
• Liza Campbell on the exciting arrival of a new film that rebuts “Waiting for ‘Superman.’” (GS Community)
• More background on the making of the movie, whose premiere is already fully booked. (Ed Notes)
• A teacher reports an unlikely reason for “finally getting the round of applause.” (Pissed Off Teacher)
• A DOE instructional coach, Kaitlin Seaver, is Girls Prep Charter School’s new principal. (The Local)
• Checker Finn says layoffs’ impact on teacher quality, not class size, is the big issue. (Daily News)
• A city teacher who was recruited last summer is leaving before being laid off. (The Reflective Educator)

In April, Cynthia Rosario picked up a copy of the New York Times Magazine and began reading its cover story, which chronicled the challenges of a South Bronx middle school and its driven principal.

The story talked about M.S. 223′s rising test scores, its extraordinarily challenging students, and how its staff of young, but committed teachers was steadily improving. But all that progress was threatened, the school’s principal Ramon Gonzalez believed, by the city’s plans to open a charter school in the building next year. His building was already nearing capacity and handing the remaining space to a new school would jeopardize his plan to expand into a high school.

“I kept reading thinking, ‘Oh no,’” Rosario said, just waiting to see her school’s name mentioned in the role of the villain.

A year ago, when Rosario applied to open a charter school in the South Bronx, she entered the city’s opaque space-search process, which nearly pitted her against a high-quality school. When she began, she never imagined the city’s Department of Education would look to a school like M.S. 223 for space. (more…)

A month after taking over a Department of Education hemorrhaging its leadership, Chancellor Dennis Walcott today announced a slew of high-level appointments.

For two deputy chancellor slots, Walcott turned to veteran educators who made their careers in the city schools.

David Weiner, a one-time city principal who is currently Philadelphia’s chief accountability officer, will become deputy chancellor for talent, labor, and innovation. In that position, he will manage hot-button issues including labor relations and the city’s Innovation Zone of schools experimenting with technology. The founding principal of PS 503 in Brooklyn, Weiner succeeds John White, who took over the Recovery School District in New Orleans at the beginning of May.

A 30-year veteran of the city school system, Dorita Gibson will take on a newly created position, deputy chancellor for equity and access. She will supervise District 79, the network of alternative schools previously headed by Cami Anderson, who was named Newark’s next schools chief last week. District 79 will still get a new superintendent, according to DOE spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Gibson will also lead initiatives that “focus on ending long-standing racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities and directing supports to communities most in need,” according to the city’s press release. Some of those initiatives previously fell under the purview of Santiago Taveras, the deputy chancellor for engagement who departed for the private sector earlier this year.

The appointments signal that Walcott is moving to stabilize the department, which has experienced rapid leadership change at the top since ex-Chancellor Joel Klein left at the end of last year. They also confirm Walcott’s intention to continue policies established during Klein’s tenure while also asserting new priorities. (more…)

What can a small group of committed individuals do to affect change in a very large and complicated system like the public schools? This is a question that activists ask ourselves regularly as we come together to try to address various issues in education, and the ideas that come out of these meetings have varying levels of impact. Unfortunately, most of these groups have little to no funding and are limited in numbers, which means that the plethora of good ideas far exceed what we are capable of pulling together. This is especially frustrating when we are also trying to do the educating, organizing, and mobilizing that our well-funded union, the United Federation of Teachers, should be doing.

Of course, each idea is different and is intended to address different goals. Fight Back Fridays, for example, are intended to mobilize school communities to fight the attacks on public education and take back the dialogue surrounding “reform.” Members of a NYCORE action group are hoping that a summer speaker series will help to interrupt the inculcation that comes with alternative certification teacher training and expose our newest teachers to some important historical knowledge they may be lacking. The members of the Grassroots Education Movement have been working to support schools fighting charter co-location, which has included organizing for and turning out to myriad public meetings.

But on a larger scale, how can we possibly compare to the well-financed corporate reformers whose preferred policies have dominated the national agenda in recent years? The documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” for example, which pushes privately managed charter schools as the silver-bullet answer to education’s problems and teachers unions as the enemy, was underwritten by individuals and foundations whose net worth is in the billions of dollars. The movie received an astounding amount of hype. As educators and parents organizing a grassroots campaign to fight these privatization tactics, it sometimes feels like we have little to no chance to counter the message these corporate reformers are pushing.

But it’s amazing what a group of committed educators and parents can do with almost no resources, a good idea, and a video camera. The Grassroots Education Movement has created a response to “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” that challenges some of the most blatant lies and over-simplications the movie presents. In “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman,” parents share horror stories of “winning a lottery” but being told that the charter school that their child won access to would not be able to accommodate their special education needs. The movie is full of facts and statistics that are paired with parent and teacher anecdotes, and together the two create a powerful framework for better understanding the realities of privatization here in New York City and nationally. (more…)

• Mayor Bloomberg indicated that teacher salaries are a main target in union negotiations. (Post)
• Layoffs would likely cause the city to lose young teachers full of idealism. (Times)
• Public Advocate Bill de Blasio launched a website where parents can lobby against layoffs. (Daily News)
• The DOE gave 23 new schools with low enrollment $236,000 in extra funds to close budget gaps. (Post)
• After the election debacle, officials want more oversight of parent councils. (GS, NY1, Daily News)
• School overcrowding is most acute in some neighborhoods of Queens. (Times, Daily News)
• Louisiana’s top schools official, Paul Pastorek, is leaving for the aerospace industry. (Times-Picayune)
• President Obama will give the graduation address at Booker T. Washington HS in Memphis, Tenn. (AP)
• The Times says N.J. Gov. Chris Christie’s threat to reject court rulings on school funding is irresponsible.
• Schools are eliminating senior superlatives because of possible long-term impact on recipients. (WSJ)

• A teacher says he is fighting back after his principal was pressured not to give him tenure. (JD2718)
• Banana hot dogs and other vegetarian delights are on the menu at SOAR Denver. (Ed News Colorado)
• Leonie Haimson points out inaccuracies in Joel Klein’s Atlantic Magazine treatise. (Norm’s Notes)
• Parent activists asked the Regents to let them help replace David Steiner. (NYC Public School Parents)
• A disastrous Boston Celtics trade offers some insights about teacher evaluation. (Starting an Ed School)
• A Jewish take on stressful state testing, test improprieties, and public school reform. (Tablet Magazine)
• Demolition has started and plans have been registered for PAVE Academy’s new building. (Brownstoner)
• School lunches are healthy and fresh at Family Life Academy Charter School in the Bronx. (City Room)
• The more Mark Anderson understands his feelings, the less his students’ get to him. (GS Community)
• Students describe Banana Kelly High School as a victim that is repeatedly being punished. (EdVox)
• A picture of cell phone lockers at a Chicago school conjures thoughts of what might have been. (Russo)