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As the city heads into summer, where exactly this fall’s crop of new charter schools will open remains in limbo. But that doesn’t mean more schools aren’t planned for the future.

Earlier this month, SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute approved a dozen charter schools to open in the city in the fall of 2012. Each of the new schools is planned for a specific school district within the city, but the institute’s announcement gives no indication of whether the schools will pursue public or private space.

The new schools include some unusual arrangements for the city, such as a partnership school with the Children’s Aid Society that will provide social services to students and a school that will reserve 30 percent of seats for students for English language learners. That school is set to open in Elmhurst, Queens, and has as a partner a nonprofit that works with Asian immigrants.

But the list mostly contains schools that replicate models already in place in the city. The sixth and seventh Carl Icahn charter schools are on the list, as are a second Family Life Academy Charter School and a second Manhattan Charter School. The Explore network has been given the green light for another school that would give preference to students zoned for a school the city wants to close; the first is supposed to open this fall, although the lawsuit filed by the UFT and NAACP has thrown that plan into question.

And the Success Charter Network, which already operates seven schools and is set to open two more this fall, had three new schools approved, all for Brooklyn. (more…)

Graduates of Washington Irving High School toss their caps

The 89-year-old nave of Riverside Church reverberated with Bulldog spirit on Monday, as Manhattan’s Washington Irving High School held its graduation exercises.

The graduates, who filled the vast space with a unified toss of their caps at the ceremony’s conclusion, represented just a fraction of the students who started at Washington Irving four years ago. While graduation data for this year’s class is not yet available, last year Washington Irving’s 4-year graduation rate was just 55 percent, which was an increase from 2009, when its rate was the lowest in the city among traditional high schools. The city has dramatically reduced the school’s size in recent years in an effort to turn performance around.

But the school’s struggles barely registered at graduation, where a handful of top students were recognized for their achievements. (more…)

• The state teachers union is suing over new evaluation rules. (WSJ, Daily News, Post, NY1, WNYC)
• Dennis Walcott’s main accomplishment as chancellor so far has been winning over hearts. (Times)
• Walcott’s graduation speeches have ranged from less than 4 minutes to just over 9 minutes. (Times)
• The City Council’s is set to eliminate a program that helps teachers pay for supplies. (GothamSchools)
• But the council is kicking in $30 million to help the city rid schools of toxic PCBs. (NY1)
• The star of Truman High School’s football team was killed during a post-graduation fight. (Times, Post)
• A Staten Island teenager died after being hit by a truck on her way to the bus after school. (Post)
• The principal of a school for young writers is accused of plagiarizing his graduation speech. (Daily News)
• Ayouba Doumbia, a Manhattan alternative school graduate, is an Ivory Coast refugee. (Daily News)
• Independence HS principal Ron Smolkin used city funds to pay a secretary for personal help. (GS, NY1)
• The Daily News: Hazel Dukes’ latest outburst shows that the NAACP is not helping city children.
• Nicole Gelinas: Michael Mulgrew shouldn’t have had to solve the city’s budget, but kudos to him. (Post)
• Michael Goodwin: The idea that funding and unions hold schools back undersells good schools. (Post)

• Data-conscious city schools don’t let their attendance rates lag the last week of classes. (City Room)
• Teachers, parents, and students can generate data of their own by rating the school year. (Insideschools)
• Diane Ravitch cites six reasons for hope in the current education policy moment. (Bridging Differences)
• A series of movies about moving beyond cars is accompanied by curriculum teachers can use. (Streetfilms)
• Los Angeles is capping the weight of homework at 10 percent of students’ grades. (L.A. Times)
• Data used to show how hard U.S. teachers work might not be comparable. (Jay Greene)
• Photographs helped Kate Quarfordt lose her regrets about the school play she directed. (GS Community)
• Cathie Black is one of many high-powered alumnae of D.C.’s Trinity College. (Washington Monthly)
• Students at PS 11 in Fort Greene assembled a salad on their penultimate day of school. (The Local)
• The Walton Foundation’s most recent spending report shows continued support for school choice. (HuffPo)
• And today was officially the last day of the 2010-2011 school year. Happy summer break!

As the salutatorian of Boys and Girls High School, Johanna Jimenez will deliver a speech tonight titled “A Race Called LIfe.”

For her classmates at Boys and Girls High School in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, many of whom have experienced hardships and overcome steep odds on the path to graduation, the title is a metaphor. But Jimenez, a top middle distance runner who is headed to college on a track scholarship, takes the idea literally.

“Basically, life is like a race. You set goals, then stay focused and work hard to achieve them,” she said, explaining her speech.

Jimenez’s life has been less of a marathon than a series of hurdles. She overcame her mother’s mental illness, foster homes, and her own insecurity to graduate from high school at the top of her class. There she joins another student-athlete, valedictorian Folashade Frazier, who will attend the University of Michigan.

Together, the pair provide glimmers of hope at a school that seems perpetually at risk of closure. Absorbing some of the community’s neediest students, Boys & Girls has a poor attendance rate and an even lower graduation rate. Detaching kids from their troubled personal lives is often the first hurdle teachers must clear before they can even begin instruction.

Born in Puerto Rico, Jimenez and her older brother, Nathaniel, were given up at an early age by their mother, who suffered from mental illness. She lived in three foster homes and one group home between the ages of 7 and 12. (more…)

At the beginning of this year, Brian Rosenbloom, the principal of Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School didn’t know how efforts to turn the school around would pan out.

As part of The Big Fix — the year-long series we’re doing in partnership with WNYC — WNYC’s education reporter Beth Fertig has checked in periodically at Chelsea as its teachers and staff try to move more students toward graduation.

Now, Rosenbloom can cite results, Fertig reports:

Earlier this month, Rosenbloom received the school’s Regents scores: more than 90 percent of the juniors passed their exams in English and U.S. history. And there were similar scores for the sophomores who took the science exam.

“It’s just beyond my wildest dreams,” he said. “To see how well the kids are doing, and the teachers – the pride they’re taking and the pride the kids are taking. I mean, I had two kids yesterday jump in the arms of the teacher when they found out they got 88 and 82 on the exam.”

Rosenbloom and his teachers say investment in learning new instructional strategies made the difference, Fertig reports. But they are split on whether students’ performance should factor into teachers’ evaluations.

Listen to Fertig’s complete radio story on Chelsea High School here. And stay tuned for updates soon from Christopher Columbus High School and William E. Grady Career and Technical High School, the other two schools whose changes The Big Fix project has tracked.

A program that helps teachers pay for classroom supplies is set to be shut out of City Council funds.

For more than a quarter of a century, the council has assigned some of its discretionary funds to the Teacher’s Choice program, which gives teachers a small amount of money to buy supplies. Even in tough budget years, the council has always directed some funding to Teacher’s Choice: Last year, the program received $9.25 million. The year before, it got $13 million.

But when this year’s list of discretionary expenditures, called Schedule C, was released today, Teacher’s Choice was nowhere to be found. That means that teachers will be on the hook for classroom expenses that previously would be reimbursed. Last year, teachers got $110 each; in 2007, they got up to $220.

Teacher’s Choice isn’t completely out of the running until the council makes its Schedule C expenditures official when it approves the city budget. That must happen before Friday, when the new fiscal year begins, and appears likely to happen sooner, even tonight.

UPDATE: “We’re obviously disappointed in the loss of Teachers’ Choice,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew in a statement. “Our members always dig into their own pockets for the supplies their students need; next year, while the city carries over a multi-billion dollar surplus and millionaires get a tax break, teachers will have to dig even deeper.” The union helped launch Teacher’s Choice in the 1980s and had advocated annually for its continuation. (more…)

Ron Smolkin violated city ethics laws, according to a disposition released today (Credit: NY1 Screenshot)

A high school principal who is accused of sending anonymous hate mail about one of his teachers is in trouble again. This time, he used city funds to pay a secretary to help him with his homework.

Independence High School principal Ron Smolkin violated city ethics laws when he hired his secretary to proofread and edit his personal graduate work, according to a Conflict of Interest Board disposition released today. Smolkin paid her hundreds of dollars out of the school budget for the work, which took place over seven months between 2009 and 2010.

The violation cost Smolkin a one-time fine of $5,000, which will come out of his salary. He made $145,000 in 2009.

According to details of the disposition, the secretary edited 18 of Smolkin’s essays, which were part of his work toward a doctoral degree at New York University. Smolkin authorized payments totaling $764.03 for 39 hours of work, a rate of $19 per hour. He also agreed to pay back the money to the Department of Education. (more…)

A few days ago I got an email that changed everything.

The cast of “Guys and Dolls” take their bows

It’s been a full month — and a seemingly endless succession of graduations, end-of-the-year recitals, awards ceremonies and fundraising benefits — since the kids I teach in the South Bronx put on our school’s annual spring musical, the 1950’s classic, “Guys and Dolls.” This year’s rehearsal process served up an especially overwhelming array of challenges and behind-the-scenes mayhem, all intensified by the parallel unfolding of my second pregnancy. (In case you missed them, here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of our 100-day countdown to opening night.)

“Well, OK…” you might be wondering, “So, after all of that dramatic build-up … how did the actual show go? (And why has it taken you so darn long to write about it?)”

Well, if you had asked me last week, before the email arrived, I might have heaved an exhausted sigh and launched into what, in the end, would’ve amounted to a sob story.

For starters, I would’ve told you that due to insane scheduling conflicts, our opening night performance was the first time we’d ever had the whole cast together, so it ran more like a dress rehearsal than an actual show, with huge chunks of missed dialogue, brutally slow pacing, and countless costume and prop malfunctions. (more…)

• Even without layoffs, schools and other city agencies are still seeing cuts. (GothamSchools, Times, Post)
• After threatening layoffs for years not executing them, Mayor Bloomberg defended his credibility. (WSJ)
• Bloomberg said he wanted to avert teacher layoffs because “last in, first out” rules still apply. (Post)
• Parents at Shuang Wen school in Chinatown are suing the city to stop investigating it. (NY1, Post)
• Performance Conservatory HS failed to ensure many potential graduates had met requirements. (NY1)
• The city school board voted again to approve a long list of charter school co-locations. (GothamSchools)
• The NAACP’s Hazel Dukes got into loud fights at the board meeting. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Post)
• The board also voted to turn Khalil Gibran International Academy into a high school only. (AP)
• A teacher from PS 246 in the Bronx is suing the city, saying her stillbirth was her principal’s fault. (Post)
• Opinion is mixed on D.C.’s Impact teacher evaluation system, which hasn’t led to many firings. (Times)