GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A teacher fired under D.C.’s evaluation system says he thinks blogging cost him his job. (Answer Sheet)
• An NYC teacher who once worked in D.C. said the teacher was inspiring, not ineffective. (James Boutin)
• Speaking anonymously, three city principals say their jobs are more challenging than ever. (City Limits)
• The city required almost 40,000 students to attend summer school; most are attending. (Gotham Gazette)
• After a delay, Principals will get state test scores Aug. 4 and they’ll go public four days later. (GS Twitter)
• Ed Sec Arne Duncan said teacher salaries should rise, to $60,000 to $150,000. (Politics K-12)
• Four in 10 teachers hired since 2005 came to the classroom via alternative certification. (Teacher Beat)
• The Grassroots Education Movement’s documentary is being screened in South Korea. (Ed Notes)
• States are cracking down on districts’ practice of rehiring pension-drawing retired teachers. (EdWeek)

From the March on Washington:

• Organizers of the Save Our Schools rally turned down a planned White House meeting. (Politics K-12)
• A report from day one of the Save Our Schools rally features Kozol, Kuhn, and Klonsky. (James Boutin)
• Chris Lehman, a principal, says uninspiring schools proved to him the rally is needed. (Practical Theory)
• Critics say the rally is asking for funding without accountability, but organizers disagree. (Politics K-12)
• Ben Smith: Union officials are helping organize the march, but that’s not being advertised. (Politico)
• Rotherham: For all the concern about privatization, corporate influence on schools is modest. (Eduwonk)

Far from living up to its promise, the city’s tenure reform in fact amounts to a quota system for teacher evaluations, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said today.

Mulgrew was responding to comments made by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott during Bloomberg’s weekly radio address this morning. They said they expect the number of tenure denials to rise next year.

Mulgrew questioned how they could predict more denials when evaluations for teachers up for tenure next year have not yet happened. He said that Bloomberg’s comments signal that the city has set up a quota system for teacher evaluations rather than using them as a tool to help educators improve.

“If it’s more about setting up a set of numbers for political reasons … then what they’re doing is wrong,” Mulgrew said. “If they’re already predetermining they’re setting this up with quotas, that’s absurd.”

The number of teachers who receive poor ratings could change when an evaluation system mandated under state law goes into effect. That is supposed to happen in September, but first the union and the city must agree on the system’s terms.

Mulgrew said they are nowhere near an agreement, even after reaching a deal for 33 low-performing schools two weeks ago. (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg escalated his critique of teacher tenure on his weekly radio show this morning, calling tenure outdated and questioning whether it should even exist.

Bloomberg was discussing the latest tenure data, which was released Wednesday and showed an all-time high number of teachers whose probation were extended rather than receiving tenure. He said he’d continue to comply with the laws that required him to award tenure, but wouldn’t like it.

“The state law has tenure, whether you like it or not. We have to work with that,” Bloomberg said. ”It may have been necessary in the McCarthy era or maybe even today at the university level. But in public education you’re not writing papers about things that are very controversial, which was the idea of tenure: to protect your ability to do that.”

Bloomberg launched the last school year with a pledge to overhaul the way tenure is granted, and he previously has criticized tenure as being too “automatic.” But he has never called for an outright end to tenure; indeed, in a 2009 speech at the Center for American Progress, he declared, “let me be clear: We are not proposing an end to tenure.” (more…)

A screenshot from Kelly Vaughan's Digital Teacher Corps submission. (Click to view.)

A member of GothamSchools’ founding team, Kelly Vaughan returned to the classroom in 2009 — but she never abandoned the digital frontier.

Now, to augment her full schedule as a middle school science teacher at Brooklyn Prospect Charter School, Vaughan has applied to join a new program being offered by the nonprofit New Visions for Public Schools. The Digital Teacher Corps connects educators who are interested in digital learning with mentors who can help them design and implement technology-based “hacks” to solve problems in their classrooms.

Applicants to the Digital Teachers Corps are uploading short videos to YouPD, a months-old New Visions project that aims to serve as a YouTube for teachers. Throughout the year, New Visions will use YouPD to share developments within the Digital Teachers Corps, said Hsing Wei, New Visions’ senior innovation officer.

“Our philosophy is to be transparent and try to share out as much to the community as possible,” Wei said.

Vaughan’s application proposes the “Global Weather Protection Agency,” a game to teach students about abstract weather concepts. Applications from other teachers suggest using graphic novels to teach English as a Second Language students andpreparing videos to differentiate test preparation review.

New Visions will select six teachers to receive training and mentorship throughout the year, along with a $3,000 stipend. Applications are due Monday.

• A new poll has 70 percent of parents disapproving of Mayor Bloomberg’s school handling. (Crain’s NY)
• A court date in the Shuang Wen School’s parent suit revealed details about charges there. (Daily News)
• The UFT’s class size suit was rejected on procedural grounds. (GothamSchools, NY1, Daily News, Post)
• Artists who make works for schools often involve students, but they don’t substitute for art teachers. (NY1)
• At one school with no gym, budget cuts are costing the physical education teacher, too. (GothamSchools)
• Teachers weigh in on the implications of the city’s successful bid to hand out tenure less readily. (WNYC)
• Half of teachers whose probations were extended last year had them extended again. (Daily News)
• Chicago parents are skeptical about the city’s new chief parent engagement executive position. (Times)
• More Texas schools are charging fees to make up for what’s lost in state budget cuts. (Times)

• A teacher admits to helping her students with state tests; “I wanted them to succeed.” (Notebook)
• A new book argues why even the best teaching can’t solve poverty or inequality. (Inside Higher Ed)
• A presentation by the DOE outlines the details of the ATR agreement. (Adobe Connect)
• A newspaper series highlights “the other welfare”: disability checks for children. (Globe via JJ)
• Teachers started to descend on D.C. today for the 4-day Save Our Schools March. (Politics K-12)
• They brought an art-installation-style demonstration: dolls trapped in boxes. (Politics K-12)
• A collection of news stories about the topics that are fueling the Save Our Schools march. (EdWeek)
• The federal government says students who get GEDs should be counted as high school dropouts. (NPR)
• Five more suggestions for maintaining high quality in digital learning environments. (Quick and Ed)

The city teachers union will have to go to the State Education Department to protest rising class sizes in New York City, rather than skip straight to the courts, after an appeals court today dismissed a 2010 suit by the union.

The suit aimed at forcing New York City to dedicate a certain pot of state funds toward making class sizes smaller. The union charged that the city misused the funds, sending them to offset budget cuts rather than using them as they were intended — as a means of reducing class sizes. The NAACP also signed onto the suit.

But in a decision handed down today, an appeals court unanimously dismissed the union’s suit, saying that the union must take its complaints to the State Education Department before going to court. (Read the full decision below.)

The union president, Michael Mulgrew, vowed to continue protesting rising class sizes. “Lowering class size is a key issue for the parents and teachers of New York City and we intend to pursue it vigorously,” Mulgrew said in a statement this afternoon.

The appeals court did not address the heart of the disagreement: whether the city actually did, as the union charges, improperly fail to lower class sizes — and use Contracts for Excellence funds instead to stave off budget cuts. At issue is the state Contracts for Excellence funding stream, and in particular, a specific clause forcing New York City to write a plan to reduce class sizes.

What’s not disputed is that class sizes have creeped up for the last two years even as funds aimed at bringing them down have flooded into schools. Class sizes for the coming school year aren’t yet available, but all signs point to likely increases, which principals are preparing for. It’s not clear, however, that the Department of Education deliberately sought to prevent schools from lowering class sizes by sending funds elsewhere. (more…)

Schools are still waiting for the results of state ELA and math tests, exactly one year after the 2010 scores were announced.

The July 26 Principals’ Weekly newsletter said that the state had “postponed the release” of the grade 3-8 scores, though the New York State Education Department said today that results were right around the corner.

“The release this year is imminent and will be announced shortly,” NYSED spokesman Tom Dunn said.

The Principals’ Weekly item told principals that after the scores are released, they will need to send “July promotion update letters” to students who had been held back, and to students who failed the tests but had been promoted to the next grade on the expectation that they would pass.

Now, it looks like those July updates may not come until August.

Clemente Lopes, principal of Horace Greeley Middle School in Long Island City, said that he was anxious to see his school’s scores—for planning, but also out of curiosity.

“I’d like to see how my students perform. I’m like a parent—I want to know how my kids did,” he said. (more…)

James Horan is used to being creative, after spending years teaching physical education at an elementary school without a gym or outdoor space of its own.

Now, like many other city teachers, he’s going to need to use that creativity to find another position.

Horan was recently excessed after teaching for four and a half years at PS 68 in Ridgewood, Queens. Even though the school’s population has been shrinking for years, Horan thought his job was safe because it wasn’t included in the list of projected layoffs that the city circulated in February.

When layoffs were averted, he joined the cheers — only to be told one month later that budget reductions made his position too expensive for the school to maintain. The city has not yet released details about how many teachers shared Horan’s fate this year, but after three straight years of cuts, the number is sure to be significant. Principals eliminated nearly 2,000 positions last year.

“I just find it very frustrating,” Horan said. “Now that I’m excessed, it’s just very unexpected. Until June, everything’s great. I would have planned differently.”

Horan came to PS 68 as a first-year teacher in the spring of 2007, teaching 30 to 50 students at a time in an empty classroom that served as the school’s gym. The school hadn’t offered physical education in at least three years, he said, and he bought the program’s only supplies himself using Teacher’s Choice funds. (Those funds were also eliminated this year.) (more…)

• Fewer than 9,000 parents responded to the DOE’s new communication survey. (Daily News)
• Newark’s system of swapping teachers at low-performing schools has come under attack. (WSJ)
• A new summer camp offers cerebral math classes to female students from city middle schools. (Times)
• The city is restoring some schools’ art after poor conditions, painting, and neglect harmed them. (NY1)
• Fewer teachers received tenure last year. (GothamSchools, Times, WSJ, Daily News, Post, NY1, WNYC)
• The Post praises the tenure shift but says that the city must stay the course despite union criticism.
• The Daily News says the change means job protections are finally becoming meaningful in the city.
• Brooklyn Prospect Charter School’s new space will require artists to leave their lofts. (Brooklyn Paper)
• The head of a summer learning nonprofit says better summer school can inhibit a learning slide. (Times)
• As states refine their high school dropout data, many are preparing to see graduation rate drops. (AP)
• Britain’s education minister met often with Rupert Murdoch to have him fund new schools. (Independent)