GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Parents rushing to find spots for their children in city schools at the eleventh hour can expect to confront a thick bureaucracy, strict paperwork requirements, and long waits.

On a recent afternoon at a Department of Education enrollment center in Manhattan, the waiting room was crowded with harried parents juggling toddlers or trying to squeeze an enrollment consultation into a lunch break; large families of recent immigrants from China, the Dominican Republic, and Bosnia; and students seeking to reenroll after leaving the system.

Khemenec Pantin, the receptionist, is patient with all of them. “You need two proofs of address and a passport or birth certificate,” he rattles off in one breath as families approach his desk.

“It’s this busy every year,” Jimmy Bueschen, an enrollment coordinator, said as he bounced between the fax machine and a row of parents waiting to receive paperwork instructions. “This year is no different. Some parents are reasonable, and some aren’t.”

In his 15 years working in enrollment for the DOE, Bueschen said he is accustomed to hearing profanities and sighs from frustrated parents. Earlier this week, he said the worst was still to come.

“Next week, we’ll have a huge volume,” he said.

That’s when families will flood temporary registration centers that the department opens in the days before school starts. The 12 temporary enrollment centers across the five boroughs can expect to see between 100 and 500 students per day, according to DOE officials. (more…)

• Juan Gonzalez: Plans show that poor areas will lose more school aides to layoffs. (Daily News)
• Judges: The city can release teachers’ ratings. (GS, Times, Daily News, Post, NY1, WNYC, WSJ, LAT)
• The Post and Daily News both praise the step toward “sunshine” on teachers’ ratings.
• Two equity advocates say the city is wrong to count on philanthropists to prop up the schools. (Times)
• A panel discussion yesterday reveal splits over Mayor Bloomberg’s education legacy. (City Hall News)
• State and city officials sparred over the city’s efforts to monitor cheating. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1)
• A DOE official’s remark about “real parents” raised eyebrows and questions. (GothamSchools)
• Chicago is aiming to add up to 90 minutes to the school day, but specifics are unresolved. (Times)
• In Chicago, Parents spend days camping on the side for the chance to get free music classes. (Times)

• A reformer says the UFT’s Teacher Data Report position is right and the reports are flawed. (Rick Hess)
• Hess and Randi Weingarten discussed school reform effects on teachers; here’s the video. (Flypaper)
• IP records show that a site that mocks Michelle Rhee was set up using an AFT computer. (Politico)
• Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office seems to have tried to speculate on teachers’ deaths. (HuffPo)
• The U.S. DOE relaunched its data site with new bells and whistles. (Inside School Research)
• A call for communities to screen “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.” (Ed Notes)
• Andy Rotherham interviewed Arne Duncan and the transcript includes some surprises. (Time)
• In addition to everything else, a city teacher wants to teach his students self-worth this year. (Mr Foteah)
• What can a teacher do when students don’t know the basics. Often, not a whole lot. (Mike Goldstein)

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said she believes the city’s schools have improved, but urged the Department of Education should do more to prove that its test scores are “bulletproof.”

Tisch made the comment at this morning’s City Hall News and GothamSchools “On Education” panel: ”I think the city has an obligation to show the public that what they’ve done here is real,” she said, noting that she had “had conversations with the city on this issue.”

Department of Education Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky, who also sat on the panel, defended the department against the suggestion that cheating is widespread, noting that investigations substantiate very few cheating allegations. He said that the department plans to release a more complete accounting of its internal investigations into cheating allegations, similar to the one released earlier this week by the Special Commissioner of Investigation, an independent office.

But Polakow-Suransky also said that more could be done to tighten test controls and that the city “would welcome more scrutiny.” He told GothamSchools that the city has offered to chip in to help the state create a “distributed scoring system” whereby students’ Regents exams could be electronically sent to other schools to be graded by teachers with no relationship to them. Currently, teachers grade their own students’ exams.

That system would be the best option for preventing teachers from changing exam grades, Polakow-Suransky said, but the cost — which officials pegged as high as $20 million — is too much for New York City to undertake alone.

“I think the state has an obligation to pay for that,” he said. “We’ve offered to help with some of our Race to the Top money, and we’re looking into some models that we can begin to test in hopes that they will take it over statewide. That’s the real solution to this.” (more…)

A top Department of Education official butted heads with a parent this morning over the credibility of parent advocates, suggesting that advocacy groups do not reflect the views of “real parents.”

The dispute took place during this morning’s “On Education” panel, which GothamSchools co-hosted.

During a back-and-forth with Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch over the success of mayoral control in New York City, the DOE’s typically reserved chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said the complaints of parent advocacy groups are not as credible as the surveys the city collects on parent satisfaction.

“Ninety-two percent of parents report that they are getting really good service each year from their schools,” he said. “I would urge people before categorizing stuff based on the voices of politicians or specific parent advocacy groups that may not have had their needs met, to really look at the data about what real parents are saying.”

On the panel, William Thompson, a former city comptroller and prospective mayoral candidate, raised his eyebrows and appeared startled by the comment (1:55 in video). (more…)

The city can release teacher ratings data to news organizations, the state’s second-highest court ruled today in another serious blow to the union’s effort to keep individual teachers’ scores out of the press.

The release won’t happen right away while the legal fight continues, Department of Education officials said.

But the union is running out of chances to stop the ratings from being published. In December, a State Supreme Court judge ruled that the city could release Teacher Data Reports for at least 12,000 teachers who have them. After the Appellate Court ruling today, the union’s last hope is the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

The union is already working on its appeal, UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced moments after the Appellate Court ruling.

Because the four judges on the Appellate Court ruled unanimously against the union, there’s no guarantee that the Court of Appeals will hear the case. Instead, the Appellate Court has to give permission. Within days, the union will ask the appellate court for permission to have the case heard in the Court of Appeals. If permission isn’t granted, the union can also ask the Court of Appeals itself. If the Court of Appeals declines to hear the case, then the Appellate Court’s decision would stand and the union would be out of options. (more…)

• Chancellor Walcott: The city guards against cheating and allegations otherwise are wrong. (Daily News)
• A judge sided with the state union on evaluations. (Times, Daily News, GS, WNYC, WSJ, Post, NY1)
• At In-Tech Academy, new technologies are changing how teachers and students work. (Riverdale Press)
• Two math experts argue that the typical math course sequence in high schools is limiting. (Times)
• Discrepancies between two laws allowed the DOE not to test PS 51 for toxins earlier. (Riverdale Press)
• All but two D.C. schools are set to reopen today after checks for earthquake damage. (Washington Post)

• Arne Duncan offered to meet Matt Damon at the airport before July’s teacher march. (Answer Sheet)
• Highlights of Duncan’s Twitter Town Hall today, which included few Twitter questions. (Politics K-12)
• Watch the Town Hall interview itself. Host John Merrow promises a second in the future. (ED.gov)
• A city teacher reports the unusual occurrence, for him, of not wanting to go back to school. (Jose Vilson)
• Is there a movement afoot within Teach For America’s NYC corps to change its approach? (Ed Notes)
• The federal government is quietly giving states more time to work out teacher evaluations. (Politics K-12)
• A deeper look at crowdsourcing theory behind the New York Times and WNYC’s SchoolBook. (Russo)
• After a noisy co-location fight, Upper West Success charter school opened quietly today. (City Room)
• Inside a wealthy New Jersey district’s charter school fight. (Hechinger Report)
• An autism expert outlines four things needed for great schools, other than great teachers. (EdVox)
• A takedown of the notion that students should add 10 minutes of homework per grade. (Mrs. Ripp)
• An interactive timeline of the last 30 years in education, from an outlet that covered them all. (Ed Week)

Two years after sending state tests to the end of the school year, the state is moving them earlier again, but its motives for doing so – to move forward on teacher evaluation plans – hit a road block today.

The 2011-2012 school year testing schedule published by the State Education Department this week has state tests for students in grades 3 through 8 starting April 16 and being graded by May 3. Last year, the tests began May 3, and scoring didn’t end until May 26.

The new dates might not be set in stone, because April 16 is the first day that students in New York City and many other school districts return from spring break. But the test scores will definitely be available earlier next year, state officials promised.

The earlier timing is necessary for state to put new teacher evaluation requirements in place, Commissioner of Education John King told district superintendents in a letter, sent Monday, that implored them not to be distracted by policy debates. The evaluation plan sets at least 20 percent of a teacher’s rating to be based on student test scores, but local districts still need to negotiate with unions if it wants more, according to a court ruling today.

Two years ago, the state moved test dates from January and March until May in part to make it possible to attribute a student’s performance to his teacher that year. A side effect is that scores came out later — this year, not until mid-August. That timeline meant that had the evaluation plan been online, teacher ratings couldn’t have been completed. It also meant that for the second straight year, the city had to send students to summer school based on predicted scores, which were sometimes wrong. (more…)

A State Supreme Court Judge partially sided with the state teachers union today over how big of a role standardized test scores should play for teacher evaluations.

Overturning a key state regulation that was approved by the Board of Regents in May, Judge Michael Lynch ruled that local districts could only double the weight of test scores in evaluations – from 20 percent to 40 percent – if the local union signs off on the arrangement. The judge upheld a different regulation, which will allow districts the option to increase testing emphasis, so long as it is through collective bargaining.

The New York State Education Department criticized the judge’s reversal and pledged to appeal it, further complicating the future of an evaluation system that was originally slated to take effect this year.

The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by New York State United Teachers in June. In the suit, NYSUT lawyers argued that the Regents were circumventing a carefully negotiated state law that set the weight of test scores at 20 percent. (more…)