GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Patrick Sullivan said PEP failed to vet contract that bilked millions from taxpayers. (GothamSchools)
• Assigning Khan Academy lectures for homework, and homework for school time. (Ed Week)
• Cartoonists are conspiring against standardized tests, or at least they don’t like them. (Larry Cuban)
• GAO: States used federal recovery funds as stopgaps for major budget shortfalls. (Ed Money Watch)
• Former NYC Schools Chancellor says Governors at NBC summit still don’t get it. (Hechinger)
• The complete 90-minute video of the Miseducation Nation panel is now online. (GEM Vimeo)
• After SAT cheating scandal, a prosecutor calls for more test security, photos of every test-taker. (AP)
• A New York City teacher finds lessons for his profession in Jay-Z lyrics. (Ed Week)
• GothamSchools is off Friday due to the holiday. Enjoy the weekend and we’ll be back Monday.

The job status of more than 700 Department of Education employees remains in limbo after a meeting between City Council members and education officials yesterday yielded no progress towards a deal to prevent layoffs, according to people who attended.

Council members said they remained optimistic that the layoffs, which affect school aides who are among the lowest paid workers in the city could be averted. But they said any deal would require more energy from education and City Hall officials.

“I know that there’s a strong effort being made on the members’ part,” said Leroy Comrie, of Queens. “I’m not sure that the administration feels wedded to the need to get anything done.”

The meeting was convened by the council’s Black, Latino and Asian caucus. They invited Chancellor Dennis Walcott to explain why the layoffs were primarily affecting low income minorities, according to several members who attended. Council members also complained they were not given notice before the layoffs were announced in August.

Letitia James, of Brooklyn, called the process “an attempt to circumvent the City council. They could have come to us before and asked for some assistance and approval.”

The layoffs actually came from individual principals, who had to cut an average of 2.4 percent from their budgets in July. Rather than eliminate teacher positions, which were spared as part of concessions made by the United Federation of Teachers, many principals chose to cut the school aides. (more…)

Brooke Hauser’s new book, “The New Kids,” follows a year in the life of students at International High School in Prospect Heights, a small school that caters to immigrants.

Among the book’s many highs and lows is a moment at the end of the Class of 2009′s school year when five students receive college scholarships from Jerry Seinfeld’s foundation. Fifteen students in the city received the scholarships, and five were members of International’s Class of 2009. (Another moment is prom, the event that led to Hauser’s 2008 New York Times story and inspired the book.)

We recently spoke to three of those winners, now college juniors. They are Mukta Mukta, seen wrestling with her religion and independence throughout the book; Freeman Degboe, a ham who introduces himself to Seinfeld as “the next Jerry Seinfeld”; and Marie Feline Guerrier, a mini-celebrity in Brooklyn’s Haitian community.

Mukta, who immigrated from Bangladesh in 2002, is now a junior nursing major at the University of Vermont. Degboe, who came to the United States from Togo in 2006, joins her there and is now studying film and television. Guerrier, a Haitian immigrant, is now studying health sciences and nursing at Long Island University.

Mukta Mukta is a junior nursing major at the University of Vermont.

How did you end up at International High School?

MM: In 2002 I moved to Nebraska first, and I went to school there for two and a half years. I was here in March at the very end of the year, so I started in New York with sixth grade. I was in a middle school in New York and one of my teachers – an English teacher – told me about International and she told me it’s a great school, it’s a new school, and it’s a small school with less students and I got in.
FD: My father moved first and then he brought the rest of us to Brooklyn. During that first week we tried to go to different schools. We went to I.S. 292, but they only took my little sister because they said I was too old. So, they sent us to this office and they told me to go to International High School. I went there and they told me to come back after break – I think it was second semester. I didn’t have to take any tests; I just showed my transcripts from Togo and they accepted me.
MFG: My dad had a friend of his who knew about high schools and who referred me to International High School. My high school experience started shaky, but I said to myself I am in the United States and the reason I came here was for a better future. Especially for Haitians, graduating is a great thing and they believe in education. My family worked hard to bring me here so it’s my job to work hard, not just to make then proud but to help me in the future. (more…)

Reports that a Department of Education technology contractor improperly stole millions of dollars from the city are returning attention to the way the school system reviews contracts.

Building more oversight over contracts was one of the goals of the reauthorized mayoral control law passed by state lawmakers in 2009. The law handed review power of contracts to the Panel for Educational Policy, the citywide school board controlled by the mayor. But since 2009, several panel members have complained that they lack the information necessary to review contracts before approving them, making their oversight authority meaningless.

In the case of the contract with Future Technology Associates, the firm accused of fraud yesterday by the city schools investigator, panel members had less than a day to review detailed information about the contract before voting on it in September 2009, according to email messages obtained by GothamSchools. Officials shared the information in response to a request by the Manhattan representative on the panel, Patrick Sullivan.

The contract came up for a renewal vote at the first meeting of the PEP after the mayoral control reauthorization. In an email to Sullivan the day of the meeting, department General Counsel Michael Best cited reauthorization as motivating school officials to prepare more thorough background materials.

Sullivan, an opponent of the Bloomberg administration’s education policies, responded that those materials — which included a draft agreement between the city and Future Technology Associates — were not sufficient. He said that a day to review them was not enough time. (more…)

• Twenty schools were notified they are on an initial ‘struggling schools list.’  (GothamSchools, Times, NY1)
• Report found widespread fraud worth millions in a DOE tech contract.  (Times, WSJ, Daily News, Post)
• Gonzalez, who first wrote about the contract, says officials were either complicit or clueless. (Daily News)
• Toxin tests at P.S. 51 could be inconclusive because of delayed response. (The Riverdale Express)
• Microsoft partnership with state helps relieve budget cuts to online teacher training. (GothamSchools)
• Parents of a Brooklyn charter school say their children aren’t getting basic school supplies. (Daily News)
• More New Yorkers approve of mayoral control since Dennis Walcott took over as Chancellor. (NY1)
• School budget cuts are forcing some teachers to seek help through online charity web sites. (Daily News)
• Students and teachers across the country join a movement to lift school bans on some web sites. (Times)
• A Christopher Columbus campus principal is being investigated for harassing female faculty. (News 12)
• Iowa education chief is under fire with ethics committee for accepting a trip from Pearson. (Gazette)

• Two city charter networks are among a small group getting federal dollars to expand. (Hechinger)
• Meet the Tiffany Lopez Test: Do reform efforts help the most motivated poor children? (Pondiscio)
• A contractor with the city violated contracts and defrauded the city for millions. (Daily News)
• StoryCorp’s big oral history of Americans talking about teachers is coming soon. (Ed.gov)
• Coaching is in the spotlight; here’s a Q+A with an instructional coach. (Larry Ferlazzo)
• Duncan will make a major teacher education announcement this Friday in DC. (Quick and the Ed)
• Obama reminded students that they are “this country’s future” in his back-to-school speech. (NPR)
• The Alabama law requiring schools to collect students’ immigration status will stand. (EdWeek)
• In ethnically diverse districts, teachers at schools with more minorities get lower salaries. (Teacher Beat)
• Singapore’s head of education is pushing a new program focused on character and “grit.” (Hechinger)

Some schools who pulled low grades on the progress reports handed out last week are already getting notice that the city is seriously worried about their performance.

Department of Education officials have identified 20 schools — 11 with middle school grades and 12 in Brooklyn alone — for “early engagement conversations” that could lead either to closure or another lease on life. This is the second year that the city, eager to stem some of the public outcry over school closures, has held conversations with low-performing schools before announcing which schools it plans to close. This year’s notice comes even earlier than last year, by a few weeks.

Department officials compiled the shortlist by looking at schools’ progress report grades, their Quality Reviews, the results of state evaluations, and the efforts they’ve already undertaken to improve. But in starting the early conversations, the department hopes to learn why the schools are struggling and whether other efforts could help them, according to Marc Sternberg, the DOE deputy chancellor in charge of school closures.

So far, the DOE has sent letters to elected officials in the schools’ districts, the districts’ elected parent councils, and their superintendents. Next, principals and DOE officials will jointly begin holding a series of meetings with families and teachers to discuss each individual schools’ options.

“We’ll take the feedback into consideration as we explore options to improve performance and support student success, and continue to work with all of our schools to ensure that students have access to high quality options,” Sternberg said in a statement.

One principal, whose school received an F on its progress report, said she was “shocked and humiliated” when she found out her school would be listed publicly.

“Even though the F grade implies that we’re failing, we’re certainly not a failing school and we’re not failing our children,” the principal said. (more…)

Pedro Noguera and Karen Sprowal talk after the "Miseducation Nation" panel ended.

Panel members at an event critiquing current school reform policies last night criticized  testing, large classes, and charter schools — and also a university professor sharing the stage with them.

More than 100 people filled a school auditorium in Manhattan to attend the four-member “Miseducation Nation” panel, which was convened in response to – and got its mocking namesake from – NBC’s “Education Nation” summit, a two-day event that wrapped up earlier that day at Rockefeller Center.

Pedro Noguera, an NYU professor who studies urban education, was invited to speak on the panel and for most of the evening, he was on the same page as his fellow panelists, historian Diane Ravitch, Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, and teacher Brian Jones of the Grassroots Education Movement. They all criticized policymakers for adopting reform ideas that they said were not working – and ignoring alternative ones, such as smaller class sizes and culturally-relevant curriculum, that they said would improve schools.

The panel also criticized the media coverage, which they characterized as biased toward current reform policies. The event was hosted by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a national media advocacy group. ”We feel beleaguered and we feel there is only one story told repeatedly in the mainstream media,” Haimson said.

More than 100 people, many of which were teachers and parents, packed into the auditorium at P.S. 66 School of the Future.

When moderator Laura Flanders opened up questioning to the audience, criticism quickly turned on Noguera, a board member of the SUNY Charter School Institute, which oversees many of New York City’s most prominent charter schools.

Veteran teacher Michael Fiorillo first brought up the subject when he asked Noguera to explain how he could support opening charter schools, while at the same time being such a vocal opponent of closing the ones that they replace. (more…)

Teach for America members aren’t the only teachers to start getting digital tools from a technology giant.

A new partnership between a statewide network of teacher training centers and Microsoft will give teachers access to discounted computer hardware and software, and help using them. Announced this week, the Tech4Teachers program will flood New York State Teacher Centers with new technology options at lower than market-rates. There are 250 center sites in New York City and 130 more throughout the state, offering in-person and virtual assistance to public and private school teachers.

Microsoft’s assistance comes at a time when state budget cuts have constrained resources at the teacher centers, which provide professional support in the form of online and face-to-face training to teachers across the state. The centers were cut from last year’s state budget, but this year the Assembly budgeted $20.5 million for them, approximately half of what the centers have been funded for in the past, according to Gail Moon, the state’s acting teacher centers program director.

Though the centers receive support from the state’s teachers union and some local unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, they primarily rely on the state for funding.

The partnership with Microsoft may alleviate some of the financial stress on teacher centers, staff members said, adding that the stress is particularly sharp now that the centers are  tasked with helping teachers and networks understand new instructional standards and integrate technology in their classroom.

“The way we’re looking at doing that is using technology by offering more webinars, electronic video conferencing capabilities, more professional development to more people, and then reducing the cost,” said Stan Silverman, co-chair of the centers’ technology committee.

Silverman said he will also use the program to show state legislators that teachers centers need more resources. (more…)

Charging that elected parent councils are “window dressing” that allow the city to avoid listening to families, a member of one of them quit publicly last night.

Brian Rafferty, a member of the Community Education Council for District 24, announced his resignation at the council’s meeting by reading a letter of protest he had written to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott.

“The Community Education Council serves no purpose other than to be a shield between the Department of Education and the parents of schoolchildren citywide,” Rafferty wrote in the letter, which he also posted on Facebook.

Rafferty echoed complaints that parents around the city have sounded for years about the weak role of the councils, which are seen as one of the few venues for parents to voice opinions about DOE policies, even though their only statutory function is to redraw school zone lines. Over the summer, after a disastrous set of council elections that had to be conducted twice, Walcott replaced the head of the DOE’s family engagement office.

But Rafferty suggested that little has changed since then. He said council members did not receive maps of new school zones until just before a recent public meeting about them, so members could not respond to parents’ criticism.

“We were as blindsided as the parents, and our job, as whipping boys for the DOE, was to take the brunt of the parents’ lashes without any regard to our own opinions on this,” Rafferty said. (more…)