GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A teacher illuminates the dark side of making student grades more transparent. (Tween Teacher)
• Despite her health focus, Michelle Obama handed out candy at the White House. (Politics K-12)
• Chicago announced the criteria on which officials will decide which schools to close. (Catalyst)
• The principal of a school based on “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” tells all. (SchoolBook)
• An Australian urges her countrymen to look away from the U.S. on education, and to Finland. (The Age)
• After parent-teacher conferences, pondering what support freshmen should get. (High School Hustle)
• A teacher runs down the good, the sloppy, the sweet, and more in his conference marathon. (JD2718)
• A final evaluation of Denver’s performance pay program finds lasting changes. (Quick & Ed)
• A new blog by social studies teachers who are trying to help each other improve. (NYCS2CFG)

Attendance was down at schools across the city today, an annual Halloween phenomenon that teachers said is driven by rumors of gang violence.

Eighty-two percent of students came to school today citywide, well below the average daily rate of 92 percent, according to preliminary attendance data posted on the Department of Education’s website.

Attendance was lowest at high schools and in pockets of Brooklyn and the Bronx. At several schools where daily attendance averages about 75 percent, including Banana Kelly High School and Lehman High School in the Bronx, only about 40 percent of students showed up today.

Assemblyman Karim Camara told GothamSchools that parents reported low attendance in many Central Brooklyn schools. On Twitter, Brooklyn high school teacher Stephen Lazar said only 50 to 60 percent of his students had come to school today. Another teacher, Janine Whitman, said only 2 of her 12 students were in class this morning. ”We were missing many students AND teachers today!” wrote Mark Anderson, who teaches at an elementary school in the Bronx. (more…)

In the last month, nearly 10 percent of teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve have found new positions, according to data the Department of Education released today.

Chart showing the exit paths of teachers from the ATR pool during October

The hiring took place during a time when the department shuffled teachers in the ATR pool to new positions every week, under the terms of an agreement with the teachers union.

The city and UFT say the agreement is meant to match more teachers with open positions. But at a union meeting for ATRs last month, some teachers speculated that the weekly assignments were intended to frustrate ATRs into resignation.

Numbers from the first month have not borne out that theory. Of the teachers who left the pool, 172 found new positions, 11 took a leave from the DOE, and 18 exited the school system entirely. Altogether, nearly 750 teachers have exited the pool since mid-August, when the city said 1,940 teachers were without permanent positions.

The new numbers show that the pool of teachers without permanent positions has settled at roughly the same size every year for three years, even though principals faced with shrinking budgets have cut jobs each summer. There are currently 1,200 teachers in the ATR pool, 77 fewer than last year at this time and 47 fewer than in November 2009. (more…)

Success Charter Network CEO Eva Moskowitz cut short a pitch to Brownstone Brooklyn parents Saturday after dozens of protesters interrupted her presentation.

Moskowitz was holding an informational meeting at a public library about her newest school, which the Department of Education has proposed siting in a Cobble Hill building that currently houses two secondary schools and a program for severely autistic students. But the roughly 15 parents who said they came to learn more about Cobble Hill Success Academy, which would open next fall, were easily outnumbered by opponents of Moskowitz’s bid to open a school in the area.

Last week, the opponents said they planned to stand outside the Carroll Gardens library during Moskowitz’s noon information session, but freezing rain drove them inside, where they distributed brochures criticizing Cobble Hill Success and charter schools more generally.

Shouting, “We have information for parents also! This district doesn’t have failing schools, it has successful elementary schools!” they interrupted a presentation made by parents from the Upper West Side school that was Moskowitz’s first foray into a neighborhood that, like Cobble Hill, includes many middle-class families and high-performing schools.

As the back-and-forth between audience members and presenters grew more confrontational, Moskowitz admonished the crowd. (more…)

• New York City’s version of its new sex education curriculum omits some graphic elements. (Daily News)
• The scheduling debacle at Long Island City HS has left students without required classes. (NY1, Times)
• The DOE proposed sites for new outposts of Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools. (GothamSchools, WSJ)
• Stuy teacher Gary Rubinstein has penned a picture book that encourages trial and error. (Daily News)
• A parent says the city’s selective high schools should have more open houses for parents. (Daily News)
• Michael Winerip: A N.H. school known for creativity has made changes under NCLB’s pressure. (Times)
• At a Westchester Jewish day school, girls learn to paint their nails in Torah-inspired ways. (Times)
• Impending NCLB waivers are seen as auguring an end to mandated tutoring programs. (AP)

• As school budgets were cut, the head of the state teachers union got a big raise. (Albany Times-Union)
• Responding to our story, charter school opponents called Hakeem Jeffries a “sellout.” (Politicker NY)
• A well-meaning teacher tries to share a working copier with peers but is blocked. (NYC Educator)
• A teacher describes two extremes of the teacher-evaluation spectrum, neither one pleasant. (Ed Week)
• “This American Life” takes on middle school (and has a GothamSchools shoutout!). (This American Life)
• A look at the new, post-PTA brand of parent advocacy around education. (Education Next)
• In L.A., a lawsuit on behalf of students aims to force more teacher evaluations. (PDF, via Eduwonk)
• Advice to city charter schools from Milwaukee, where many charters are teacher-led. (NY Teacher)
• Chicago Mayor Emanuel said the teachers union is “cheating kids” by opposing extended day. (Catalyst)
• A study by an organization pushing to change teacher prep says teachers support their efforts. (NCTQ)

Success Charter Network head Eva Moskowitz is making her first public appearance in Brownstone Brooklyn—and as usual, she will be joined by protesters.

Moskowitz is holding an informational session tomorrow to detail her plans for a new charter school that is likely to open in the affluent Cobble Hill neighborhood next year. Most of tomorrow’s protesters are parents from the neighborhood, who say they are planning to attend the meeting to tell Moskowitz that the Success Charter Network is not wanted there.

Opposition is also starting to rise from another group: School leaders in the Baltic Street building where the city has proposed to house the new school. The principals say they are nervous that the charter school’s presence could derail their attempts to improve their schools.

“We have had monumental success this year, and I’m concerned about how we can sustain that with another school added to the building, with the division of space,” Joseph O’Brien, principal of the School for Global Studies, one of the three schools currently housed in the building, told GothamSchools last week, before the co-location plan was announced.  (more…)

To help poor students do better in school, what comes first: tackling out-of-school factors tied to poverty, like health care or housing, or boosting academic offerings at school?

A panel yesterday offered a novel answer: Neither. Supports should target students in school, through teachers, they said, but they shouldn’t be purely academic.

Those supports, panel members said, range from teaching students skills to calm down during a rage to helping parents access social services they might not even know they are eligible for.

The panel featured leaders from three city organizations devoted to providing these supports: Drema Brown, the vice president of education at the Children’s Aid Society, Pamela Cantor, president of the non-profit Turnaround for Children, and Robert Hughes, president of New Visions for Public Schools, as well as James Shelton, the Obama administration official who heads up innovation efforts.

In the past, “Words like ‘social and emotional development’ of children were in the margins, nice to do, but not essential,” Cantor said. “A conversation is being framed today that we all can get behind, that a high-performing, high-poverty school has to do a lot—a lot more than is asked of schools to do.”

At one point, a person in the audience praised the direction of the conversation but asked the panel why their topic — students’ social and emotional needs — gets short shrift in the education debate.

“Well, our communications strategy sucks!” Shelton responded, to laughter from the audience.  (more…)

Dania Reid, of the Charter Parent Action Network, speaks at a town hall event with elected officials.

If charter school advocates had any concern that Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries wasn’t on their side, he lay their worries to rest last night.

Jeffries, a U.S. House of Representatives hopeful who has not always supported charter schools in his district, pledged his full-fledged support to charter school parents and backers at a town hall event hosted by the New York City Charter Center.

“The aspirations of parents such as yourself, who just want to find a vehicle to provide young children with the opportunity to get the best possible education … is one that I will always support, notwithstanding the consequences from those who may want to defend the status quo,” Jeffries said.

The event reflected a move among supporters of the city’s policy of closing struggling schools and replacing them with new options, including charter schools, to preempt the heated fights over co-location that engulfed the city last year. Nineteen new charter schools are slated to open in the city next year, and the city is hoping to house many of them in public school buildings.

Thursday’s event took place in Bedford-Stuyvesant’s New Beginnings Charter School, a second-year school located in a private facility owned by the Archdiocese of New York. It was the first such event organized by the center’s parent advocacy group, the Charter Parent Action Network. According to David Golovner, a vice president for the center, the network is working with parents in dozens of charter schools this year to help mobilize support in areas where charter schools are more densely located and where more are likely to open in the future. (more…)

• Troubled Long Island City High School angered students this week by redoing their schedules. (NY1)
• Chancellor Walcott said the city has improved high schools but must do more. (Daily News, AP)
• Parents at the building picked for Eva Moskowitz’s new school are pushing back. (Brooklyn Paper)
• In the majority of city schools that don’t have metal detectors, cell phones enter freely. (WNYC)
• DOE officials say they might revise Tribeca rezoning plans using parents’ feedback. (Tribeca Trib)
• Chicago’s new “Office of Portfolio” is using a complex formula to decide which schools to close. (Times)
• Alabama’s immigration law fits a strategy to limit education rights for illegal immigrant students. (Times)
• Parents at P.S. 194 in the Bronx are upset that some students are bused out of the area. (Daily News)