GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The teachers union is threatening to curb its efforts toward new teacher evaluations if the Department of Education doesn’t remind principals again that the old evaluation system is still in place.

The threat comes at the end of an angry letter sent by UFT Secretary Michael Mendel sent to the DOE yesterday. In the letter, Mendel says that UFT members report some principals are preparing to use the Danielson Framework, an evaluation model that the DOE favors, to rate teachers — even though the union hasn’t agreed to the change.

City officials dispute the charge, saying that Danielson is being used only in ways that the union has approved: in most schools, to give teachers information to help them improve. The model is being used to rate teachers only in 33 “persistently low-achieving” schools where the city and UFT agreed to new evaluations in order to land federal school improvement funds, the officials say.

But despite a joint reminder from the UFT, DOE, and principals union last month, the union is charging that some principals still haven’t gotten the message that the Danielson rubric shouldn’t be used to rate teachers. At a meeting for members of the UFT’s governing body last night, UFT officials said they had obtained documents showing that some networks, the groups that support principals, had devised evaluation checklists based on Danielson’s criteria, according to a union member who was there. The officials did not share the documents, the union member said.

Mendel told GothamSchools that teachers have reported getting official reprimands based on Danielson-influenced observations and that many administrators do not seem to have had adequate training before starting to test the new model.

Mendel said the union won’t break state law and pull out of negotiations altogether. But he said confusion and the sense that some principals are pushing Danielson prematurely have made the union less willing to collaborate with the DOE. (more…)

• More than a third of teachers at Harlem Success Academy 3 have left since the end of last year. (Times)
• After a stabbing at Curtis High School, metal detectors are in place, to the principal’s chagrin. (NY1)
• A principal who was removed from his school later tried to use clout to benefit his friends. (Daily News)
• Some schools creatively fit in student exercise amid space, time, and budget constraints. (Times)
• Supermodel Tyra Banks visited students at the High School for Teaching and Professions. (Daily News)
• The UFT is launching a new bullying hotline as part of a multi-agency initiative. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• A popular teacher at an elite private school was fired for a mysterious offense. (Times)
• Enrollment in Detroit’s schools is down 10 percent from last year, beating expectations. (Detroit News)

• A new report concludes that D.C.’s teacher eval system is “doing what it was intended to do.” (DFER)
• But data in the report suggest most teachers leaving D.C. each year are “effective.” (Dana Goldstein)
• A Jesuit school in Crown Heights is trying to stem the exodus of male students. (Brooklyn Ink)
• A new study finds that poor students drop out five times as often as other students. (Hechinger)
• A teacher says moving Regents exams earlier in the year won’t benefit students. (JD2718)
• An Ohio town closed schools today after lions, tigers, bears, and more escaped a zoo. (10TV)
• Director of the Right to Read Project: The city should do more for struggling readers. (Gotham Gazette)
• A lost provision of NCLB: The designation of schools as “persistently dangerous.” (Educated Reporter)
• On the difference between math and Mathematics and how schools get it wrong. (Gary Rubinstein)
• Handicapping the odds that Congress can revise NCLB before the 2012 elections. (CSM)
• The only ESEA amendment to pass today protects teachers from being force-transferred. (Politics K-12)
• Linda Darling-Hammond: New assessments are an improvement but not enough. (Teaching Matters)

Since the first protesters arrived at Zuccotti park nearly five weeks ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement has ignited protests from California to the United Kingdom. The city Department of Education could be next.

Calling Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott a member of the maligned “1 percent,” city education activists say they are planning to bring hundreds of protesters to next week’s school board meeting for an “Occupy the DOE” action.

The idea to form ODOE came to organizers, many of whom are city public school teachers, during a Sunday afternoon “grade-in” for educators at Occupy Wall Street, according to Leia Petty, an organizer who works as a guidance counselor in a Bushwick high school and is a long-time activist.

As the teachers discussed how the OWS movement intersected with public education, she said, they united around a shared concern that educators and families have been shut out of DOE decision-making process. So they decided to protest the entity that does ratify DOE decisions: the Panel for Educational Policy, which is holding a special meeting next week about new academic standards.

Petty said ODOE protesters will fill the 350-seat auditorium and draw attention to the PEP’s track record of ignoring public testimony before approving the DOE’s proposed policies. Most of the panel’s members were appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (more…)

Council Speaker Christine Quinn, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott and others pose with the new BRAVE poster

The teachers union and city are often portrayed as pushing each other around. Not today.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott shared a podium this morning to announce a new hotline for students to use to get advice about bullying. The hotline is the main initiative of BRAVE (Building Respect, Acceptance, and Voice through Education), a $50,000 anti-bullying campaign funded by the union and launched in conjunction with city agencies and the City Council.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said at the announcement that bullying had replaced grades and graduation as parents’ chief education concerns.

“The reality is if you poll parents right now, you ask them what keeps them up at night, you ask them what makes them worry about their child’s ability to excel in school, they’ll tell you bullying,” Quinn said.

When students call the hotline (212-709-3222) on weekdays between 2:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., the trained clinicians and mental health professionals who pick up will first evaluate their immediate safety and then help them construct a plan to confront their situation.

There will not be any direct communication with students’ schools because of the confidentiality issue. However, the Mental Health Association of New York City, who will be manning the hotline, will be tracking data about the number of student callers.

(more…)

A new special education data system isn’t as bad as its critics say, Chancellor Dennis Walcott told Bronx parents Tuesday night.

The chancellor acknowledged that the Special Education Student Information System was earning “mixed reactions” from educators, but he downplayed concerns that it was a “systemic” problem.

The web‐based system was created to track information about students with disabilities and is being rolled out this year, to massive complaints. Over the summer, SESIS was blamed for leaving some special needs students without school seats. Now, teachers are saying the system is extremely burdensome to use. As a compliance deadline approached last week, the union blasted the DOE for its “total incompetence” in managing the system rollout. In a separate email, UFT Secretary Michael Mendel called SESIS a “systemic problem that is affecting almost everyone who uses it in almost every school.”

Walcott voluntarily addressed those concerns and others last night at a meeting with District 7 parents in the Bronx. It was the first of many town hall‐style meetings that Walcott will host this year in accordance with a law that requires the chancellor to visit each of the city’s 33 districts in a two‐year period.

At this meeting, held at The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, Walcott answered questions about budget cuts, school closures, absent teacher reserve deployments, and class sizes. He brought SESIS up on his own. (more…)

• Parents at MS 447, a likely site for a new Success Network charter school, aren’t happy. (Brooklyn Paper)
• The City Council said the city could do more for homeless students. (GothamSchools, NY1, Daily News)
• Brooklyn Tech turned an old woodworking shop into a state-of-the-art mock courtroom. (Daily News)
• Across the city yesterday, students interacted with the Hudson River through projects and trips. (NY1)
• A DOE official promoted illegal lobbying. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News, Times, NY1, WSJ)
• The Board of Regents endorsed a law to help illegal immigrant students. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• The city is seeking to fire a Queens school secretary who killed her seemingly abusive husband. (Post)
• The U.S. Senate rejected a bid to limit the inclusion of potatoes in school lunches. (Times)
• Education is popular among D.C. legislators, especially Democrats, for the first time in years. (AP)
• New laws let Munster, Ind., ditch all traditional textbooks in favor of digital texts this year. (Times)

• A teacher’s wish for his colleagues: One day to draw students’ applause, as he did recently. (JD2718)
• What to expect when senators mark up the Harkin-Enzi ESEA bill tomorrow. (Politics K-12)
• A trio of moderate senators want to see a focus on teacher evaluations restored to the bill. (Politics K-12)
• But where have all the reformers gone? Some key voices of the recent past seem to be silent. (Russo)
• A city school attributes students’ improved behavior to a new focus on social-emotional learning. (GOOD)
• In defense of outsiders evaluating schools and influencing education policy. (Corey Bunje Bower)
• High school students from the iSchool are going to use GPS to survey neighborhood trees. (Examiner)
• After watching Flip video footage of his classes, a teacher realizes he doesn’t like his tone. (Mr Foteah)
• Crunching “high-flyer” numbers, an online learning group says early intervention is key. (Flypaper)

Natavia Schurry, the mother of a kindergartener at P.S. 256, protests the school's threatened closure. (Megan Hester)

An after-school rally at Brooklyn’s P.S. 256 today took aim at the idea that the school is failing, even though it got an F on its most recent progress report.

The Department of Education included P.S. 256, a Bedford-Stuyvesant school, on a list of 20 low-performing schools that are being considered for closure. But parents and staff say the school is doing its best with limited resources.

Budget cuts have cost P.S. 256 its art and reading teachers and shrunk its tutoring program, according to Jimmy Dinkins, vice president of the school’s parent-teacher association.

“How are you going to put a school on a sinking ship and then expect us to pass?” Dinkins asked before the rally today.

DOE figures show $427,000 in budget cuts since 2008 for the 400-student school, where fewer than 4 in 10 students pass state reading and math tests.

Dinkins said he and other parents suspect that the DOE is trying to figure out how to free up space for the Community Partnership Charter School, whose middle school grades moved to the P.S. 256 building last year, to expand. (more…)

After they endorsed anti-cheating measures and the state’s bid for a No Child Left Behind waiver, the Board of Regents turned yesterday to a different policy issue: the plight of students whose families came to the country illegally.

As part of their 2012 legislative agenda, the Regents voted to support the federal Development, Relief, and Education Act for Minors. The DREAM Act, which failed in the U.S. Senate last year, would clear a path toward citizenship for high school graduates whose families are in the country illegally. The act would benefit nearly 350,000 students statewide, many in New York City, by making them able to work legally and get financial aid for college.

Today, Board of Regents Chancellor and State Education Commissioner John King sent a letter to New York’s congressional delegation, urging them to back the DREAM Act when it comes before them during the next legislative session.

The Regents’ endorsement didn’t come without question. Roger Tilles, a Regent who in the past cast one of just three “no” votes against letting test scores count more in teacher evaluations, initially questioned the wisdom of weighing in on the issue. He said the political consequences of taking a stand on immigration could alienate groups that prioritize other education policies. He did not say what those groups could be.

Tisch responded to Tilles with a personal appeal. (more…)