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Seth Diamond, commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services and Kathleen Grimm, DOE deputy chancellor, testify before a city council hearing on education barriers facing homeless youth.

Despite improvements, the city is still falling short at protecting homeless students from disruptions to their education, advocates told members of the City Council today.

Education committee chair Robert Jackson said he convened a hearing on obstacles facing homeless students in part to follow up on the story, reported by the Daily News last year, of a high school student who was unable to take a required Regents exam because she had to spend the day with her family going through the city’s shelter intake process. Since then, the Department of Homeless Services revised its policy to excuse children from most of the lengthy intake process.

“We’re pleased that this harmful policy was changed,” Jackson said. But he said, “This is but one example of the hardships faced by homeless students. DHS’s placement of families in shelters outside of their original community, combined with the [Department of Education]‘s busing restrictions, lead to many students in shelters having to transfer schools, thereby disrupting their education.”

DOE and DHS officials said they are increasingly collaborating to help students classified as homeless, who have quadrupled since 2008 to more than 65,000 and who make up a significant portion of students who are chronically absent from school. But the officials said they could do more to help more support students’ legal right to remain enrolled at their “school of origin,” the school they were enrolled in before becoming homeless.

DOE Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm said the DOE has counted 50,000 students in temporary housing, 20,000 of them in shelters. “Our number indicates about 65 percent remain in their school of origin,” she said. “We have no idea why parents move a child from a school, and maybe that’s something we could address.”

Advocates said the answer could be found in the city’s policies about school transportation and placement.

“Unfortunately, specific practices at DOE and DHS all but guarantee educational instability for a large swath of homeless students,” testified Jared Stein, the assistant director of New York State Technical and Education Assistance Center for Homeless Students, an advocacy group that helps school districts work with homeless students.  (more…)

The head of the Department of Education’s public affairs office broke the law when he urged school employees to engage in political lobbying, according to a report today from Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon.

During “Lobby Week” in March, Lenny Speiller, executive director of the DOE’s Office of Public Affairs, inserted language into an email to parent coordinators asking them to share a petition calling on lawmakers to do away with seniority layoff rules for teachers, investigators concluded. Mayor Bloomberg was pushing the policy change heavily at the time. But the state constitution prohibits public employees from engaging in private political lobbying.

Parent coordinators told us that the lobbying had begun months earlier. We reported about the advocacy efforts, which the city immediately disavowed, on March 16. The next day, teachers union president Michael Mulgrew filed an official complaint against the lobbying, and SCI launched an investigation. The union opposes changes to seniority layoff rules.

The petition asked lawmakers to “allow the City to keep it’s [sic] most effective teachers by ending the State’s ‘Last-In, First-Out’ policy, allowing teachers to be retained based on their performance, rather than just seniority.” Speiller told investigators that he suggested that language but didn’t expect it to be included in the petition that parent coordinators were asked to distribute. But other DOE employees said he made clear that his revisions would be included. (more…)

• Reports reveal city investigations into cheating allegations and consequences for cheaters. (Times)
• The Regents endorsed a slate of anti-cheating measures. (GothamSchools, Times, NY1)
• New York State will apply for a waiver to escape some federal education law rules. (GothamSchools)
• Students at P-TECH, the new school opened with IBM’s help, are getting IBM mentors. (Daily News)
• Students at an all-girls school say an iPad app that was made for them simplifies chemistry. (NY1)
• New York could start charging GED test-takers when a costlier version of the test launches. (Post)
• Local politicians are looking to toughen consequences for bullying conducted online. (Daily News)

• The DOE is the only agency the City Council would exempt from a law about contracts. (City Hall News)
• The council said today that it will require the DOE to offer more details about space. (Schoolbook)
• A question: Does Michael Winerip’s column today extol practices he condemned before? (Eduwonk)
• A suggestion that teacher hiring include two demo lessons, plus coaching. (Starting an Ed School)
• A teacher’s takeaways from learning how to elicit higher-order thinking, a la Danielson. (Mr Foteah)
• Parents say they have been shut out from the Contracts for Excellence process. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• Five major education groups are asking Sen. Harkin to slow down on revising NCLB. (Politics K-12)
• A revision to Harkin’s bill leaves the specifics of teacher evaluation up to each state. (Politics K-12)
• A teacher parses the players participating in the end-of-accountability scenario. (Flypaper)
• Four things to consider when analyzing the study of Houston’s “no excuses” schools. (Shanker Blog)

ALBANY — New York is joining the vast majority of states seeking to escape some of the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The Obama administration announced in August that it would offer states a chance to skirt some of NCLB’s strictest provisions, including the one that requires all students to score proficient on state tests by 2014. Last month, federal officials fleshed out the requirements and states lined up to apply — 39 so far, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. New York seemed to be a strong contender but officials here had not said until now whether the state would seek a waiver.

Today, state education officials announced that they plan to file a waiver application by the federal government’s second deadline, in mid-February.

Between now and then, a “think tank” of representatives from nearly two dozen education organizations will advise the State Education Department on its application, officials said today during a meeting of the Board of Regents. The think tank — whose members come from teachers unions, advocacy groups, reform organizations, and rural and urban school districts — have met twice already to plan and will discuss substantive issues for the first time when it convenes on Wednesday.

Ira Schwartz, the assistant commissioner in NYSED’s accountability office, will oversee the application process. (more…)

ALBANY — State education officials today received the go-ahead to request $2.1 million to expand the scale of the state’s test security program.

That funding, which the state legislature must approve, would support several policy changes. To catch cheating after it happens, the state will broaden erasure analysis to cover 10 percent of all elementary and middle school state tests. And as a preventive measure, teachers will be barred from grading their own students’ tests starting next year. The state is also requiring the city to boost on-the-ground monitoring of schools on testing days.

Deputy Commissioner Valerie Grey presented the new security measures to members of the Board of Regents during their monthly meeting today. The committee voted to approve the measures, and a final okay is expected when the full board convenes tomorrow.

The recommendations the Regents approved today were similar to those they first discussed last month, but there were two key changes. In the first, Grey said the state had abandoned a proposal to bar teachers from proctoring their own students’ exams after consultation with other states revealed that such a policy would be “highly unusual.” To compensate, Grey said, the state hopes to require districts to strengthen test-day monitoring. That proposal was not included in last month’s list, but was added after Regent Kathleen Cashin argued that a larger presence of test monitors was needed to prevent cheating.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators must sign off on adding the funding to this year’s state education budget. But officials today appeared confident that the recommendations would go into effect. An open question is whether local districts will be able and willing to pay for additional test-day monitoring. In New York City, officials have said that school districts should not have to foot the bill for new security requirements the state sets. (more…)

On a recent afternoon, dozens of teachers, social workers, and non-profit administrators, pored over the academic calendars of several charter schools. They were studying how a school can express its mission in the way it builds its calendar.

“There’s a lot to think about: Summer school — would that be mandatory?” asked Simeon Stolzberg, a former charter school authorizer who was leading the exercise. “You could have a year-round school, and maybe every eight weeks there would be a two-week vacation. Think about whether or not there is time in a day for teachers to plan and prep and grade — and eat lunch.”

Some of the teachers laughed, but Stolzberg was completely serious.

“Your calendar is one of the things that will set you a part from a district school,” he told the group, participants in a new program, Apply Right, that is helping prospective charter school leaders by taking them through the most minute details of school planning.

The program and two others, projects of the nonprofit New York City Charter School Center, reflect a growing sense that charter school leaders need more support than they have been getting.

“There were a number of schools that were approved in the last five years that frankly probably should not have been approved,” said James Merriman, the center’s director. “What I think we are seeing is that the bar of entry is being appropriately raised. … We want to see more charter schools, but we’re only really interested in seeing high-quality schools.” (more…)

• The state is asking for $2 million to enact stronger anti-cheating measures. (Times, Daily News, WSJ)
• The state has substantiated just 40-50 cases of test cheating in each of the last two years. (AP)
• The Post says cheating and grade inflation have thrown the city’s school improvement claims in doubt.
• The Regents are also set to support lobbying Congress to aid students who immigrated illegally. (Times)
• Michael Winerip: Bob Cohen, a DOE network leader, helps principals troubleshoot challenges. (Times)
• Some say Dennis Walcott should have done more in his first six months as chancellor. (Daily News)
• Parents and others at PS 84 on the Upper West Side say the school shouldn’t have gotten an F. (Times)
• Investigators: The principal of the Institute for Collaborative Education lets students to live with him. (Post)
• Brooklyn children performed a musical of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” at Zuccotti Park. (Daily News)
• A Muslim family is suing on discrimination grounds after their son was held back at PS 180. (Post)
• The chef at the Fatty Crab restaurants teaches cooking to children at PS 3, which his son attends. (WSJ)
• The Post says City Council members shouldn’t complain about layoffs because they agreed to them.
• Volunteers spruced up city schools during the annual New York Cares volunteer day. (NY1)
• The Times says New Orleans schools are flourishing because of new ideas and instruction methods.
• The first female chess grandmaster is promoting the game for young children, especially girls. (Times)
• An appeals court blocked pieces of the immigration law that has Alabama students staying home. (Times)

• Mike Petrilli: Could the end of NCLB augur an end to the accountability movement? (Flypaper)
• Debate on Sen. Tom Harkin’s ESEA bill has been scheduled for next week. (Politics K-12)
• The bill would require the weakest schools to undergo one of six overhaul tactics. (Quick & Ed)
• Andy Rotherham: Schools are more like the Boston Red Sox than the Oakland A’s. (Time)
• Teachers in San Francisco protested outside Murdoch’s ed conference appearance. (HuffPo)
• A South Bronx area is among 80 communities to focus on third-grade reading. (Curriculum Matters)
• The principal of Telecommunications HS quotes poetry in support of the “we.” (Schoolbook)
• Newark Mayor Cory Booker is looking for an education policy assistant. (On Ramps)
• Chicago’s union is claiming a victory in its fight against the city’s extended day plan. (Catalyst)

The teachers union is telling its members that the Department of Education’s expectations around a new special education data system are “unconscionable.”

By tomorrow, teachers of students with special needs are supposed to enter information about them in a new data system, Special Education Student Information System (SESIS). But the system has been buggy since it went online this summer, and teachers are complaining that they have too little training and time to enter the information by the deadline.

A letter to UFT members today urged teachers to push back against unreasonable expectations.

“The problems related to SESIS are not your fault, but are a result of the DOE’s total incompetence in managing the school system as a whole and this initiative in particular,” said UFT Secretary Michael Mendel in a letter sent to teachers today. “We recognize your hard work and dedication. Unfortunately, the people in charge of the school system, your employer, do not. They do not value your dedication and commitment to your students.”

The union is encouraging teachers to let their supervisors know that the requirements are too burdensome and to track the time they spend grappling with SESIS. Teachers are also being encouraged to file grievances if they are told to enter data into SESIS outside of their work day or if they are punished for not meeting the data entry deadline. (more…)