GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

News from New York City:

• New grading policies at Washington Irving High School let students who failed classes get credit. (Post)
• A group of education policy experts is urging New York State to spend more on its schools. (Times)
• School safety data the state published did not include thousands of incidents city officials reported. (Post)
• Bad blood between the NAACP and Chancellor Walcott seems to have outlived the NAACP’s suit. (Post)
• Hundreds of school aides were laid off on Friday. (GothamSchools, Times, Daily News, NY1)
• Local food growers see opportunity in the upcoming revision of the DOE’s food guidelines. (Crain’s NY)
• Nonprofit groups are bringing yoga into schools, but without the practice’s spiritual bent. (Times)
• Since 2009, 20-odd DOE workers have been disciplined for saying or doing off-color things. (Daily News)
• The principal of the Children’s Workshop School explains how her school went from a C to a B. (Times)
• The Daily News: Eva Moskowitz’s plan to open a Cobble Hill charter school is a political test for the city.

And beyond:

• Ed technology companies’ promotional materials rarely mention studies of their effectiveness. (Times)
• Steve Jobs’ widow is on education reform group boards and is expected to donate to the cause. (WSJ)
• Michael Winerip: Pearson’s free trips for school officials sometimes straddle the business line. (Times)
• A profile of ex-DOE deputy John White’s leadership of New Orleans’ charter-dominated schools. (WSJ)
• D.C. and its union are set to start on a new, potentially less innovative contract. (Washington Examiner)
• Republican presidential hopefuls don’t share bipartisan consensus about the federal school role. (Times)
• Los Angeles is retaking control over a high school that is managed by a nonprofit partner. (L.A. Times)
• D.C. teachers are more often visiting students’ families at home, just as in New York. (Washington Post)
• Students who stutter are not protected by anti-discrimination laws, and some need the protection. (Times)
• An advisory firm said the Murdochs should leave NewsCorp’s board but Joel Klein could stay. (Times)
• Middle school girls seem to like personalizing their school locker space. (Times)

• How to persuade parents at struggling charter schools to vote with their feet. (Eduwonk)
• A six-year teaching veteran felt alienated by Michael Mulgrew at a recent event. (LinkEd)
• A new book shows how economic inequality is driving educational inequity. (Hechinger)
• The modal years of teaching experience is now at 1, from 15 twenty years ago. (Atlanta J-C)
• The author of the California math standards praises the Common Core. (American Educator, PDF)
• In Philly, protesting not dropouts, but “pushouts” — a deliberate rebranding. (Notebook)
• A push to make teacher evaluation demands a part of a reauthorized NCLB. (Ed Week)
• Relate: a guide to the first draft of legislation circulating in the Senate. (Politics K12)
• Inside a “flipped” classroom, where lectures are assigned as digital homework. (USA Today)

The Department of Education is preparing for the high volume of new assignments it will have to make starting Tuesday, as Absent Teacher Reserve  teachers are shifted to a new school every single week.

Starting next week, the nearly 1,300 teachers in the ATR pool will report to a fresh school every Monday, an arrangement set in a deal between the city and teachers union to avert teacher layoffs. Teachers enter the pool when their positions are eliminated, usually because of budget cuts or school closures. While some teachers quickly find new positions in the city schools, others do not, and some stay in the pool for years without finding a new position.

A computer algorithm and multiple DOE staffers are tasked with making matches between ATR members to their weekly school placements, DOE officials told reporters today in a telephone briefing. The officials said the process is a work in progress, acknowledging that it may require more time and energy from central office staff and principals than the previous ATR arrangement. Previously, ATR teachers held long-term assignments. The relatively comfortable stability was seen by some as a reason why longstanding members of the pool failed to find new positions.

Union officials explained to skeptical teachers in the ATR pool earlier this week that the arrangement is meant to help them land permanent positions.

DOE officials echoed that explanation. The placements should be seen as a tryout that could easily result in a full-time position, according to Larry Becker, the chief executive officer of the DOE’s human resources division.  (more…)

Santos Crespo, a local president for the DC-37 labor union, denounces layoffs on last day of work for more than 700 school aides.

For many parents at Marta Valle High School, Cliftonia Johnson, a school aide, was the first line of defense when their children cut class.

Johnson, 48, has spent two years at the Lower East Side School, where she works as a community associate, taking attendance and communicating with families of students who skip school—a job that sometimes requires calling hundreds of parents on the phone each week.

She was one of close to 700 public school aides laid off today because of city budget cuts.

Speaking this afternoon in front of City Hall at the latest of several rallies that District Council-37 union workers have held this month to denounce the district-wide layoffs, Johnson said her position is invaluable to her school community:

“These high school kids barely come to school. It’s tough to get them to go to school because a lot of them don’t believe they’re worthy of an education, and you need someone who looks like them to tell them they are worthy,” she said.

Johnson, who is black, echoed union criticisms that the layoffs disproportionally targeted people of color, to the detriment of school communities with substantial minority populations. “If you take our [outreach] away, you’re making it worse. ” (more…)

Parents in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood say they’re happy with their children’s schools but wouldn’t mind seeing a charter school move in.

Charter school operator Eva Moskowitz yesterday announced plans to open a new school in the Success Charter Network in Cobble Hill, an affluent, tree-lined neighborhood whose public schools are flush with parent involvement and, in some cases, parent donations. It would be Moskowitz’s second foray into a middle-class neighborhood after pushing through a contentious plan to open a school on the Upper West Side this year.

In District 15, Cobble Hill’s district, 1,500 parents signed a petition supporting the charter school’s bid to open, according to a press release from Success Charter Network.

But parents I spoke to today at a coffee shop and housing project in the neighborhood said they hadn’t heard of Moskowitz and weren’t aware that space-sharing was a likely scenario — or that co-location fights can turn ugly.

Still, they said that the neighborhood could use more school options, no matter what they are.

“If there’s a good school set up in the neighborhood and has a program my kid would like, I’d consider it,” said Madely Rodriguez, a P.S. 29 parent who was sipping coffee outside Cafe Pedlar, a magnet for neighborhood parents after morning drop-off. (more…)

Maria Clausen, a special education teacher at New Design High School, works with students on laptop computers provided by the iZone program.

Teachers at New Design High School have long tried to conduct familiar tasks in new ways. They write announcements in graffiti chalk in the hallways, maintain a freestanding “pond” inside the science lab, and ask students to fashion outfits out of newspaper in a design class.

But this year, innovation is a second job for New Design’s teachers. As one of 26 schools participating in the Department of Education’s iZone360 initiative this year, the quirky high school on Manhattan’s Seward Park Campus is getting extra funding to let teachers test out homegrown strategies to boost student achievement.

An open question about top Department of Education deputy Shael Polakow-Suransky is to what extent he is a protege of Joel Klein — and to what extent he is a product of his distinctly progressive, anti-testing education at Brown University.

A new story in Brown’s alumni magazine argues that Polakow-Suransky’s chief influence is Ted Sizer, the progressive educator who chaired Brown’s education department for many years — and was Polakow-Suransky’s thesis advisor.

Sizer, who died two years ago, founded the Coalition of Essential Schools, to which more than a dozen city schools still belong, and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. That institute, based at Brown, supports the city’s Coalition for Educational Justice, which has lobbied against school closures and budget cuts.

From the article:

For his senior thesis — Sizer was his adviser — Polakow-Suransky compared the South African school in which he’d volunteered with the Providence-based group Direct Action for Rights and Equality, which fights for greater access to public education. Again, Polakow-Suransky focused on the role of schools in transforming society, or, as he describes it, “How do you use an educational process to shape a process of change?” (more…)

• Four minority women who are to lose their jobs in today’s aide layoffs tell their stories. (SchoolBook)
• The City Council formally announced a hearing on the layoffs and scheduled it for Tuesday. (WSJ)
• Success Charter Schools plan to expand into more gentrified Brooklyn neighborhoods. (Schoolbook)
• Union officials hosted a testy meeting with ATRs to discuss the way they’re being used. (GothamSchools)
• Officials use old fashioned way to promote a five-day parent academy on college readiness. (Daily News)
• A gay sports bar trying to open on school property was rebuffed by a Community Board. (City Room)
• A Queens school, PS 151, reversed its own decision to end its French immersion program. (Daily News)
• Boys and Girls High School principal responds to an op-ed calling him a “dictator.” (Amsterdam News)
• Low-income parents are going back to school through a program aimed at boosting their children. (NY1)
• Chicago’s teacher residency program is trying to recruit more minority teachers by starting early. (Times)
• Charter schools in big Tennessee cities are showing mixed results. (The Tennessean)
• Michigan narrowly voted to lift its state cap on charter schools. (Detroit Free Press)

• Apple visionary Steve Jobs, who died last night, was proud of dropping out of college. (Answer Sheet)
• He also had education policy opinions, saying teachers are unionized “in the worst way.” (Jay Greene)
• Jobs’ legacy will also live on in the burgeoning education technology sector. (Learning First Alliance)
• DC-37 has one last rally scheduled to back school aides who are being laid off tomorrow. (PR Newswire)
• John Thompson: What education folks can learn from the data focus in “Moneyball.” (Class Struggle)
• A different perspective on Tuesday’s meeting for ATRs in Brooklyn, from an attendee. (NYC ATR)
• A new report looks at the federal role in investing in charter schools. (Center for American Progress)
• Surprisingly, the NEA supports the Senate Republicans’ plan to fix No Child Left Behind. (Politics K-12)
• A charter school teacher recounts her dinner talk with Chicago’s union chief. (Charting My Own Course)
• Debbie Meier: The language of Occupy Wall Street reminds me of my old school. (Bridging Differences)
• City students protested against illegal pushouts from school at City Hall earlier this week. (EdVox)

Harbor School sophomore Cullen Palicka sets out for the school's inaugural regatta today

Seafaring students from a maritime-themed high school took to the New York Harbor today for a fundraising regatta.

Teams from corporations paid to join sailors on 16 boats, including two named “Extra Credit” and “Late Pass” that were manned by students from the Harbor School, in a race around Governor’s Island, where the school has been the sole full-time tenant since last year.

“We’re finally introducing the Harbor School to the sailing community,” said Murray Fisher, the eight-year-old school’s co-founder and the head of its support foundation.

Coupled with a fundraising gala tonight on Governor’s Island, the regatta appears likely to take in $125,000, organizers said.

That money could go a long way at a school that has to pay for boat fuel and oyster habitats in addition to the salaries of its teachers. Each of the school’s six career and technical education programs — which teach fish farming, boat repair, and deep-sea diving, among other skills — has a full-time teacher and needs an assistant and supplies if students are to get strong enough training to prepare them for maritime professions. (more…)