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Chancellor Dennis Walcott responds to Terrell Tomer's questions at a town hall meeting in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Scores of parents, children, and school staff from District 23 packed the auditorium of Brownsville’s P.S. 156 Wednesday to tell Chancellor Dennis Walcott that their schools don’t deserve to be shut down.

The meeting comes at the start of Walcott’s first closure and co-location season as chancellor. Department of Education officials are deciding which schools to close from a shortlist released in September. Decisions are likely to be made by early next month and a public hearing on the closures will take place early in 2012.

Many people speaking out at the meeting came from three schools that are on the shortlist for closure. Community members from two low-performing schools that share a building, the General D. Chappie James Elementary and Middle School of Science, and P.S. 298 protested before the meeting began.

Brownsville’s neighborhood schools have been in the news lately for a host of problems: low test scores; gang violence, when a parent was killed and a student shot outside P.S. 298 two weeks ago; and facilities issues, when P.S. 156 and I.S. 392 were evacuated twice earlier this week after smoke and odors were detected.

But speakers kept the focus of the town hall on the potential district school closures and charter school openings that have been floated for the neighborhood. (more…)

• Students with disabilities were also suspended disproportionately often, city data show. (Daily News)
• Mill Basin parents are upset P.S. 236′s principal didn’t tell them about a teacher’s assault. (Daily News)
• Juan Gonzalez: Records show health complaints at the Bronx school found to be toxic. (Daily News)
• The city added 27 additional schools to its potential closure list. (GothamSchools, Times, NY1, Post)
• The at-risk schools include six charter schools, several with well known problems. (Daily News)
• One school that could face closure is Lehman High School, which suspended the most students. (NY1)
• A documentary set to premiere tonight looks at a history of parent organizing efforts. (GothamSchools)
• The new charter high schools run by New Visions focus on problem-solving skills. (Riverdale Press)
• Charter school advocates concluded that charter schools are not in crowded buildings. (Daily News)
• A coming Lower Manhattan school will be 180 students larger after a city change. (Downtown Express)
• Gov. Cuomo has launched his competitive grant program for school districts. (GothamSchools, Times)
• Students at a Queens high school will rebuild homes upstate destroyed by Hurricane Irene. (Daily News)
• Not a single Queens school got an F on the most recent high school progress reports. (Times-Ledger)
• The Daily News says the state’s NAEP scores show that state education reforms are desperately needed.
• More than 40 schools caught up in Atlanta’s cheating scandal lost their federal accreditation. (AP)
• Last weekend’s early winter storm has some districts in the region exhausting their snow days. (Times)

• The city’s progress reports give less extra credit if students arrived after eighth grade. (Insideschools)
• A teacher describes a staffing situation that doesn’t seem good for students. (Chaz’s School Daze)
• Reporters’ questions led to a teacher’s replacement at the Bronx’s P.S. 24. (Bronx Press Politics)
• A teacher reflects on the value of sometimes letting his students remain confused. (GS Community)
• Hawaii, which wasn’t supposed to win Race to the Top, did surprisingly well on NAEP. (Politics K-12)
• Dividing curriculum pie into three parts: Content, process, and performance. (Curriculum Matters)
• Fewer ELLs were excluded from NAEP testing; inclusion rates ranged widely. (Learning the Language)
• A review of charter school research finds the schools are doing well overall. (CRPE via Jay Greene)
• A California teacher drafts a transcript of a trial of value-added measurement. (InterACT via Russo)
• A Chicago teacher outlines objections to proposals for teacher evaluations. (Charting My Own Course)
• A survey of districts finds many found creative ways to avoid teacher layoffs. (Flypaper)
• Teach Plus’s founder asks: What if we focused on the strong teachers, not the weak ones? (Rick Hess)

Three schools that are getting millions of dollars in federal aid are among 27 schools newly added to the list of schools that could be closed.

Department of Education officials announced today that they had added 17 high schools, six charter schools, and the middle school grades of four secondary schools to the list of schools they are considering closing. The schools join 20 elementary and middle schools where the city began “early engagement” meetings in September about .

The high school additions include three schools receiving federal “transformation” funding; troubled Lehman High School, which handed out the most suspensions in the city by far; and most schools that got F’s on this year’s progress reports. Seven of the schools are in the Bronx, where large high schools say they are straining to serve high numbers of needy students; five in Manhattan; three in Brooklyn; and two in Queens.

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 holding early engagement meetings, 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.

Echoing an argument that advocacy groups are pushing at schools on the potential closure list, teachers union president Michael Mulgrew said he thought the department was not entering the engagement meetings in good faith. (more…)

For Natoshia Wheeler, the argument that schools do better when they have more resources is proven every night in her living room.

Wheeler has three children in Brownsville schools. Her youngest and oldest attend two low-performing schools that share a building, the General D. Chappie James Elementary and Middle School of Science, where she is PTA president. Her middle daughter attends I.S. 392, a selective middle school located just six blocks away.

Recently Wheeler’s middle daughter brought home a new laptop that her school provided, equipped with a tools for free online tutoring. The tools allowed her to complete complicated projects, such as building a model island with different biomes on it, that enthralled her siblings.

But at the Chappie schools, Wheeler said after-school programs have been cut, the art teacher was let go, and students can’t always bring books home to use while completing homework. What’s more, she said, the three-year-old schools are only just finding their feet after replacing P.S./I.S. 183, a perennially failing that closed in 2008. Last year, on their first progress reports, both schools got D’s.

So when the elementary school got an F and the middle school got a D on their most recent progress reports, Wheeler said she was not shocked — but she was surprised that the city said it was considering shuttering the school. The city has not yet announced any closures but has named 20 elementary and middle schools that are eligible according to the Department of Education’s guidelines. (more…)

Nine months after he announced a $500 million mini-Race to the Top program, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has released details on how cash-strapped school districts can compete for the funds.

Districts will have to show improved test scores and promise to implement new teacher evaluations to have a shot at the first $75 million being doled out through a grant about student performance.

Cuomo outlined the competitive grant programs on his first official day in office on Jan. 5 in his State of the State speech, in which he said he planned to create two $250 million funds. One would be doled out to districts that boosted test scores and graduation over the last two years; the other would be for districts that cut costs.

Cuomo cut more than $1.2 billion in funding from local districts this year, saying that the state had spent too much on schools without getting adequate performance results. Distributing funds competitively, he said, would spark faster improvement in education.

“This competitive award program will incentivize innovative reforms in school districts across the state that will benefit students and help educate the workforce of tomorrow,” Cuomo said in a press release about the program today.

Details about the first grant, three years of funding rewarding student performance, were quietly posted on the State Education Department’s website Oct. 20. State officials say more grants are expected in future years until $250 million has been distributed. (more…)

It doesn’t matter what subject you teach; every lesson contains at least one frightening transition. After the teacher presents the day’s new content and gives instructions to the students about the day’s activity, he or she says the magic words: “Get started.” It’s like a step into the abyss.

On the best days, 75-85 percent of the students get started immediately. Ten to 20 percent of the other students see them working and, feeling self-conscious about their inactivity, pick up their pens, open their books and pretend to be immersed in the work. Confused about their assignment, the two or three remaining students raise their hands and I walk over to answer their questions.

Such days are rare. Sometimes, the percentages are different, but the range of activity is roughly the same. Some days, I say the magic words and the whole class stares at me like I’m speaking Greek. Ancient Greek. It’s a brutal moment. Were my instructions that unclear? Am I really that bad at this? Are the students punishing me?

Alternately, I might wonder, “What’s wrong with them?” I know I’m a good teacher; my instructions were clear and I’ve taught this lesson before. Why don’t they start their work?

In that moment — while the students stare at me blankly, silently — I have to make a choice. I can break that silence, restate the instructions, perhaps more loudly and slowly than before, and take questions from the students. Or I can let the silence sit there and wait it out, hoping and trusting that the kids are just moving slowly today and will figure it out.

As a new teacher, my impulse was always to opt for the former. (more…)

Producers of a new documentary about parent activism say they aim to inspire parents across the country to press for change.

The film, “Parent Power,” traces the organizing story that emanated from an effort to improve a single Bronx school in the mid-1990s and resulted in the citywide Coalition for Educational Justice. Set to premiere on Thursday, “Parent Power” was produced by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, which has long supported parent activism efforts, in collaboration with FPS Video Productions. (The premiere, at NYU’s Cantor Film Center, is open to the public.)

Filmmakers Norm Fruchter, an Annenberg Institute policy analyst, and Jose Gonzalez, a parent activist from the South Bronx, gathered 15 years of footage and photography of parent organizing efforts. They also interviewed teachers union president Randi Weingarten, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, parent activist Zakiyah Ansari, and others involved in supporting the parents’ efforts.

I spoke with Fruchter, who told me about the making of the movie, the origins of its story, and his hope that parent activists across the country tune in.

JC: Where does this story begin?

NF: [In 1996,] parents at the New Settlement Apartments in the South Bronx were concerned about their local elementary school. (more…)

• Remaining large high schools in the Bronx are struggling with many needy students. (Daily News)
• Data released for the first time shows city school suspension patterns. (GothamSchools, NY1, AP)
• The data reveal that some schools regularly suspend children as young as 5 or 6. (Post)
• A union survey outlines the toll of budget cuts. (GothamSchools, NY1, Daily News, Times, AP)
• Nationally, math scores rose and reading was flat on this year’s NAEP exam results. (WSJ, Times)
• But low math scores in New York put officials on notice. (GothamSchools, NY1, Daily News, Post)
• A Brooklyn school was evacuated twice when odors and smoke were detected. (GothamSchools)
• Nutrition experts and food companies are fighting over changes to the school lunch program. (Times)
• The foundation head charged with using Newark’s Facebook money describes challenges. (Times)
• An NYU professor says families should be able to opt out of the city’s sex ed curriculum. (Daily News)