GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

iPads might be good for tracking student behavior and playing interactive learning games. But they’re not the best for checking Department of Education email accounts.

The department will no longer allow people with @schools.nyc.gov email addresses to manage their accounts through their iPad, iTouch, and Google Android devices, according to an email sent last week by an official in the DOE’s Division of Instructional and Information Technology. (I saw the letter on the NYC Education News email list.)

The official, Tom Kambouras, said many DOE employees had adopted the new devices in recent months.

“While these devices are changing the way we do our business, it has [sic] also presented us with a few IT challenges as well,” Kambouras wrote. A major one, he said, is that syncing accounts to some mobile devices has stretched the department’s email server to capacity — meaning that there can be “no exceptions” to the new policy.

The problem is neither universal nor totally debilitating: DOE employees who tote Blackberries, which the department has for years issued to some officials, will still be able to access their email accounts. And until the server problem is fixed, iPad users can check their DOE email through their web browsers.

Still, the new policy is a reminder that in the department’s race to adopt new technologies, infrastructure can be an obstacle. (more…)

• The growth of charter schools in affluent districts is raising concerns about inequality. (BusinessWeek)
• The nonprofit Turnaround for Children aims to improve schools by addressing students’ needs. (Times)
• A successful Williamsburg school could move to East New York, where its students live. (Daily News)
• The Archdiocese of New York is set for a major reorganization of the city’s Catholic schools. (Daily News)
• Eighteen students were hospitalized after being pepper sprayed at Leadership Academy HS. (Post)
• The union that represents school aides plans to sue over their layoffs. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• Two Jackson Heights public schools are going to open their playgrounds to the public. (Daily News)
• A 15-year-old arrested in a shooting outside Promise Academy was not a student there. (Daily News)
• The state Board of Regents approved relaxing some special education requirements. (GothamSchools)
• The state has named an independent investigator to review test security. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook)
• Chicago’s union head apologized to Ed Secretary Arne Duncan for making fun of his lisp. (Tribune)
• Across the country, more schools are giving up on hallways lockers as needs change. (USA Today)
• Kevin Chavous: Congress’s education law debate has spawned an unholy right-union alliance. (WSJ)
• A spending bill that Congress released yesterday would roll back proposed health standards. (AP)

• If the principal of P.S./M.S. 165 were chancellor, everyone at the DOE would work in a school. (DNAInfo)
• A local Brown v. Board of Education, a dismissed suit brought by a teacher who was terminated. (Leagle)
• Three transfer schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant aim to give options to overage students. (Bed-Stuy Patch)
• Bronx students offered Occupy protesters a 10-point platform for improving schools. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• In Rochester, more than 1 in 3 students have been held back at least one. (Democrat and Chronicle)
• The principal of P.S. 86 in the Bronx, a TFA training center, didn’t intend to get the job. (SchoolBook)
• Registration is open for workshops to learn about securing grants for public schools. (Insideschools)
• A teacher explains how his school gets 9 in 10 parents to come to teacher conferences. (SchoolBook)
• Lessons about reporting on teacher evaluations from a seminar for reporters. (The Educated Reporter)

The State Education Department’s proposal to relax some special education rules met resistance today from two New York City-based members of the Board of Regents.

The Bronx’s Betty Rosa and Brooklyn’s Kathleen Cashin were the only two members of a Board of Regents subcommittee to vote against the proposals, which would significantly reduce or eliminate the roles of people that are currently required to serve on a committee that supports student with disabilities.

Both Rosa and Cashin said they were concerned that scaling back services would hurt children who require individual education plans. Cashin questioned whether the proposals, which are meant to cut costs, would result in any kind of real savings.

“The whole mandate relief is not that expensive, relatively speaking, compared to the trauma that could be caused the family,” Cashin said.

Cashin was particularly concerned with the decision to eliminate the “parent member” role on the committee. The role, an unpaid position, is meant to provide additional support for parents whose students have disabilities.

But SED Deputy Commissioner Becky Cort, who presented the recommendations to the Regents, said the “parent member” role was duplicated by the school psychologist and other school staff who sit in on the meetings. In addition, she said, because the parent member wasn’t always available for meetings, finding a time when the entire committee could meet was frequently tricky. (more…)

Annual state spending on school aid will be down 6.1 percent this year, according to new spending projections from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget office.

The new projections show the state’s budget gap growing from $2 billion to up to $3.5 billion. The reductions come after three straight years of budget cuts that have left schools struggling.

Last week parent activists took their message to Cuomo’s office, urging him not to repeal the so-called “millionaire’s-tax” on high-earning residents and the decry the effects of the current state budget on class size in local schools.

Last year, New York City lost $812 million in state education funding. According to the revised plan, the state will spend about $19.6 billion on school aid this year—a reduction of nearly $1.3 billion from the 2011 budget.

Earlier this fall educators and families in New York City and elsewhere rallied against the $1.3 billion already slashed from the state’s education funds, many of them lamenting that beloved after school programs were the first expenses to go at their local schools.

The principal of a high school under scrutiny for cheating has resigned — but not because investigators concluded he did anything wrong.

Henry Rubio, principal of Manhattan’s A. Philip Randolph High School informed staff members this afternoon that he was stepping down. He is taking a job with the principals union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, where he is already a vice president.

An investigation into Rubio concluded on Thursday and found no evidence of wrongdoing on his part, according to Chiara Coletti, a CSA spokeswoman. She said the union had waited until Rubio was cleared of suspicions before giving him the job, as a member of the union’s “supervisory support panel” that helps the Department of Education mentor principals. A prerequisite for that job, Coletti said, is that candidates must be “standing principals,” and the investigation had put Rubio’s status temporarily in jeopardy.

We reported in August that the city’s Office of Special Investigations had opened an inquiry into the school after receiving reports that students had been given passing grades that they had not earned. Teachers and administrators told us that students had been allowed to complete credit recovery work under illicit circumstances and, in some cases, cheated on the work itself.

Santos Crespo, a local president for the DC-37 labor union, on the last day of work for nearly 700 school aides last month.

The union that represents school aides is suing to roll back layoffs of nearly 650 members that took place last month.

Lawyers for District Council 37, which includes school aides and parent coordinators, plan to file a lawsuit over the layoffs on Wednesday, according to a press release the union just sent out.

The suit will argue that the Department of Education acted in bad faith during its negotiations with DC-37 over the jobs, declining to consider other ways to save money or considering whether the City Council and principals might pitch in with their funds. It will also argue that the DOE violated state law by conducting layoffs that disproportionately affected schools with many poor students.

Principals chose to cut school aide positions over the summer as they hammered out slimmed-down budgets for this year, and the layoffs took place in October after charged negotiations between DC-37 and the city failed. (more…)

The person who could reshape how the state handles cheating allegations in public schools has been named.

In September, the Board of Regents authorized an independent review of the way the state handles test security and cheating allegations. Today in Albany, Valerie Grey, a State Education Department deputy commissioner, told the Regents that the state had picked a special investigator — and he will conduct the review at no cost to the state.

Hank Greenberg, a lawyer who represented the state’s attorney general’s office when Gov. Andrew Cuomo occupied it, will have immediate and full access to all state education records, according to the state’s press release about his appointment.

From the release:

Commissioner [John] King said Greenberg would have complete, unfettered access to SED assessment records, including records of alleged test integrity violations and how those allegations were tracked and resolved. Greenberg will examine reports of alleged irregularities in the administration and scoring of State assessments, and examine the intake, review, referral investigation and response to those allegations. Based on the findings of his review, Greenberg will make recommendations to the Commissioner and Board of Regents to improve SED policies and procedures.

“We are very grateful and fortunate to have his service pro bono,” Grey told the Regents.

Grey also said that she had met with Cuomo’s office to outline SED’s $2.1 million request for a slate of test security measures that the Regents approved last month. ”[We] made our case,” she said. “And we will continue to do that.”

Chancellor Dennis Walcott prepares to read to a group of 4-year-olds at the Bank Street Head Start center.

Using skills developed at his first job, Chancellor Dennis Walcott dropped to the floor at Manhattan’s Bank Street Head Start center today and read a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears to a circle of 4-year-olds.

Just as he said he had as a pre-kindergarten teacher in the 1970s, Walcott changed his voice for the different characters and acted out parts of the story, keeping the children laughing and acting along. (Watch video of the reading.)

The read-aloud came during a break in painting, mashing play dough, building with blocks, and assembling magnetic tiles — activities that look like fun and games but actually reflect the city’s academic goals for pre-K students.

Those goals are set out in the city’s new curriculum standards, called the Common Core, which start in pre-K. Like all city students, children in the Department of Education’s pre-K classes are expected to complete Common Core-aligned “tasks” this year like the ones the DOE has suggested for units about trucks, plants, and the five senses.

Among the Common Core standards for pre-K: Students should engage in group reading activities such as the one Walcott led and practice addition and subtraction using everyday objects. (more…)

• One family’s story illustrates the challenges that the city’s shelter system imposes on schooling. (Times)
• Very few test-takers fail the state’s teacher certification exams, which are set to get tougher. (Post)
• Many city schools are already using versions of the city’s new sex education curriculum. (S.I. Advance)
• The Board of Regents’ agenda for today includes voting on relaxing special ed rules. (GothamSchools)
• Mayor Bloomberg continued his rebuttal of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch’s criticisms. (Daily News)
• Many teachers who are seeking donations want unexciting classroom supplies. (GothamSchools)
• Gina Bellafante: Schools are asking for donations while filmmakers get city subsidies. (Times)
• Two of the leading young players in chess are black teens who attend Brooklyn’s I.S. 318. (Times)
• The rising class of online schools enrolls a variety of students and takes a variety of forms. (WSJ)
• Fear of unintended consequences is setting in as Chicago rolls out new teacher evaluations. (Times)
• The Daily News praises Dennis Walcott for vowing to return federal funds without an evaluation deal.
• The Times says Tennessee’s new teacher evaluations have problems but are a step in the right direction.
• D.C. is adopting the Tools of the Mind program as reform efforts shift to instruction. (Washington Post)
• New Jersey is set to unveil a school progress report card system like New York City’s. (N.J. Spotlight)