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Jean Robinson, a senior at the High School for Teaching and the Professions, speaks at a press conference Wednesday about truancy reduction.

As the new kid at the High School of Teaching and The Professions in the Bronx two years ago, Jean Robinson awoke each morning filled with dread and anxiety about going to school.

“You know, everybody has their own different cliques and I wasn’t really fitting in with any of them,” Robinson said.

A sophomore transfer, Robinson missed her old friends and began skipping school. Over the course of the 2009-2010 school year, she missed more than a month of school and, with each passing day, knew a high school diploma was further and further out of reach.

“I thought about it every day, but I just felt like I needed that extra push,” Robinson said. “I didn’t have that at the time.”

Robinson’s paltry attendance rate caught the eyes of city officials, who at the same time were launching a citywide push to raise attendance rates among students who were absent most often. They paired Robinson with a mentor who monitored her attendance and made sure she was showing up to school.

With the help from her mentor, a school guidance counselor, Robinson last year reduced her absence rate by more than 50 percent, missing just 10 days of school.

Robinson’s turnaround was touted by Mayor Bloomberg as a success story of the year-old attendance initiative called “Every Student, Every Day,” which, in addition to mentors, included letters home to parents and celebrity wake-up calls. As a result of the first year’s success, Bloomberg announced Wednesday that the city was more than doubling the initiative’s scope, from 25 schools to 50 schools with more than 4,000 students. (more…)

• Even as the city encourages inclusion, some special needs students have their own classes. (WNYC/SB)
• The city says a year-old campaign to reduce truancy is working. (SchoolBook, NY1, AP, Post)
• Mona Davids’ New York City Parents Union has received $10,000 from the UFT since April. (Post)
• Supporters of schools in Crown Heights rallied against possible closure. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook)
• Mayor Bloomberg disputed Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch’s critique of city schools. (GothamSchools)
• Parents in Queens are pushing back against the city’s claim that their schools have space. (Daily News)
• Students and the public were kept out of an NBA exhibition game at Boys & Girls HS. (Daily News)
• A charter school group wants to make sure evaluation rules aren’t foisted on charters. (GothamSchools)
• Chicago is giving schools years to add required physical education time and teachers. (Sun-Times)

• Ohio voters rejected a law that would have ended teachers’ collective bargaining rights. (State EdWatch)
• The State Education Department is seeking feedback on its plan to cut special ed diplomas. (NYSUT)
• Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is going to start giving performance bonuses to principals. (Catalyst)
• Chicago’s schools chief got his first job, in NYC, by making salt disappear. (Charting My Own Course)
• A state-by-state look at the racial diversity of states’ teaching corps. (Center for American Progress)
• A N.H teacher describes the “Cultural Literacy Tidbit” she uses to start each class. (Core Knowledge)
• A study says a program to warn city students against dating violence and harassment paid off. (AP)
• Some schools don’t give outdoor recess, which the city encourages but does not require. (Insideschools)
• Randi Weingarten: Low wages for teachers contributes to high teacher turnover. (U.S. News)

On the same day that she spent time denying weeks-old rumors about being the future mayor, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch was rebuked by the current one.

Speaking with reporters in the Bronx today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took aim at Tisch’s characterization that the Department of Education had “warehoused thousands of kids” in failing schools. Tisch made the comments to the editorial board of the New York Daily News after visiting Brooklyn’s Automotive High School, which started undergoing federally funded “restart” this year.

“She’s totally wrong on the facts,” Bloomberg said. “I don’t know where she got that from. … She’s obviously been misinformed.”

But Tisch had backed up her statement not with hard facts but with anecdotal evidence about what she saw in Automotive’s classrooms and hallways. “No one’s in the class and kids are wandering around the hallway. I couldn’t tell me for the life of me what the instruction was,” Tisch told the Daily News.

Bloomberg, whose administration has relied on data to drive school improvement, said today that Tisch’s approach to identifying and solving problems in schools is misguided:

You can’t run a school system on anecdotal evidence. We have a 1.1 million students to take care of and you can’t run it on … you have to have numbers. (more…)

Three weeks after Merryl Tisch’s name first surfaced as a potential mayoral candiate, the New York Times is reporting something we’ve known all along: she’s not interested.

From our Oct. 21 story:

“I am aware that people are talking about it,” Tisch said. “I am not an idiot.”

“Have people mentioned it to me? Yes. Have I considered it? I am so busy with my work right now, it’s ridiculous.” …

In 2004, Tisch mulled a run at an open City Council seat, but ultimately decided not to, she said, because she enjoyed her work too much on the Board. Over the years, however, she’s remained active politically, donating more than $50,000 to a variety of candidates, mostly Democratic candidates, according to campaign finance filings.

This time around, Tisch said she isn’t even pondering the prospect of a political run. “I am absolutely, positively not going to run,” she said.

This morning, a short item in The New York Post’s Page 6 column reignited these rumors, mentioning that business and real estate leaders are pressing” Tisch to run. In its follow-up story, the Times reports that Tisch once again denied any interest in running for mayor, despite the fact that she and her husband, James Tisch, have been paying a consultancy firm for at least a year: (more…)

During one week in October, District 17′s superintendent held “early engagement conversations” at three schools the department is considering closing.

At each school — M.S. 587 on Oct. 11,  P.S. 22 on Oct. 12, and P.S. 161 on Oct. 13 — the superintendent, Rhonda Hurdle Taylor, heard community members explain why their schools should get another chance.

Then she resigned, and Buffie Simmons took her place.

DOE officials said the personnel change would have little impact on school closure decisions because Hurdle Taylor, like all superintendents, was required to document thoroughly what happened in the engagement meetings.

But parents in District 17 are wondering whether Simmons, who is new to the district, understands the local issues, according to a parent leader, Barbara Simmons (no relation). In contrast, Barbara Simmons said, Hurdle Taylor had worked in the district for many years, including as principal of P.S. 390, now closed, when Simmons’s son was a student there.

The leadership change is just one of several reasons that the three schools are protesting their potential closure today in the latest in a series of rallies organized with the support of advocacy groups that oppose school closures. (more…)

Rezoning plan for Lower Manhattan

District 2′s Community Education Council is facing a catch-22: Approve the three rezoning plans presented by the Department of Education last night, with all of their wrinkles, or risk missing a chance to solve crowding problems this year.

After parents criticized a first draft of the plans last month, department officials brought new rezoning maps – one for the Upper East Side, one for the West Village/Chelsea, and one for  Lower Manhattan – to the council’s meeting last night. The plans, which council members had not seen before the meeting, address some problems but introduce others, according to Shino Tanikawa, the council’s president.

The Upper East Side plan was minimally altered, while the West Village/Chelsea plan had significant changes. P.S. 3 and P.S. 41, which currently share a single choice zone, will be split into two separate zones. Moreover, the P.S. 41 zone would include inside of it the future zone lines for the Foundling School, which is set to open in 2014.

The main point of contention involves the Lower Manhattan plan which would send some addresses currently zoned for Tribeca’s P.S. 234 and others currently zoned for P.S. 397, the new Spruce Street School, to P.S. 1 in Chinatown, a far less affluent school with many immigrant students. Last summer, families on P.S. 234′s waiting list resisted when they were offered places at another Chinatown school, P.S. 130.

Some parents said the change would damage the neighborhoods’ sense of identity. But Tricia Joyce, a P.S. 234 parent and a co-chair of the school’s overcrowding committee, said the bigger problem is that P.S. 1 could become overcrowded.

“The proposals are all just overcrowding the schools around us for an insignificant gain,” Joyce said. “Rezoning does not create seats and seats are what we need.” (more…)

The UFT isn’t the only group concerned that some schools are under inappropriate pressure to adopt new teacher evaluations. The state’s charter schools association is also sounding the alarm.

In a bulletin sent on Tuesday, the New York Charter Schools Association tells charter schools that despite mixed messages from the state, they are bound to adopt teacher evaluations that follow the state’s new evaluation law only if they signed on to the state’s Race to the Top bid. About 80 charter schools — fewer than half of those open in the state last year — agreed to follow the state’s Race to the Top commitments, including using test scores in teacher evaluations, in exchange for a share of the winnings.

Peter Murphy, NYCSA’s policy director, said his group had gotten questions from some charter school administrators who are confused about whether they are obligated to follow the state’s evaluation law. But more than that, he said, the group was “reminding the universe” that no matter the value of the State Education Department’s reform agenda, charter schools are not bound to abide by it unless they agree to, as in the case of the Race to the Top application.

“We’re very mindful of good-intentioned efforts to treat charters like every other district schools,” Murphy told me. “Charters are going to live or die by their results. That distinction is important and constantly gets blurred.”

“Charter schools absolutely should be doing evaluation systems,” he added. “But part of the freedom of being a charter is doing it the way you deem best. That’s part of being regulated by outcomes.”

• A nonprofit program that helps low-income students get to college will open in Brooklyn. (Daily News)
• Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said the city’s high schools “warehouse a lot of kids.” (Daily News)
• Public school parents protested against Gov. Cuomo’s plan to end the millionaire’s tax. (GothamSchools)
• The New York Post‘s Page Six tells Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, “Please run!” for mayor.
• A teenager was shot outside Harlem Children’s Zone’s Promise Academy Charter School. (Daily News)
• A mother whose daughter tried suicide after bullying at her Queens high school is suing the city. (Post)

• A new study concludes that soda bans in schools don’t improve students’ health. (Well)
• A slideshow of movers and shakers in private schools, in New York City and beyond. (Observer)
• A look back at the evolution of cover for a new book about an international high school. (Book Clubs)
• A parent and teacher explains his opposition to letting the millionaire’s tax expire. (GS Community)
• The start of middle school admissions season is upon us, bringing many questions. (Insideschools)
• Jon Schnur: Parents are mistaken in thinking their children’s schools aren’t the problem. (TIME)
• In a version of Early Learn writ large, Head Start centers will have to reapply for funding. (Politics K-12)
• Stephen Lazar: The implications of new Regents exam grading rules are problematic. (SchoolBook)