GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

A lot went down in 2011 — literally. The list includes Chancellor Cathie Black’s approval rating, principal satisfaction, rainy-day funds, funds in general, State Education Commissioner David Steiner, chances of a reconciliation or even negotiation between the city and teachers union, the number of unsuspended students, and, recently, even friendly replacement Chancellor Dennis Walcott’s approval rating.

And yet, in the other sense of the phrase, a lot that might have gone down didn’t. In the wake of the departure, in November 2010, of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, a new administration seemed to hint at a new way of doing business: more open, more inclusive, less antagonistic. But Bloomberg, who had privately infuriated Klein by failing to push as hard as the chancellor wanted, kept up much of his rhetorical heat. The city also didn’t get a teacher evaluation deal, and that means the state will freeze turnaround funds that depended on an agreement.

The freeze means that close-and-reopen remains a ruling strategy. And there are still nearly two dozen schools the city deems too bad to redeem. Same as it ever was.

Here’s our annual review, in detail. (more…)

The city and teachers union won’t meet this week’s deadline to hammer out a new teacher evaluation system — and it doesn’t look like they will reach an agreement any time soon.

State Education Commisioner John King this week issued a strict ultimatum to New York and nine other districts: Agree on new teacher evaluations in a subset of low-performing schools by Dec. 31 or lose special federal funds for those schools. The city is receiving about $60 million in the funds, called School Improvement Grants, for 33 schools.

In July, the city and union agreed to roll out new evaluations in the schools, but they still had some details to finalize. They were locked in negotiations until today but threw in the towel this morning, citing irreconcilable ideological differences, particularly around due process protections for teachers who receive low ratings.

The impasse has potentially far-ranging consequences. The first is that the 33 struggling schools will stop receiving funds midyear, leaving them in the lurch to pay for programs, personnel, and nonprofit partners that are already in place.

“I am left with no choice but to suspend SIG funding” to New York City, King said in a statement this afternoon, hours after city officials essentially petitioned him to consider awarding the funds despite the impasse. (more…)

The State Education Department will cut districts off from one pot of federal funds within days unless they settle on new teacher evaluations for some struggling schools.

In a move that the state teachers union called “an arbitrary exercise of brinksmanship,” State Education Commissioner John King issued the threat today to New York City and nine other school districts that are receiving School Improvement Grants to overhaul their lowest-performing schools.

King said all but two had not met the requirements to continue receiving the funds — most notably, the requirement to hammer out agreements on new teacher evaluation systems. Those agreements are supposed to be in place by Dec. 31.

In July, city and UFT officials reached an agreement to roll out new teacher evaluations in 33 of the schools, known as “persistently low-achieving” schools. That agreement came a week after the state turned up the pressure on the city and just in time for the schools to receive nearly $60 million in federal funds.

But city officials said today that the agreement was only a “framework” that must be formalized by the Dec. 31 deadline.

If that doesn’t happen, a funding freeze would not only prevent new reforms from being put in place but also could threaten changes that are already underway. Yonkers is warning that SIG-funded teaching positions at some of its schools would effectively be terminated. Some New York City schools have “master teachers” whose salaries are paid out of the federal grant money.

City and union officials say they remain locked in negotiations — which are sure to be tense after a semester when relations between the groups grew strained over the new evaluation system’s rollout. (more…)

• A local holiday classic, “Pablo the Reindeer,” is passed down to a new generation. (PS 22 Chorus)
• A roundup of seven top innovations from 2011 that are changing education. (GOOD)
• Among “The Lives They Lived”: a 43-year Stuyvesant teacher whose last words were about math. (Times)
• Andy Rotherham: Despite scandals and misgivings, the SAT isn’t going anywhere. (School of Thought)
• First in a series of NYSED webinars: How to create “student learning objectives.” (Engage NY)
• The head of the city’s district-charter collaboration compact is looking for branding help. (Twitter)
• The principal of Millennium Art Academy says Superman has arrived: in her teachers. (SchoolBook)
• Some Teach for America teachers report having very few students in training classes. (Gary Rubinstein)
• Like the city schools, we’re taking next week off. Stay tuned for our year-in-review and see you in 2012!

It’s been a good year for GothamSchools. (We’ll have more to say about how 2011 treated the New York City schools next week, in our annual end-of-year review.)

Thanks to your support, the scrappy site we started in 2008 is now an institution that thousands of New Yorkers depend on for smart, trustworthy information. We want to keep up the good work in 2012, and also to get even stronger. As always, that will require help from our readers.

And so we’re asking you to consider making a donation to ensure that our reporting only gets stronger in 2012.

Here’s a brief review some of what we were able to do in 2011:

• We informed more than 500,000 people who visited GothamSchools directly. We informed more when our stories got picked up in media outlets, such as the New York Times, the WPIX nightly news, and the national radio show “This American Life.”  (more…)

New Year’s Day will mark a decade since Mayor Bloomberg’s first day on the job. The city’s schools have changed in big ways since then — but some things, it seems, have stayed the same.

While reading up earlier this week on Washington Irving High School before attending a protest against its planned closure, I came across a news report that could have been ripped from today’s headlines: Students risked not graduating because a review found that they had been given credit even though they had failed required courses.

From the New York Times’ report about the scandal:

O’Neill Ellis, 17, learned Tuesday that he would not receive a diploma. He had failed an economics class, but [the principal] allowed him to make up the credits by reading 15 chapters of an economic textbook and writing an 11-page report. When Mr. Ellis heard that [the principal] had been removed, he suspected his diploma would be revoked, he said in an interview last night.

“I understand we might have messed up,” he said. “But I don’t see why they should have taken back our diplomas. It’s not like I did a little two-page project. It took 11 pages, it required thinking.” …

An English teacher, Linda Winkler, described a case involving a student in her class. She said the principal gave a passing grade to a student who had been absent from her class at least 50 times since February. (more…)

Before quizzing his middle school students on the features of the Neolithic Revolution, C. Ross Flatt had them play handmade board games about it. Acting as leaders of a budding civilization, the students managed a flash-card supply of food, settlements and other key resources, and built an army to protect their territory — marked on a laminated map — from invaders.

Then, rather than ask them what struggles they think Neolithic societies faced, Flatt had them describe the scenarios that tripped them up during the game.

“Did you ever get in trouble during the play of game and realize you didn’t have a stable food supply?” he asked. One student said he experienced a drought, while another said a cold snap not only depleted her resources but left her open to raids from other starving players.

For Flatt, one of a dozen teachers at Quest to Learn, a Chelsea middle school, these game-centered classroom exchanges are routine. But they are also the result of behind-the-scenes tinkering from a fleet of non-teaching, in-house curriculum specialists.

I visited Quest to Learn, which is in its third year of operation, after touring its sister school, ChicagoQuest, during a conference about digital learning earlier this fall. I wanted to see how the model developed by the Institute of Play, a nonprofit that works on game research and development, looked here in New York City. (more…)

The city’s budget watchdog predicted less money making its way to classrooms next year, even as it said the city’s overall economic outlook could be rosier than what Mayor Bloomberg has previously suggested.

The Independent Budget Office yesterday said that rising costs for contracts, employee benefits, and charter school payments appear poised to cut into the funds that the Department of Education is free to allocate to schools. The IBO analyzed this year’s budget and Mayor Bloomberg’s November financial plan and determined that spending for classroom instruction and school administration could drop by $300 million in 2013, a 3.3 percent decrease.

That’s because funds would likely have to be redirected to other areas of the DOE where costs are soaring, according to the report: pre-kindergarten special education contracts with private schools are set to increase by 10 percent, to $100 million; fringe benefits for school employees are expected to increase 2.5 percent, to $68 million; and payments to charter schools, which are enrolling more students each year, will go up 5.6 percent to $46 million.

City officials disputed the IBO’s projections of next year’s spending as premature.

“It’s impossible to say what we’re spending next year because we haven’t put out a budget, for schools or any other agency yet,” said City Hall spokesman Marc LaVorgna. A preliminary budget for the 2013 fiscal year is expected in January or February. (more…)

• A high school student embroiled in basketball recruiting allegations has found a new team. (Daily News)
• At Gompers High School, two basketball teammates were best friends in Santo Domingo. (Daily News)
• George Washington High School is trying to rebuild its long-defunct track team. (SchoolBook)
• A teacher at a Bronx high school had an outburst during class and was taken to a hospital. (Daily News)
• Students and teachers at Columbus High School say phaseout is taking a serious toll. (GothamSchools)
• Chicago’s high schools will all extend their days by more than half an hour next year. (Tribune)
• Wealthy donors are paying to bring Paul Vallas to Bridgeport, Conn., as interim schools chief. (WSJ)
• Seven states that lost last year’s Race to the Top competition will share a small pot of extra funds. (Times)

• A teacher describes torn feelings at watching a student be handcuffed and taken to a hospital. (Prelife)
• Former Chancellor Cathie Black is the winner of a 2011 Fifteen Minutes Award. (NY Mag)
• A new community education journalism endeavor is set to take root in Macon, Ga. (Southern Ed Desk)
• A rap version of Strunk and White’s classic writing handbook, “Elements of Style.” (YouTube)
• After a favorable ruling for a teacher accused of making a threat, bills and lost time remain. (JD2718)
• Analyzing Washington Irving High School’s scores and finding evidence of success. (Gary Rubinstein)
• And a DOE official responds to a protest against Washington Irving’s planned closure. (SchoolBook)
• A PEP member who runs a teen-pregnancy nonprofit defends the city’s sex ed mandate. (GS Community)
• A first-grade teacher on how she taught herself to teach gender-variant children. (Rethinking Schools)