GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Despite parsley prices, just two produce distributors bid to supply veggies to city schools. (Crain’s NY)
• A Manhattan Institute center is asking courts to make public employees’ pension data public. (NY Torch)
• The state teachers union is the third highest-spending lobbying group; the UFT is eighth. (NYPIRG)
• Today’s RttT winners excluded some early ed leaders but included one making cuts. (Early Ed Watch)
• Someone who says he is a pricey SAT tutor working in city charter schools answers questions. (Reddit)
• Brooklyn’s District 17 is holding a “community feast and holiday show” tomorrow. (GS Calendar)
• The After School Corporation is bringing a city program to New Orleans and Baltimore. (Beyond School)
• An Illinois school played Justin Bieber tunes on repeat to raise money for its arts center. (Huffington Post)
• L.A. teachers ratified a contract that basically turns schools into unionized charters. (Contra Costa Times)
• In a second addition, the city is growing the Peck Slip School by two more classrooms. (Daniel Squadron)
• Bronx P.S. 48′s music program wins $50,000 for original rap music video. (Schoolbook)
• College Board e-mails some students and counselors asking for credit card information. (The Choice)

In October, we reported that students at the iSchool had won a contest to have the surfaces of their school — walls, halls, and even tables — turned into interactive whiteboards.

Now, the glossy white paint is up, and the company that ran the contest, IdeaPaint, documented the process in this video.

Here’s how a teacher told us the paint job would influence learning at the school:

Christina Jenkins, an iSchool teacher who bought IdeaPaint for her classroom with donations last year, said the temporary nature of whiteboard writing encourages ideas to flow more readily. For students who might worry about making mistakes, “paper can be more intimidating,” she said, pointing to a wall in her room where students had jotted down ideas for their senior projects.

Five days before the official start to winter, the Department of Education has finished crunching numbers from summer school — and found that nearly one in five students told to attend shouldn’t have had to.

Of the elementary and middle school students whose test scores were so low that they had to attend summer school, two thirds were promoted in August, according to data the DOE released today.

The numbers also show that thousands more high school students than usual signed up for summer classes when it looked like they wouldn’t have a chance to retake Regents exams in January.

Over 17,000 more high school students enrolled in summer school than in 2010, likely driven by the news that the state had voted to eliminate the January Regents exam administration, often used to retake failed tests required for graduation. The exams were reinstated in August, after the summer session had ended.

Elementary and middle school students have less choice about whether to attend summer school. In those grades, whether a student is promoted depends on his state test scores. But the city doesn’t find out students’ scores until August, when summer school is already over. So every year, the city must predict whether a student is likely to pass the state exam — and tell those who seem likely to fail to register for summer classes.

This year, the city told 34,069 students in grades 3-8 that they should attend summer school — or about 9 percent of all students in those grades. But 6,245 of those students actually passed the tests with a score of 3 or 4. (more…)

Parents, students, and staff gathered to show support for Legacy

Carolyn Blackette wasn’t thrilled when she first found out her daughter would be attending Legacy High School for Integrated Studies because of its reputation. Blackette’s daughter had been assigned to the school after not getting into any of her high school choices, so Blackette marched down to the Department of Education to protest. A DOE employee convinced her that it was a good school and moving in the right direction under new leadership. Still skeptical, Blackette went to orientation — and fell in love with Legacy.

Within the first four months of school, she has received a personal call from the principal to make sure her daughter was adjusting comfortably, had frequent correspondences with teachers about her daughter’s performance, and witnessed her daughter welcomed into a warm school environment.

“I’ve been through the system before,” Blackette said, having put several other children through public schools. “I’ve never seen them take such interest in a child.”

With such an overwhelmingly positive experience, Blackette was shocked – as were other Legacy parents and students – to hear the school was placed on the chopping block last week when the DOE proposed its phaseout.

On Wednesday night, Thomas Fox, a DOE official that works with a number of schools including Legacy, facilitated a public hearing on Legacy’s proposed phaseout. As soon as parents and students caught wind of the event, they mobilized to rally – painting black and red “Save Legacy” tees, posting fliers around the school, making phone calls to bring in the troops. Approximately 100 staff members, students, and parents filled the cafeteria to hear what Fox would say and to push back.  (more…)

When the Obama administration announces winners of the second Race to the Top competition later today, New York will not be on the list.

That’s according to the Associated Press, which reports that nine states are sharing the $500 million in funding for early childhood programs. Those states are California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington, a source at the U.S. Department of Education told the AP.

Being shut out means New York will not get federal funding to build a “kindergarten readiness measurement tool” — or a test that all children would take when they enter school. The state had been eligible to receive as much as $100 million.

The nine winners are culled from 35 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, that applied for the federal funds this fall. (more…)

Academy for Scholarship and Entrepreneurship Principal Zenobia White talks with middle school students.

The principal of a Bronx secondary school is calling the city’s plan to cut her middle grades a blessing in disguise.

Across the city, school communities and closure opponents are gearing up to protest this year’s round of city proposals to close or truncate 25 schools. But at the Academy for Scholarship and Entrepreneurship in the Bronx, one of the six principals whose secondary schools could lose their middle grades is raising a white flag.

In some ways, it’s easy for ASE Principal Zenobia White to accept that her school will shrink by three out of seven grades over the next two years. She doesn’t have to start thinking about looking for another job, as she would if the school had been proposed to phase out completely. And her job could get easier once she has fewer students to move forward and a smaller staff to develop and observe.

But losing her middle school also means giving up on a vision to usher neighborhood students through their entire adolescence at a single school. Her hope was that by meeting students early in their academic careers, ASE teachers would be able to have a sustained impact on their performance, and the high school would avoid a common pitfall — enrolling students who are performing far below grade-level.

“When you have a middle school, you’re always making choices,” White said when I met with her at the Wakefield school building this week. “I’m a person who wants to support every last child, every last initiative, but the reality is it’s just literally impossible to do that when you have so many things going on at once.” (more…)

• City charter school advocates aren’t thrilled with candidates to replace Mayor Bloomberg. (SchoolBook)
• Gov. Cuomo reaffirmed his support for a 4 percent increase in school aid next year. (SchoolBook)
• Data show that city children are growing less obese. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook, Post, WSJ)
• A middle school teacher was arrested for raping a student. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News, NY1)
• Bay Ridge parents fear the city is going back on plans to open new school building. (Brooklyn Paper)
• Chicago says it’s more likely to invest in schools that won’t be closed or will be replaced. (Tribune)
• An Illinois school district promised new revenues is fretting over a tax break renewal. (Times)
• In Miami, charter schools enroll a disproportionately low number of poor students. (Miami Herald)
• Two education conglomerates are battling over a Florida Race to the Top contract. (The Ledger)
• D.C. schools called police to manage problems nearly 400 times in 2009-10. (Washington Examiner)

• New research suggests the Socratic method of questioning doesn’t always yield understanding. (Time)
• A California teacher pens an ode to her school’s counselor, the diamond of the school. (Tween Teacher)
• A New Dorp High School student journalist reports on the day metal detectors showed up. (SchoolBook)
• The push to collect more data about students means there is more room for security breaches. (HuffPo)
• A new mentoring program is being billed as a one-on-one Teach for America. (New Haven Independent)
• A report from a Bed-Stuy charter school where an anti-cyberbullying program kicked off this week. (Patch)
• An advocate for adopting international education methods lists priorities from abroad. (Class Struggle)
• The NYCLU is encouraging students to wear black armbands for free speech tomorrow. (NYCLU Twitter)
• Tracing the “half of all teachers leave in five years” claim back through its many versions. (Shanker Blog)
• What can be done with a decent student who refuses to write papers or apply to college? (NYC Educator)

When investigators concluded that a Queens teacher had had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student, the city sent him home.

Two weeks later — today — police arrested I.S. 278 teacher Charles Oross and charged him with rape, criminal sexual act, and endangering the welfare of a child.

The detail about Oross being “reassigned to his home” can be found in a footnote of the report about his behavior released today by the Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigation. It offers one clue as to how the city is managing teachers accused of wrongdoing now that they cannot be sent to reassignment centers known as “rubber rooms.”

Until last year, teachers accused of inappropriate behavior languished in the rubber rooms, sometimes for years, while awaiting discipline hearings. But after Mayor Bloomberg awakened to the existence of the rooms, he pushed for them to be dismantled. Part of the city-union deal shutting the rubber rooms down was that teachers whose cases were pending trial could be given work assignments.

For a couple of weeks in November, Oross was assigned to 49-51 Chambers Street, the Emigrant Savings Bank building that houses city offices. That is a more typical destination for teachers removed from their schools in the era after rubber rooms.

But city and union officials said today that the rubber room deal had introduced the possibility of assigning teachers to their homes. (more…)

As today’s City Council hearing on parent engagement wore into its third hour, parents grew agitated that they had yet to deliver their testimony.

After listening to chancellor Dennis Walcott and executive director for family and community engagement, Jesse Mojica, discuss parent engagement with council members for hours, the parents were ready to contribute, but the meeting was scheduled to end at one.

“It’s really unfair that this wasn’t mostly parent voices,” Michelle Lipkin, P.S. 199′s PTA president, said when she took the mic. “There’s a real disconnect between the definition of parent engagement for parents and the definition of parent engagement for the department of education.”

That disconnect was made clear as parents and council members agreed that the Department of Education can engage parents all they want, but without power, the engagement is all for naught.

“There’s no big secret in what gets parents involved,” Councilman Charles Barron said. “It’s when parents actually have power.” He suggested giving parents a say over curriculum, principal hiring, and budget.

Others agreed and noted that the Panel for Education Policy, the Community Education Councils, and the school closure procedures give only the guise of engagement.

“The parents need power through legislation. Not engagement, not feedback, not any of those pretty words. We need a vote on the PEP,” Christine Annechino, president of CEC 3, testified. “We have no voice. We have no power.”

Concerns raised by council members and parents during the meeting included the cut of 57 parent coordinators earlier this year, the accountability and assessment of parent coordinators, the lack of communication about toxic school environments, and the relocation of last night’s PEP meeting. While the tone was civil throughout, the issues always came back to the fact that parents don’t just want to be kept abreast of issues in their child’s school, they want to have the power to effect change. (more…)