GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The city is planning to slash funding for an after-school program started under Bloomberg. (SchoolBook)
• All donations on DonorsChoose today will be doubled. View New York City projects. (DonorsChoose)
• Advocates For Children offers a three-point plan for understand the harm of school closures. (Facebook)
• According to a teacher, the city’s gift shop honors police and firefighters but not teachers. (NYC Educator)
• A call for concerned parents of District 15 to make the trek to the PEP meeting in Queens. (Brooklyn Rail)
• A maxim: Teachers who try to control students are not in control of their classrooms. (Coach G)
• In a far-ranging speech, Diane Ravitch praised Finland’s lack of standardized testing. (Schools Matter)
• Yet Finland does in fact have standardized testing. A look at it and how it’s used. (Education Nation)
• Diana Senechal defends the contributions of her mentor, Ravitch, to education history. (New Republic)
• Because of statistical issues, charter schools’ NAEP scores are reported for just six districts. (Russo)
• Pittsburgh is spending two-thirds of the first half of a Gates grant on consultants. (Trib-Review via Russo)
• Race to the Top looks like it is going to survive budget battles to live for another year. (Politics K-12)

Three months into the start of the school year, the Department of Education is just figuring out how to rate more than a thousand itinerant teachers.

Under the current teacher evaluation system in place in nearly all schools, principals rate teachers once a year as either “satisfactory,” or “unsatisfactory.” They are also supposed to offer advice to help teachers improve.

But when the city and UFT struck a deal this summer to avert layoffs, they agreed to move members of the  Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers who do not have permanent positions, to a different school—with a different principal—each week. The agreement left open the question of who would observe and rate those teachers.

In a year when the city and union are fighting fiercely over the particulars of new teacher evaluations, officials from the United Federation of Teachers told me they have left the decision of how ATRs will be rated up to the DOE.

Now the city has decided that ATRs will receiving ratings from their district superintendent, officials said, with input from the principals of schools where they were sent to work over the course of the year. The city is also testing out other options. (more…)

What happens inside New York City charter schools is more important than their ideological affiliations in determining academic success, according to a new paper.

The paper, which did not undergo peer review, is based on a detailed analysis of 35 city charter schools by two Harvard University researchers, Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie. Fryer is a MacArthur “genius” award winner who has conducted experiments and studies in New York City in the past, often in order to test his theories about the impact of incentives.

For the newest paper, “Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City,” the researchers conducted in-depth case studies at self-selecting charter schools that received $5,000 for supplying required information. By interviewing principals, teachers, and students; analyzing test scores and lesson plans; and videotaping classroom activity, Fryer and Dobbie built a database of “the inner workings of schools” and compared them.

They wanted to find which traits of city charter schools appeared most closely linked with academic success. They also asked whether schools with a particular philosophy, such as the “whole child” approach of providing wraparound services or the “no excuses” approach typified by KIPP charter schools, did better than others.

The researchers conclude that teacher credentials, class size, and per-pupil spending did not account for test score differences across the schools, but that five other features did. Those traits — frequent teacher feedback, high rates of data usage, “high-dose” tutoring, more class time, and a culture of high expectations — are features of many charter schools. Without them, schools that adhere to particular philosophies don’t outperform other charter schools, according to the analysis. (more…)

A teacher who received an unsatisfactory rating at the Bronx High School of Science will have that rating removed from his record after a judge ruled that it was assigned unfairly.

Peter Lamphere had gone to court to appeal an unsatisfactory rating he received when he was the union chapter leader at Bronx Science, where there are deep tensions between administrators and teachers.

Lamphere and other teachers said they had been targeted after speaking out against administrative policies. In February, Lamphere described his experience in the Community section:

In the fall of 2007, the math department welcomed a new assistant principal, Rosemarie Jahoda. Soon, however, we found that the newer teachers in the department were being subjected to a level of scrutiny and paperwork that was excessive. As soon as I spoke up about the issue, which was my responsibility as a member of a UFT consultation committee that met with the principal, I immediately began receiving unjustified disciplinary letters.  These were quickly followed by groundless unsatisfactory lesson observation reports. I had had a spotless teaching record for my entire previous career, including at Bronx Science.

Last week, responding to a lawsuit filed by the state teachers union, Judge Paul Feinman granted Lamphere’s petition to have the U-rating overturned. (Feinman is the same judge who denied the UFT’s bid to halt school closures and co-locations last summer.) According to the petition, which was filed in July, the city had upheld the U-rating even after Bronx Science Principal Valerie Reidy declined to contest Lamphere’s appeal. (more…)

Two days before the Panel for Educational Policy is set to vote on Brooklyn co-locations for two Success Network charter schools, a proposal for a third school in the heart of Williamsburg is taking shape.

The Department of Education is expected to release the proposal as early as today for the school, which would open next year with about 180 students in Kindergarten and first grade. The school would be sited at J.H.S 50 John D Wells, a middle school with about 450 students.

The proposal comes weeks after a plan was announced to expand the Success Network into a more affluent part of the borough known as Brownstone Brooklyn in District 15. That announcement was met with fierce opposition from the district’s Community Education Council and from education activists who say that the school is not in demand from the community.

In both instances, the interest in entering new neighborhoods underlines a strategic shift for the Success charter network’s academic mission, which has previously been to concentrate on narrowing the achievement gap for low-income students living in poor communities. By opening in areas with larger populations of middle class families, Success Network head Eva Moskowitz said she wants to open enrollment at her schools to more affluent students.

Moskowitz has already expressed interest in opening a school in Williamsburg and its charter was approved for District 14 in September, but details about where it would be located were not certain. (more…)

News from New York City:

• The state is set to propose lengthening annual exams, but not to four hours as threatened. (Times)
• A teacher’s aide with cancer has filed the first suit over toxic contamination at P.S. 51. (Daily News, NY1)
• A former teacher who has been active in Occupy protests resigned as an investigation began. (Post)
• The city completed its annual list of schools it aims to close. (GothamSchools, Times, NY1, WSJ, Post)
• A Bronx high school where students complained about irregular instruction is on the list. (Daily News)
• So is a Bronx school where students had lobbied for years for additional resources. (GothamSchools)
• And so is a Brooklyn secondary school for boys that hadn’t been warned it could close. (GothamSchools)
• The City Council voted to overrule Mayor Bloomberg’s veto of a bill constraining contractor use. (WSJ)
• Ginia Bellafante: A two-year-old lawsuit alleging abuse at Poly Prep is roiling the private school. (Times)
• The Daily News said the city made the right choices when picking which schools to close and shrink.

And beyond:

• Two supporters of the “Broader, Bolder Approach” call for attention to poverty’s effects in schools. (Times)
• In Newark, calls are growing for the state to cede control of the school district after 16 years. (Times)
• A survey of what has happened around the country when states have taken over school districts. (Times)
• An exchange aimed to bridge differences between urban and suburban schools in Chicago. (Tribune)
• Michael Winerip: Schools on military bases got better NAEP scores than other public schools. (Times)
• New Orleans charter schools are angry that the school board voted to cut budgets. (Times-Picayune)
• Texas schools are trying to quantify just how much they have lost to annual budget cuts. (Times)
• Boston’s public schools have unequal facilities that don’t correlate to academic performance. (Globe)
• A growing group of online tutors, such as Sal Khan, are becoming celebrities in the real world. (Times)

Samuel Gompers High School, one of 19 schools slated to close, was quiet before dismissal Friday afternoon.

Some of the teachers at Samuel Gompers Career and Technical Education High School held their breath when administrators called them into the school’s music room shortly after third-period this morning. Moments later, officials from the Department of Education and the teachers union announced that Gompers would be one of 19 schools the city tries to close this year.

Gompers’s progress report card grade dropped from a C to an F this year. But even last year city officials had flagged the school for its low performance, making it one of a handful of schools eligible to receive federal school improvement grants. When Gompers wasn’t selected for the funds, some predicted that closure would become a more likely intervention for the school.

The news still came as a surprise for three teachers I spoke to today, who asked not to be identified because they were instructed not to speak to reporters.

“It came as a complete surprise to us,” said one technology teacher. “Our school management team told us they had a strategy and as long as we followed it we’d be okay.”

The teacher, who has been at the technology-focused school for nearly a decade, said this year administrators told teachers to document all of their lessons diligently and collect more data on student improvement — policies that rankled some more experienced teachers. (more…)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott is interviewed by WNYC's Brian Lehrer at a forum on public school options.

Many of the parents and teachers attending a forum last night about school choice said it was their first time hearing Chancellor Dennis Walcott talk about the Bloomberg administration’s school policies.

Walcott defended the school choice model that has developed during Bloomberg’s tenure at the event, which was organized by the New York Times and WNYC in conjunction with their SchoolBook reporting project.

(Listen to WNYC’s coverage of the event.)

The event took place against the backdrop of a spate of school closures announced by the Department of Education earlier in the day. The city’s closure strategy, meant to clear space for better school options, has in large part fueled the increasing number of choices that families face, especially when applying in middle and high school.

Parents and teachers we spoke to said the apparent options could be dizzying, even for the most involved families. educators, some parents said they didn’t think Walcott’s answers got to the root of their concerns.

“It’s very confusing. The whole process reminds me of voting. People don’t engage because there’s too much information out there. They don’t know how to process all of it,” said Tania Cade, who has a child in third grade at P.S. 278 and another in seventh-grade at a gifted-and-talented program in Washington Heights. “I don’t think that [Walcott] addressed that issue at all. It’s all up to the parents, and God bless those parents who don’t have the time or don’t speak the language.” (more…)

Margaret McAuley, principal at Chappie D. James Elementary School of Science, questions the extent of support provided by the Department of Education to her struggling school.

Just hours after learning that Chappie D. James Elementary School of Science would be phased out, Principal Margaret McAuley publicly registered her concerns about the process that had brought the school to the point of closure.

McAuley testified Thursday evening at a meeting of the Citywide Council on Special Education, an elected parent group, which had been set aside to discuss closures well before the city announced yesterday that it would shutter 12 schools.

After the Department of Education’s director of engagement strategy, Meg Barboza, narrated a PowerPoint presentation about the city’s closure strategy, fielding challenges from council members along the way, McAuley took the microphone.

As music from a principals union event wafted into the second-floor meeting room at Brooklyn Borough Hall, McAuley described her efforts to serve students at her Brownsville school, which she started in 2008 after a previous school in the building had been closed because of poor performance. She said she had chased down resources and partnerships, sought out extra training for teachers, brought in computers and programming for parents, and put new expectations in place for students.

McAuley said she wasn’t surprised by the school’s first progress report grade last year, a D — scores remained very low. But she said they were improving, slowly but surely and unfortunately not in a way that this year’s report card grade, an F, could capture.

Most of all, she said, she hadn’t been informed that her school’s performance wasn’t up to par until October, when the city added it to the shortlist of potential closures. (more…)