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If the Department of Education goes through with its plan to close Manhattan Theatre Lab High School, the city will lose a rare option for students who want a rich arts education but lack previous training, members of the school community argued at a public hearing about the closure plan Tuesday night.

Manhattan Theatre Lab students performing during a talent show that preceded its closure hearing

Manhattan Theatre Lab, an eight-year-old high school on the Martin Luther King Campus, has a lower-than-average graduation rate, a failing grade on its most recent city report card, and serious academic shortcomings.

And while most students defended the school at the hearing, three seniors who testified said Principal Evelyn Collins had not given sufficient attention to the school’s lackluster academics. Collins took over in 2006 after a tumultuous period that included the midyear resignation of the school’s founding principal, the education director of a local theater company.

But Manhattan Theatre Lab also has a rich arts curriculum in drama, dance, vocal music, and set design — and it does not require auditions to be accepted. That sets the school apart from other arts schools, including the elite LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, located across the street.

Many students told GothamSchools they had auditioned for LaGuardia or other selective schools but were not accepted. They said they had felt unprepared next to other eighth-graders from around the city who had been fine-tuning their craft through private training since an early age.

Manhattan Theatre Lab’s open-door policy has attracted a student body that is 96 percent black and Hispanic, at least two-thirds free lunch-eligible. About 10 percent of students require special education services.

At LaGuardia, nearly 70 percent of students are white or Asian, and less than 1 percent of students have special needs. (more…)

Courtesy: KIPP

A few months ago, teachers from KIPP charter schools approached the network’s co-founder Dave Levin to say that they were restless with the training they were getting. Despite weekly observations and extensive support, the teachers wanted to talk to educators from outside the KIPP organization to find out what they considered best practices for classroom teaching.

Levin took that idea and developed it into the “What’s Works in Urban Schools,” a conference that took place Saturday at New York University. The purpose of the event, Levin said, was to forge better working relationships between district and charter school teachers.

“Too often the broader structural debate has nothing to do with the great things that are happening in classrooms across New York City,” Levin said. “Whether you teach in a charter school or a district school, good teachers have the same goals.”

On Saturday, hundreds of teachers braved inclement weather, an early morning wake-up, and a $35 entry fee to attend the event, which was sponsored by KIPP, Google, TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project), Teaching Matters, and Scholastic. (more…)

• Six schools in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Charter Network are set for 2013, two in District 2. (Daily News)
• Juan Gonzalez: An audit found many students do not get mandated special ed services. (Daily News)
• Community meetings are underway at the 33 schools the city wants to “turn around.” (GothamSchools)
• At A-rated Maxwell High School, community members rallied against the city’s closure plan. (NY1)
• The city is citing data not in its progress report, such as teacher absences, to make its closure case. (Post)
• A transfer school on the turnaround list has state support for being judged differently. (GothamSchools)
• The UFT targeted Bloomberg’s record in a TV ad. (GothamSchools, NY1, Daily News, SchoolBook, WSJ)
• A misspelled “shcool” crossing sign outside Marta Valle High School was repaired. (The Lo-down, Post)
• A national report puts efforts to boost teacher quality in New York State 13th best in the nation. (AP)
• The short-term principal of P.S. 165 resigned last month to start a charter school. (Columbia Spectator)

• An UWS hair salon is trying to make up for lost SIG funds by donating to schools. (Columbia Spectator)
• The Department of Education’s Innovation Zone is hiring new managers. (Simply Hired)
• At its closure hearing, Aspire Prep blamed its declining scores on teachers’ sick leaves. (SchoolBook)
• President Obama is discussing education in his State of the Union address tonight. (Politics K-12)
• Educators are joining Michelle Obama in her viewing box for the president’s speech. (Politics K-12)
• A tale of high-achieving teachers and students at a “persistently low-achieving” school. (GS Community)
• A resolution about school buses that has been tabled until the next PEP meeting. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• A teacher describes the short-term results she gains by conducting “guerrilla education.” (Prelife)

A transfer school that the city is planning to close is desperately trying to escape an accountability dragnet planted by No Child Left Behind.

Its plight could reshape how other transfer schools are assessed under a new accountability system the state is working to devise.

Bushwick Community High School is one of 33 schools that Mayor Bloomberg has said he wants to shut down and reopen after replacing half of the teachers. It landed on the list after its low graduation rate triggered penalties under city, state, and federal accountability systems.

BCHS teachers say the school is being penalized because it enrolls only students who have been unsuccessful in other high schools, making it unlikely for them to graduate on time. This week, the staff submitted a letter to Bloomberg arguing that he should remove BCHS from the list schools that the city is planning to “turn around.”

“BCHS’s placement on the PLA list is the illogical conclusion of a crude, one-size-fits all accountability system,” they wrote. “As a transfer school, BCHS is designed to be part of the solution for struggling students in the city, but the current accountability metrics punish us for working with our students while allowing the source of their failures to go undetected.”

It’s a position that state officials support and are even trying to turn into policy. (more…)

Posters from past student theater performances adorned the walls of Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School's auditorium, where parents gathered Monday for a meeting on school turnaround.

The city has started running through its closure protocol at dozens of low-performing schools it wants to “turn around.”

At Brooklyn’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, Superintendent Aimee Horowitz held a tense meeting with teachers to talk about the closure plan Monday afternoon. Hours later, she detailed the plan to about 50 angry and bewildered parents at an “early engagement” meeting that has for the last two years been the Department of Education’s first step in letting schools know they could be closed.

The pattern is set to repeat this week and beyond at dozens of l0w-performing schools that were midway through federally mandated overhaul processes known as “transformation” and “restart” until earlier this month, when Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city would instead try to use a different process, “turnaround,” at the schools. The switch, aimed at letting the city sidestep a state requirement that it negotiate new teacher evaluations with the United Federation of Teachers, would require the schools to be closed and immediately reopened after having at least half of their teachers replaced.

The mass-replacement plan drew fire from parents and students who said FDR’s teachers are essential if academic performance is to improve.

“I feel tortured,” said Abdul Sager, a ninth-grader whose first language is Bengali. “If a new teacher comes who doesn’t know about my feelings and strategies … to learn English, it’s going to take more time.” (more…)

The United Federation of Teachers is turning up the heat on Mayor Bloomberg with a new television ad marking mayoral control’s double-digit birthday.

In a separate ad appearing in print today, the union is also continuing its appeal to parents in the ongoing fight over teacher evaluations. (more…)

• Seven of the 33 schools the city now wants to close got A’s or B’s on their city report cards. (Post)
• One, Maxwell High School, got an A last year, up from much lower scores in previous years. (Daily News)
• City, state, and union officials testified in Albany on Gov. Cuomo’s education budget. (Daily News, NY1)
• The hearing revealed dissent at the state level about competitive school grants. (GothamSchools, Times)
• Bill Hammond: The hearing was “a lesson in pussyfooting” around teacher evaluations. (Daily News)
• An audit of the city’s ARIS data warehouse found waste. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook, Daily News)
• Revelations about a misspelled street sign has some pointing fingers at the school it’s outside. (Post)
• A student was arrested with a pellet gun at his Manhattan high school’s metal detectors. (Daily News)
• New Orleans announced plans to turn more high schools over to charter operators. (Times-Picayune)
• More on the Long Island student named a national science fair semifinalist while homeless. (Times)
• Some Chicago parents say they were paid to support the school closure plans at hearings. (Sun-Times)
• D.C.’s schools chief supports a plan to pay teachers more in high-need schools. (Washington Times)

• Two city politicians continued an annual push to make Lunar New Year a school holiday. (SchoolBook)
• A report, with video, from a closure hearing at P.S. 215 that Chancellor Walcott attended. (Ed Notes)
• A street repair has left a crucial word misspelled outside Marta Valle High School. (The Lowdown NY)
• An argument that Gov. Cuomo’s competitive grants programs would mostly reward luck. (Shanker Blog)
• A retired superintendent says teacher evaluation problems are surmountable but very real. (Newsday)
• A Colorado teacher explains that “punitive testing” drove him/her out of teaching. (United Opt Out)
• The UFT notes that most charter schools coverage left out good news for Opportunity. (Edwize)
• Suggestions for seven classroom practices that should just go away already. (Core Knowledge Blog)
• A 2005 graduate of Lehman High School describes how she wasn’t prepared for college. (EdVox)
• A newspaper ombudsman cautions on writing about Race to the Top. (Washington Post via Eduwonk)