GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The band OK GO stars in a paint-filled “Sesame Street” video about primary colors. (YouTube)
• Liza Featherstone observes the march toward privatization in her own son’s school. (Brooklyn Rail)
• Nat Hentoff: Students should rate their teachers, not standardized test results. (Village Voice)
• Teacher Mark Fusco compares students’ regular writing to their Regents exam essays. (GS Community)
• A city high school student describes being the child of two parents who “self-deported.” (Times)
• The UFT says the principal of Brooklyn’s P.S. 22 has driven teachers out for years. (New York Teacher)
• A teacher snapped a photo of a cracked floor that has gone unfixed for two years. (inside Colocation)
• The city’s online zone maps have not been updated to reflect changes in zoning. (Insideschools)
• Students at Fashion Industries High School had an inspiring visit from fashionistas. (SchoolBook)
• On the difference between student performance, which tests measure, and schools’. (Shanker Blog)
• A private school job listing reveals the myriad tasks of a school librarian. (Education on the Plate)
• Charter networks that span multiple states are hitting common assessment issues. (Curriculum Matters)

A second principal of a school the city has targeted for poor performance has announced her departure.

Herma Hall is leaving Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts after three years as its principal. The school’s UFT chapter leader, Anthony Klug, and Noah Gotbaum, a member of the district’s elected parent council, said teachers learned of Hall’s departure this afternoon.

Hall announced this afternoon that she would leave the school next week, just as the citywide school board, the Panel for Educational Policy, is set to vote on the city’s proposal to shut Wadleigh’s middle school. The Department of Education declined to comment on her departure.

The principal of another school up for closure, Jane Addams Career and Technical Education High School, was removed last week and demoted to being an assistant principal at another school. In that case, Sharron Smalls was under investigation for awarding students credits they had not earned. Smalls was reassigned to an assistant principal position at the Holcombe Rucker School of Community Research, a small high school in Morrisania, according to Marge Feinberg, a department spokeswoman.

Hall’s departure is notable because only Wadleigh’s middle grades are up for closure. Hall is also the principal of the high school, which city officials have promised would not be affected by the proposed changes.

On the auditorium stage at Wadleigh’s six hour-long closure hearing last week, students defended Hall and her faculty for creating a family-like environment at Wadleigh. (more…)

Bloomberg discusses school funding during today's budget briefing

The education proposals that Mayor Bloomberg announced during his State of the City speech last week made no appearance at his budget briefing today.

Nor did the policy he had pushed last year during the budget process, an end to seniority-based layoff rules.

In fact, in his budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins in July, Bloomberg said little about schools except that the Department of Education is among the only city agencies not set to experience budget cuts. The city is planning to spend $13.6 billion on schools in 2012-2013, and layoffs are not on the table.

That’s good news for principals, who said last year (as they had in the past) that they could not fathom cutting anything more in their schools.

But the budget proposal counts on some revenue that is not at all assured — increased school aid from the state.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, of course, has said the aid increase would go only to districts that have new teacher evaluations in place. So far, the city and teachers union have been unable to agree on new evaluations and do not appear on the brink of doing so.

But Bloomberg said today he was not worried about Cuomo’s threat, arguing that the aid increases were slated well before Cuomo’s recent ultimatum. (more…)

Legacy students sat on the panel to present anecdotal and data-driven reasons why Legacy should remain open

By the time Wednesday’s closure hearing began, students at Manhattan’s Legacy School for Integrated Studies had already said everything they could to support their school. For weeks, they had been making a case for their school, on the Today Show and WPIX, NY1 and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter.

And yet, revved up from a multi-school rally in Union Square, they said it all again.

In the school’s packed cafeteria, students said once again that their new principal, Joan Mosely, and the many new teachers hadn’t had time to turn the school around. Last year’s poor academic performance, they said, reflected stricter standards and higher expectations. They even made a formal presentation about the school’s performance and demographics.

Their arguments were seconded by teachers, parents and representatives of several elected officials, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, both candidates for mayor.

But Marc Sternberg, a Department of Education deputy chancellor, said the city did not want to wait for improvement that might never arrive.

“The question ultimately is, how patient can we be?” Sternberg said. “Our inclination is to act on behalf of our future students quickly.”

Students and teachers said the closure proposal had in some ways dampened the mood at the school. But they pointed to a silver lining: that the sustained protest against the city’s plan had given them purpose, public speaking skills, and an esprit de corps. (more…)

Parents and children hold a press conference last month to oppose the closure of P.S. 161's middle school.

A last-ditch effort to stop their school from losing its middle grades has some parents planning to keep their children home on Monday.

Fresh off protesting at a public hearing about the city’s plan last month, parent organizers at P.S. 161 in Crown Heights are calling for a one-day school boycott.

For weeks, families have lashed out against the city’s plans to close or shrink 25 schools at public hearings about the proposals. But the boycott marks a new form of resistance. It is scheduled for three days before the citywide school board, the Panel for Educational Policy, is set to vote on — and presumably, approve — the city’s proposal to eliminate P.S. 161′s middle school grades.

Under the city’s plan, P.S. 161′s elementary school would remain intact. But Demetrius Lawrence, the outspoken president of the school’s PTA, told me that parents in all grades are planning to join in the boycott.

“We wanted to do one day of direct action in order for us to get a strong statement out,” he said. (more…)

“Ball so hard, let’s get graded/Don’t get me? I’ll elucidate/A-D/Won’t fool me/Check my score and validate it.”

I recited those lyrics — an adaptation of a Watch the Throne song that I called “Regents in Paris” — over the public address system at my school last week. Teachers and students danced in the hallway chanting in time “Let’s do this test/Let’s pass this test.” It was an absurd scene that fit with the absurd scenario: Students’ reading/writing ability was about to be “officially” assessed in the form of a three-hour-long onslaught of mundane, out-of-context passages that students were supposed to care about enough to analyze in short snippets of writing.

Yes, it was time for the January Regents exams. I had asked half of my junior class to sit for the English Regents even though they did not need to pass it until June. The plan was that we could get the test out of the way for them. The other half of the group took a mock Regents exam to prepare for the June test, and I took it with them. I wanted to understand the test-taking experience more genuinely.

Before I could get to the Regents exams, though, I had to review students’ final papers for my English class. I spent the beginning of the week doing just that. Though the students’ work had some internal inconsistencies and plenty of room for growth, these essays showed that they had successfully analyzed novels through the lens of gender identity and gender socialization. The essays were well structured, validated by quotations, and genuinely interesting to read. (more…)

Dozens of city students walked out of at least five high schools in three boroughs Wednesday to protest the city’s school closure plans. Amid the crowd of protesters in Union Square, I spoke to several students about what inspired them to take to the streets and what they think the city will lose by shuttering struggling high schools.

Here’s what they told me:

Ana Leguillou
Senior, Paul Robeson High School

The city decided to phase out Leguillou’s Brooklyn school last year. Now that the school has started to shrink, Leguillou said student morale is low. “Students feel like they’re not doing what they should be,” she said. She tried to persuade friends to join her at the protest, but said, “They said, ‘No, thanks, there’s nothing more we can do.’ It’s sad to see that they’ve given up.” Leguillou said she wanted to show her support to other schools in hopes that they could avoid the same fate. “It may be a lost cause for us, but we can still fight.” (more…)

• Large schools in the city, which include many of the most elite, are worried about their survival. (Times)
• New data show student results at schools that closed. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook, NY1, Daily News)
• Citing philosophical differences, Pedro Noguera has resigned from SUNY’s charter school board. (WSJ)
• SUNY officials: Underprepared high school grads cost the system $70 million a year. (Times-Union)
• The principals union chief panned the city’s turnaround plans. (GothamSchools, SB, Daily News, Post)
• So did Michael Mulgrew, head of the United Federation of Teachers, in new detail. (GothamSchools)
• The Post says state ed chief John King should discard Mulgrew’s and Logan’s letters in his “circular file.”
• Diane Ravitch urged city principals to join a protest against the state’s evaluation law. (GothamSchools)
• Students staged a walkout and protest against the city’s planned school closures. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• Students defended faltering Academy of Business and Community Development. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• Discovery High School in the Bronx closed an urban farming program beloved by students. (Daily News)