GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• For the second time this week, a school aide was arrested on sexual abuse charges. (Schoolbook)
• Walcott and Mulgrew shook hands and made nice for the cameras at a “respect” summit. (Capital NY)
• A teacher blogs that student input on teacher evals can balance out test scores and observations. (Chaz)
• On her last day before headed to NewsCorp., Natalie Ravitz announces replacement. (GS Twitter)
• Money from the city’s middle school plan is going to reading instruction at 18 schools. (Schoolbook)
• The Mayor questioned the financial wisdom behind Quinn’s call for universial kindergarten. (Metropolis)
• Insights into advice Joel Klein gave Rupert Murdoch on the phonetapping scandal.   (BusinessWeek)
• A researcher says solutions to eliminatethe rich-poor achievement gap are “overflowing.” (AnswerSheet)

Monique Lindsay, a member of the Citywide Council on High Schools and a Grady High School parent discusses the city's turnaround plan.

With the first round of school closures that the city proposed now approved by the Panel for Educational Policy, the Department of Education’s attention is turning to another set of 33 low-performing schools that it has said it would “turn around.”

The controversial plan, announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg last month in his State of the City address, requires that the city abruptly close and then reopen each school with a new name and many new teachers. The city is set to submit its formal proposal for the turnarounds — and their accompanying federal funding — to the state today.

City officials have explained the plan at each of the schools on the list and heard concerns at a slew of recent hearings and meetings with the schools’ superintendents, who are required to hold meetings at any school proposed to be closed.

But when the Citywide Council on High Schools devoted its monthly meeting to a question-and-answer session about the model on Wednesday, parents from several high schools that would undergo turnaround said they still felt uninformed about the plan.

About 30 parents, teachers, and community members attended the meeting and several pressed Elaine Gorman, the DOE official overseeing turnaround, about the plan.

Karen Marreao, whose daughter is a senior at John Dewey High School but not on track to graduate this year, said she viewed the turnaround as the latest status update tacked onto an ever-growing list of school reform measures that have been applied to Dewey in recent years. (more…)

A disagreement over how to protest last night’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting spilled onto the sidewalk less than two hours before the event started.

In the video above, Brian Jones, a teacher activist affiliated with the Grassroots Education Movement makes a last-ditch effort to form a unified front with the teachers union against the city’s policy of closing schools. He confronted Leo Casey, a vice president in the United Federation of Teachers and asked him why the union had refused to join his group.

The UFT planned to hold their own policy meeting at a school down the road and said they would not even attend the PEP. GEM, on the other hand, was joining a larger protest that included Occupy DOE factions and students organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice. The plan was to remain in the Brooklyn Tech auditorium for the event’s entirety and disrupt it through the ‘people’s mic.’

“All of your allies are coming to our plan, so what’s the point sticking to [your plan]?” Jones asked Casey, as dozens of protesters behind him began chanting that they would not walk out. “The NAACP is going to be inside with us. Why are you going to be outside?” (more…)

New York State education officials kicked off a statewide information-gathering tour in Brooklyn on Wednesday about a controversial practice: credit recovery.

Credit recovery involves a variety of alternative academic programs used in schools to offer students a way to make up credits for incomplete or failed courses. It has been lauded by city officials and principals, who have used it as a way to help both failing students and advanced students earn credits that were otherwise unavailable at schools to them.

But critics in New York City have accused Mayor Bloomberg and Department of Education principals of abusing the policy to juke citywide graduation rates, a hallmark accomplishment of his administration. Last year, the city audited about 60 city high schools’ data, including how many credits they issued through credit recovery practices, but has not yet released the results.

The State Education Department formalized the policy in 2010 with a regulation that allows students to gain credits without meeting “seat time” or attendance requirements in limited circumstances. But Associate Commissioner Ken Slentz said on Wednesday that state officials had grown “concerned” that the policy was “not meeting its original intent.”

Testimony from two former teachers, and education expert, and anonymous letters from educators read by parent activist Leonie Haimson appeared to confirm Slentz’s concerns. (more…)

Nine takeaways from last night’s raucous Panel for Educational Policy meeting, for those who don’t have time for 5,000-plus words and minute-to-minute updates:

1. The city’s agenda was unsurprisingly approved. But the bloc of borough presidents’ appointees has hardened into constant opposition. Last year, some borough presidents’ appointees voted to support at least a few of the proposed phaseouts. Even Patrick Sullivan, the appointee of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, cast a rare “yes” vote on the city’s proposal to close the high school grades of Frederick Douglass Academy III in the South Bronx.

That didn’t happen last night. Sullivan, Gbubemi Okotieuro of Brooklyn, Wilfredo Pagan of the Bronx, and Dmytryo Fedkowskj of Queens voted against every single closure proposal before them. Sullivan and Pagan even abstained on two votes for proposals to grow schools rather than shrink them. And in a surprising move, Diane Peruggia, the appointee of Staten Island’s conservative borough president, James Molinaro, cast a “no” vote — against the first-ever closure of a Staten Island school, P.S. 14.

Only one plan won unanimous support: the plan to expand Brooklyn’s P.S. 8 to include a middle school, something parents in Brooklyn Heights had been asking for for years.

2. Protesters were divided on strategy and the teachers union’s lost out. Three different groups planned protests and two of them faced off outside and inside Brooklyn Tech. Protesters affiliated with the Occupy movement, many with no connection to the city schools, sustained a “people’s mic” for hours, shouting over official speakers and panel members.They even tried to prevent others from testifying and as their numbers dwindled, their protest devolved into an expletive-laden series of personal attacks. Their goal — ultimately unsuccessful — was to shut the meeting down.

The UFT, on the other hand, had rented space at nearby P.S. 20 to hold an alternate meeting, the “People’s PEP.” The idea was to march from Brooklyn Tech to P.S. 20 instead of heading inside for the city’s meeting — a plan that caused a teacher activist to argue strategy with a union vice president outside the meeting, which can be seen in this video. (more…)

• The PEP voted to close or shrink 23 schools after a tense meeting. (GS, NY1, Daily News, Times, Post)
• Council Speaker Christine Quinn proposed CUNY funding and mandatory kindergarten. (Daily News)
• Comptroller John Liu, also running for mayor, said Quinn did not articulate an education vision. (WSJ)
• New research shows that the achievement gap between affluent and poor students is growing. (Times)
• A Hoover Institution Fellow advocates for city teachers to receive letter-graded report cards. (Post)
• The P.S. 243 aide accused of sex crimes took students on unsanctioned excursions. (Daily News)
• A City Councilwoman urges the city to promote boys sports in small high schools. (Queens Chronicle)
• The USDOE gave 10 states No Child Left Behind waivers in the first round of exemptions. (Times, WSJ)