GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• In giving a C, Mitt Romney’s French teacher noted a “false sense of knowledge.” (HuffPo via Russo)
• An Upper East Side private school put out a press release backing NCLB waivers. (Digital Journal)
• Brooklyn teacher Ryan Hall (see his class here) says eighth-graders can see algebra’s value. (HuffPo)
• Mike Petrilli renounces his belief that the government shouldn’t subsidize PBS: It’s too good! (Ed Next)
• A satirical police alert was filed after prolific Diane Ravitch didn’t tweet for 45 minutes. (Students Last)
• A student who says her school is unsafe and too easy is told that transferring will be hard. (Insideschools)
• Aaron Pallas draws contrasts between his retention research and TNTP’s. (GS Community/Hechinger)
• A UFT chapter leader urges his colleagues to conduct their own surveys of teachers. (Labor Lessons)
• A teacher recognizes his own history teacher’s excellence and worries about others like him. (Yo Mista)
• A national office faults the way districts coordinate special education services after high school. (HuffPo)
• Principals who lobbied against New York’s teacher eval law say getting heard is tough. (Answer Sheet)
• The nation’s report card will include more contextual details about students’ lives. (Curriculum Matters)

Manhattan Theatre Lab students performed before the school's closure hearing. Its former principal now wants to lead an arts-themed charter school.

Two of the charter schools vying to open next year have the backing of principals from schools the city has moved to close.

One school’s lead applicant is the principal of Peninsula Preparatory Academy Charter School, which the city this year deemed so low-performing that it should be closed. Another would be led by Evelyn Collins, an arts evangelist who was principal of Manhattan Theatre Laboratory High School when the city school board voted last February to phase it out.

That’s on top of a third school whose board would include a principal who was removed from the district school he ran until 2010.

The three schools are among 23 whose preliminary proposals won their planners an invitation from the State Education Department to submit formal applications to open in New York City. They join another 12 schools that have asked SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute for permission to open in the city.

James Merriman, director of the New York City Charter School Center, said he would not comment on individual school proposals because he was not familiar with them. But he said that opening a charter school is a bad backup plan for school leaders who have stumbled before.

“Anyone who thinks the charter sector will be an easier way to run a successful school, or running a charter school is going to be easy, is in for a big surprise,” Merriman said. “The fact is charters are held to even higher accountability standards than district schools and so I caution anyone who does not have a track record of success in thinking that success will come to them in the charter sector.” (more…)

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer spoke at a January press conference on school closures that drew four mayoral contenders, including him.

Not satisfied with simply railing against the Bloomberg administration’s education policies in the lead-up to the 2013 mayoral election, more than 20 community and advocacy groups have formed a coalition to urge a different path.

And if the coalition, called A+ NYC, is successful, that path will be lined with education research.

A+ NYC is the latest entrant into a crowded field of education advocates aiming to influence the mayoral election. It is driven by many of the same advocacy groups that just four months ago signed on to New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, which aims to oppose Mayor Bloomberg’s schools policies.

But organizers of both coalitions say they have very different strategies. Participants in A+ NYC say their coalition doesn’t share the blanket opposition to his education policies that New Yorkers for Great Public Schools proclaimed when it announced itself in May. Instead, they say, the new coalition is about policy, not politics.

“I think that this coalition is not focused on Bloomberg at all,” said Megan Hester, a coordinator for the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which supports the Coalition for Educational Justice. ”It’s focused on what we want from the next mayor.”

Hester said A+ NYC, which convened for the first time last week, would focus on compiling education research to share with candidates as they develop their platforms. Eventually, she said, A+ NYC would establish its own policy recommendations and push candidates to adopt similar positions. (more…)

• The proposed Whole Elephant Charter School would focus on Chinese language and culture. (Post)
• Stuyvesant’s acting chief is educator Jie Zhang. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook, WSJ, Daily News, NY1)
• A long-shot mayoral candidate, Tom Allon, wants Stuy to change in other ways, too. (GothamSchools)
• New Jersey’s new tenure law requires teachers to work four years first. (WSJ, Times, Daily News, Post)
• Under criticism for its response, Horace Mann School set out steps to address sex abuse. (Times, WSJ)
• Monday was the first day of the school year for New Orleans’ Recovery School District. (Times-Picayune)