GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Obama said he would target poverty by cloning the Harlem Children’s Zone. Why hasn’t he? (NYT Mag)
• A Chicagoland suburb is offering unpaid internships to teachers who can’t find jobs. (Tribune)
• Andy Rotherham suggests a question about lax waiver requests for presidential debates. (Eduwonk)
• Speaking as a parent, too, a teacher praises those who stand up for the joy of learning. (NYC Educator)
• A investing expert explains why charter schools are an attractive part of any portfolio. (Answer Sheet)
• Chicago’s Academy for Urban School Leadership is charting a new model for teacher training. (WSJ)
• In one Mississippi school, teachers started the year with a “Call Me Maybe” flashmob. (YouTube)
• Kevin Chavous says teachers need to understand the challenges of homelessness better. (Take Part)

Two men used shell companies and forged signatures to charge the Department of Education for sign language services that students didn’t need, an investigation found. The fraud ran for more than two school years and cost the city at least $1.5 million.

The brazen scheme involved claiming payment for services to students who were not enrolled in city schools and, in some cases, offered as proof that services had been provided the forged signatures of people who were retired or even deceased. In one instance, the city paid more than $100,000 over an eight-month period for a student who had left the school system a decade earlier. In another, the city handed out $187,200 in payments that were authorized by someone who had died “several years ago.”

Today, authorities arrested one of the men involved, Nelson Ruiz, while his collaborator, William Cruz, remains at large, said a spokeswoman for the Special Commissioner of Investigation, which conducted the probe.

Special education costs have skyrocketed in recent years and though the sign language fraud doesn’t begin to explain the amount of money that pays for special education servies, it suggests that the ways outside providers  are paid is highly-vulnerable to fraud. (more…)

Sometimes, the front-page story contains only a hint of the real story. This week, we’re showcasing readers whose comments brought attention to policy narratives behind the headlines.

As a reminder, each Friday we highlight a sampling of the most thoughtful, substantive, and informed comments that readers left on the week’s news articles. We believe that a constructive conversation in the comments section helps us meet our goal of elevating public dialogue about education.

On Monday, we wrote about the groundbreaking for a new building that will allow the highly selective Beacon High School to serve more students. A reader posting as “HS Biology Teacher” implied that the city’s decision about Beacon’s size contrasts with its recent emphasis on schools of fewer than 500 students. He writes,

1500 students… that’s, in my opinion, the perfect size for a school. Large enough to be able to offer a variety of courses and clubs, but small enough to minimize the dangers of students being lost in the crowd.

And another reader, “Tony,” suggested that Beacon’s selectivity might make the school complicit in concentrating low-performing students in some schools. (more…)

Percentage of teachers who had tenure denied or extended, 2006-2012

The city’s two-year-old crackdown on “tenure as we know it” continued this past year with nearly half of the teachers up for tenure not receiving it.

Just under 4,000 teachers were up for tenure in the 2011-2012 school year, fewer than usual because hiring restrictions sharply cut the number of new teachers in 2009. Of them, 55 percent received tenure and 3 percent were denied it, effectively barring them from working in city schools. The remaining portion — 42 percent — had their probationary periods extended for another year.

The extension rate was slightly higher than in 2011, when 39 percent of teachers up for tenure had their decisions deferred under a revamped tenure evaluation process. But it is five times the extension rate from 2010, which was the first time that the city used the deferral option in large numbers.

Mayor Bloomberg vowed in 2010 to move toward on “ending tenure as we know it,” a change he favors because teachers who do not yet have tenure can more easily be fired.

Last year, Chancellor Dennis Walcott predicted that more teachers would be denied tenure this year.

UPDATE: But  the denial rate for teachers in the tenure pool for the first time actually fell. Last year, 104 teachers eligible for tenure for the first time were denied it, for a denial rate of 2.2 percent. This year, that rate was 1.9 percent, meaning that just 42 teachers up for tenure for the first time were told they could not continue to work in city schools.

The Department of Education’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said today that the department had no firm goals for how many teachers should receive or be denied tenure.

“This is not about hitting some numerical target at all,” he said during a call with reporters. “What we’re asking principals to do is treat this as a big decision about: Is this teacher ready for lifetime guarantee of employment?” (more…)

• The city is easing up on its hiring restrictions, giving some prospective teachers their first way in. (NY1)
• At a small high school in Queens, the teachers have lower attendance rates than the students. (NYPost)
• The state released teacher “growth scores” tied to student performance from last year. (GothamSchools)
• Mayoral candidates are divided over whether to take donations from StudentsFirstNY. (GothamSchools)
• A California bill for a new teacher evaluation system has passed a key committee. (LATimes)
• A teacher says the focus on classroom rigor misses opportunities to excite students.  (Answer Sheet)