GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• J.C. Brizard will get a year’s salary after resigning as Chicago’s schools chief after 16 months. (Tribune)
• Joe Biden hammered Paul Ryan on his proposed education cuts in Thursday’s debate. (Politics K-12)
• Diversity is an asset at Brooklyn Latin, a specialized school with many students of color. (Schoolbook)
• School Improvement Grants are yielding mixed results in 40 Colorado schools getting them. (ENC)
• A Philadelphia school just had its library refurbished after the library sat closed for 25 years. (Notebook)
• A takedown of the Joel Klein-autobiography takedown says it puts personality over policy. (Sara Mead)
• A teacher describes the swap between an experienced teacher and two newbies. (Chaz’s School Daze)
• Foreign investors are providing new influxes of capital to build charter schools in the U.S. (Reuters)
• Susan McKinney JHS students protested a proposed Success Academy co-location. (Fort Greene Patch)

The school week was short in length, but it began with a splash here, with a report on the tenuous status of the politically-charged UFT Charter School. The story stirred critical commentary from readers on the role that teachers unions could — and should — play in school management and accountability.

(As a reminder, each Friday we highlight a sampling of our favorite comments from the week. Please review our commenting policy to find out more about what we like.)

When it opened in 2005, then- President Randi Weingarten declared that the UFT Charter School would become a proof point that the union contract was not a barrier to success. But seven years in, the school is now one of the lowest-performing in the city.

Commenters were divided on how to assign blame for the school’s demise. “BB” argued that the school’s label as a unionized school was besides the point:

Poverty, crime, massive class sizes, lack of parental engagement, high staff turnover, lack of teaching resources, and non-experienced educational leaders are the real cause of most of the problems schools face in this country.

The difference, “Danny” responded, was that assuming full responsibility for school’s management put the union a position where it was directly accountable for school performance:

“[T]his school was run, from the top to the bottom, by the UFT, whereas regular district schools are run by the NYC DOE, with only the teacher side influenced by the UFT-DOE contract…The charter gave the UFT a chance to show what they could do if they were calling ALL the district-level shots.” (more…)

Occupy the DOE protesters stsop at Tweed Courthouse on their way to a larger Occupy rally in November 2011.

A year ago, Brian Jones and other education activists crowded into a standing-room-only auditorium where city Department of Education officials were supposed to present new curriculum standards to parents.

Just moments after Chancellor Dennis Walcott began to deliver his opening remarks one member of the crowd stood up.

“Mic check,” he called out.

So began the first offensive of Occupy the DOE, an outgrowth of the Occupy Wall Street movement intended to wrest authority over the city’s schools out of the hands of the “1 percent” and into the “99 percent” of education stakeholders who are teachers, families, and students.

Minutes after the first interruption, Walcott and the other officials called off the meeting, retreating to smaller sessions in other parts of the building.

Supporters of the movement hailed the disruption as a victory and would soon stage protests at meetings througout the winter. But the demographic profile of the activists and their raucous tactics also alienated groups that had similar gripes about the city’s education policies.

A year later, the broader Occupy movement is in disarray, but the Department of Education is largely unchanged. Walcott remains in charge, mayoral control is still in place, and tests geared to the new standards are in development. But even though Occupy the DOE’s website has not been updated since May, activists say that, for better or worse, the movement has had a lasting impact on education advocacy in the city. (more…)

Young Women's Leadership School of Brooklyn's student government members organized the school's celebration of the First International Day of the Girl on Thurtday.

Principal Talana Bradley stood in front of her students on Thursday waving a copy of the day’s top news story, about the shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan.

Yousafzai was shot by Taliban extremists because she advocated for women’s education in Pakistan, Bradley told the all-female student body at the Young Women’s Leadership School of Brooklyn.

“We take for granted being in a place that not only allows you to be educated but promotes success and greatness,” Bradley said.

Bradley’s exhortations kicked off the Williamsburg school’s celebration of the “International Day of the Girl,” a day that the United Nations designated last December. The school drew high-profile women to an event that 10th-grade student government members had spent nine months planning. (more…)

• Officials knew about a school’s decaying condition for over a year before they pulled students. (NY1)
• Chicago schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard is out after 17 months and one bruising strike. (Tribune)
• John King responded to criticism of the evaluation law at one of Cuomo’s ed reform meetings. (Newsday)
• Efforts to improve parent engagement and serve needy students are coming slowly. (GothamSchools)
• De Blasio defended a tax plan to pay for universal pre-K after Bloomberg called it “dumb.” (Daily News)
• Bloomberg said the comments will be his last on plans proposed by a 2013 candidate. (Times, DNAInfo)
• NYSUT withdrew $150,000 from a Democratic Senate hopeful whose chances are fading. (Buffalo News)
• Democracy Prep’s founder and superintendent Seth Andrew is leaving after this year. (GothamSchools)
• A teacher was removed after officials found he exchanged thousands of texts with a student. (Post)
• New school-by-school “value-added” data in Atlanta shows wide disparities among schools. (AJC)