GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A new brochure outlining an agenda for an Obama second term includes education hints. (Politics K-12)
• A Romney presidency would likely bring few but significant changes, another pundit says. (Rick Hess)
• Newark superintendent Cami Anderson says the way she was raised prepared her for the job. (Ed Next)
• John Dewey High School students have deployed a robotic submarine that they made. (Brooklyn Daily)
• Chicago officials are meeting with community leaders in advance of school closure decisions. (Catalyst)
• Citing civil rights leader Robert Moses, a math teacher argues that his work is political. (Jose Vilson)
• Teach for America’s alumni network is designed to catapult members to influence. (American Prospect)
• Public school teachers can show their school or union ID to see “Brooklyn Castle” for free next week.

The sharp complaints that UFT President Michael Mulgrew leveled a week ago at the city and state’s Common Core rollout were based on anecdotal reports, according to union officials.

Now the union is hoping to back up Mulgrew’s harsh words with the voices of more than 100,000 educators. Today, every UFT member received a survey by email asking them whether they have received the curriculum materials, professional development, and technology they need to tie their instruction to the new standards.

A message from Mulgrew that accompanied the survey signaled that the union is looking for problems.

“With this online UFT survey, we are gathering vital evidence of the DOE’’s lack of instructional support as we demand that the DOE provide you with the tools that you need to teach to the new standards,” he wrote. “We will use this evidence to do our own evaluation of the DOE’’s support of our work.”

The state is in the process of developing curriculum materials aligned to the Common Core, a move that few, if any, of the other 45 states that have adopted the new standards are making. In the city, the Department of Education has built some curriculum materials and recruited hundreds of educators to build more in an effort to give teachers a helping hand during the transition. (more…)

Greg Linton, an 8th grade humanities teacher at M.S. 266, takes notes on his school's literacy data.

Nearly a year after beginning their search for an exceptional middle school to lead a push to boost literacy in struggling schools, city officials have concluded that no school is good enough.

After the city launched its Middle School Quality Initiative last year, it selected two dozen underperforming schools to receive special training and thousands of dollars in program funding. Then it picked more successful schools to be “anchors” that would teach them. Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School became a model for teacher collaboration, and schools were sent to M.S. 244 to learn about using data to detect signs that students are at-risk.

The city also wanted to push the 23 schools on literacy, where their students especially lagged. But officials said they could find no middle school strong enough to use as the emblem of the literacy initiative.

“There isn’t an anchor we could turn to to say, ‘Show us the magic of how it’s all done together,’” said Nancy Gannon, the department official overseeing MSQI.

Nonetheless, as MSQI expanded from 24 schools at first (six with only partial funding) to 49 this year, the department also expanded the initiative’s literacy program. The schools are getting extra funds and monthly trainings focused exclusively on literacy, in a program that officials consider it the most significant part of the citywide initiative. (more…)

Two screenshots from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform's new interactive college-readiness map show how many students in the Class of 2011 graduated college-ready in two adjacent Manhattan neighborhoods.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform is betting that an interactive map is worth about 5,000.

The institute today released a 10-page report arguing that demography is still destiny for New York City schoolchildren, at least in terms of whether they are prepared for college. Accompanying the report is a new data tool that lets users handicap students’ chances of graduating from high school ready for college by neighborhood. (more…)

• A new analysis finds deep disparities in the city’s college-readiness rates by neighborhood. (Daily News)
• The city is being sued for improper billing from 2001-2004. (SchoolBook, NYWorld, Daily News, Reuters)
• Miami-Dade County Public Schools won this year’s Broad Prize for Urban Education. (Miami Herald)
• If the explosion of online guitar lessons is a guide, machines will never overtake live teachers. (WSJ)
• Park Slope families ramped up their criticism of proposed rezoning with a rally Monday. (DNAInfo, NY1)
• After a monitor noted test security violations at a Philadelphia school, the city did nothing. (Notebook)