GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• How do you get students to buy into an education that has already failed them? (Chaz’s School Daze)
• An analysis of NAEP scores finds that higher standards don’t hurt weak students. (Education Sector)
• An illicitly closed door at a S.C. school sports board meeting did not deter reporters. (Post & Courier)
• Three Brooklyn mothers are organizing a citywide charrette for parents to set the agenda. (Insideschools)
• A recent study suggests that stereotypes about CTE or vocational classes might be changing. (Shanker)
• A Brooklyn teachers says his students were affected by Sandy, even though they weren’t hurt. (Edwize)
• A psychology professor offers suggestions about how to talk about Sandy with children. (SchoolBook)
• When transfer students are counted in college completion rates, the numbers improve. (College Bound)

Realizing that its strategies for stocking the city’s ever-expanding supply of schools with excellent principals have fallen short, the Department of Education is launching new programs aimed at slowing down the transition from teacher to administrator.

The largest of the new initiatives is the Teacher Leadership Program, aimed at developing leadership skills in hundreds of teachers who are still working in the classroom. Other initiatives are meant to prepare leaders to handle the special challenges of running middle schools and to capitalize on the leadership skills of principals who are already in the system.

And a foundation that helped the city underwrite a fast-track principal training program is now paying for educators to earn degrees in school administration at local universities.

“Most of our principal training work that we’ve done historically is focused on that last year before you become a principal,” Chief Academic Office Shael Polakow-Suransky said. “It’s the last step in the process, and what we’ve come to understand is that there [are] a lot of steps that happen before that in someone’s career. … We want to begin to do that kind of training.”

The new programs represent a strong shift away from the Bloomberg administration’s early approach to cultivating school leadership at a time when the city is losing about 150 principals a year, even as it has ramped up new school creation. Together with existing programs, they are set to produce 134 new principals and engage 300 teachers this year, according to the department. (more…)

A page from a batch of Department of Education emails released in June was almost completely redacted when it was released in response to a Freedom of Information Law request. The UFT is suing over the scope of the department's redactions.

The city teachers union wants the Department of Education to justify withholding large swaths of information in emails it released to the union earlier this year.

The UFT announced today that it is filing a lawsuit charging that the department redacted more than it should have when it fulfilled a union request for internal emails earlier this year.

The emails were the target of a May 2010 Freedom of Information Law request by the UFT. The union wanted to see the communication exchanged between top department officials and charter school supporters in late 2009 and early 2010, a period when legislators were under pressure to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in the state.

The department did not quickly release the emails, saying that the request was too broad when it deferred the request each month. In April, two years after first asking for the emails, the union filed suit over the delay, and shortly after that, the department started releasing the emails in sections.

The emails shed some light on the department’s internal communications and showed that then-Chancellor Joel Klein kept close tabs on legislative advocacy around charter schools. But to a significant extent, they revealed nothing.

“The latest internal Department of Education emails to come to light are mostly dark: The 228 pages released today contain large swaths of blacked-out text,” we wrote in June, when the city released hundreds of messages from December 2009. (more…)

• The trek for students uprooted by Sandy to and from their new schools is filled with obstacles. (Times)
• The state teachers union poured $4.5 million into a handful of state senate races this year. (Times Union)
• The city’s latest Race to the Top bid will seek $40 million to expand its iZone schools. (GothamSchools)
• A Queens high school with a dress code has banned students from wearing jeans and jeggings. (Post)
• Newark teachers okayed a “groundbreaking” contract that includes merit pay and peer evaluations. (WSJ)
• A Bronx school campus with a history of safety issues was flagged again by officials. (Riverdale Press)
• At the same school, fire alarms have become a regular — and disruptive — part of the day. (Press)
• SED’s new teacher group includes seven teachers who work in city schools. (GothamSchools)
• Without government help, some private schools are struggling to bounce back from Sandy. (NY1)
• StudentsFirstNY’s organizing arm is pushing teacher evaluations as an issue for parents. (GothamSchools)