GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

They’ll weasel out of this one, but should be fun to watch. Would they be willing as a test of teacher effectiveness to send all the teachers at Stuyvesant to a “failing” HS for one year, and send all those “failing” HS teachers to Stuyvesant for one year? If teacher effectiveness is the cause of the “failing” HS, then logically we should see dramatic increases in the “failing” HS students, while Stuyvesant students should start flunking their tests. Of course, we can’t do such an experiment, but ask them what they think would happen anyway. My bet is all students would do same as they did before, proving it’s not teacher effectiveness as the cause of the “failing” HS. My other bet is they won’t answer the question.

Oh yea, as a personal request, ask them to send me to teach at Stuyvesant.

1) Are the school progress reports accurate? Will you continue to use the school progress reports? How could they be improved?

2) Do you support value added modeling to measure teacher effectiveness? Would you support the public release of value added data?

3) If you support mayoral control, describe the checks and balances you will have in place to ensure DOE decisions aren’t driven by politics. If you don’t support mayoral control, describe the DOE governance structure you would put in place.

4) How many charter schools would your administration authorize each year?

5) What does it mean to be well educated?

 Thanks Guest! I do think Gotham Schools has very high credibility, is a really super site, and all the folks there deserve our thanks. To maintain their credibility I appreciate that they must also appear balanced and non partisan. I think of them as the London Hyde Park of NYC education! They’re really great.

1. Bloomberg had 12 years of control over education in NYC, in your opinion, what policies worked, and what policies failed?

2. What are your thoughts about the break-up of neighborhood high schools?

3. How would you deal with the ATR situation in NYC?

4. What was your favorite elective class/club in high school, and how would you enhance students’ educational offerings beyond the core subjects?

Do you intend to lower class sizes?

If so, by how much?

How much money will that require?

Do you intend to increase city spending on education as a percentage of total spending? If sp, what other services will you cut?

Assuming the education operating budget remains flat next year, what spending would you eliminate in order to reduce class sizes?

Go A.S. Neill. Here’s another too hot to handle question: The same 65 bulge that corroded Regents results exists with credit-bearing courses. It’s the new dirty little secret. Would you get serious about cheating by cracking down on principals who set pass rate quotas for school courses and harrass teachers to meet them? 

Some really good questions already listed here, though you need to reflect all the groups involved in education, and all the policies that impact education. I would really love for you to try to get students to pose some questions. 

1. Do you think mayoral control of the schools has been more effective than the old BOE? Support your answer. (had to thrown in the “Regents-speak” here)

2. If you continue with mayoral control, who would you appoint to the PEP committee?

3. Who would you appoint to be your head of education?

4. Who wrote the Common Core State Standards? (just curious if they even know it was non-educators with little to no input from educators or early childhood development experts)

5. Do you believe that value-added measures of effectiveness are accurate? If so, can you explain why you disagree with the scientific data and conclusions of the nation’s top scientists?

6. Do you think we can encourage students to pursue STEM-related careers despite the constant denials of their relevance by politicians on issues like climate change, developmental effects of poverty, and effective evaluation methods?

7. Will you continue to grant no-bid contracts?

8. If fiscal austerity measures are necessary, what cuts would you make at what levels in the educational budget?

9. Who was your favorite teacher and why? 

10. Did you attend public schools? If so, where and when? Do your children attend public schools? If not, why not?

11. Will you publicly release your standardized test scores so that you can be evaluated by them as a single measure of your intelligence and career-readiness?

The first question asked of the potential candidates should be, “will you continue the policies of the Bloomberg administration with regards to public education”? If they cannot detail how their policies would differ they should not receive support from those in the education community.

By the way Quinn, hang it up.  The people in NY will not forget your sludge-fund fiasco and how you sold your soul to the mayor to have him overturn term limits.

Forgive me but you are a political harlot!

If you’re “grilling” six candidates in 60 minutes, then please make sure all your Q&As are in “short answer” format.  That way you can cover all these questions without letting candidates “filibuster” their way through long-winded answers!

Stringer has somewhat inexplicably dropped out to run for controller. 

And this group of candidates . . . meh. It’s almost as if there’s a huge conspiracy to make Howard Wolfson’s Bloomberg legacy polishing project go as smoothly as possible!

1. Given that frequent weather-related disruptions to the region’s transit, power, and communications structures seem to be a ‘new normal’, would you support a residency requirement for the city’s first responders, teachers, and administrative workers?

2. Charter operators are currently not required to replace students who leave their schools. This has created several gross inequities–the DOE has shoehorned charters into colocations with district schools, resulting in overcrowding, but then at the same time the charters can offer class sizes that would be the envy of even private schools. It also gives charter networks, with their substantial corporate and private funding, a built-in test-scoring advantage over so-called ‘mom and pop’ charters, who are heavily reliant on per-seat funding and usually fill classes to capacity. Would you support amending the state charter school law to require charter schools to have rolling ongoing admissions for any available seat in any grade of the school, up to and including making any charter operator prove that their schools have been running at full capacity before allowing them to expand or apply for additional charters? 

walcott comes out and states that the kids of nyc have to make up the days lost during the storm…EVEN after gov cuomo signed new bill eliminating the mandatory days…..but still,,,,,walcott,,,i mean poodle puppet is stating that we have to make up the days…..this is what happens when we elect people from boston to come here and pretend they are a new yorker……get out of town leave now go to boston…do not live in nyc we want you out blloomydoe

4) is easy–NYC hasn’t been able to authorize new charters for a couple of years now. SED and SUNY approve all the new charters in NYC.