GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• What are those “informational texts” the Common Core prioritizes? Here’s a reading list. (Answer Sheet)
• In Oklahoma, any family that wants to send their children to high-quality pre-K can. (American Prospect)
• The Evander Childs Campus in the Bronx was without a library for five years, until now. (New Visions)
• Five unanswered questions about Race to the Top-District start with why there are finalists. (Politics K-12)
• The demise of desegregation offers lessons for those working toward educational equity now. (Atlantic)
• UFT chief Michael Mulgrew is at 13 of 100 powerful New Yorkers. Dennis Walcott is at 57. (City & State)
• A top female student won a full ride to Stanford, the ”Brooklyn Castle” chess teacher reports. (ES’s Blog)
• Chicago missed out on charter-district collaboration funds because of its change at the top. (Catalyst)
• A city teacher says a broken school choice system fuels the city’s low college readiness rate. (HuffPo)
• Another looming teacher evaluation logistical issue: Student-Learning Objectives. (Ed in the Apple)

City Councilman Robert Jackson, an original plaintiff in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, joined advocates to renew their push to secure funding from the state for high-need schools.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott was not the only one fretting about the city’s school funding today.

While Walcott was warning about the potential loss of new funds, longtime advocates were preparing to board a bus for Albany to call for the state to settle an old tab. (more…)

In a fiery, off-the-cuff speech delivered to supporters on Tuesday, outspoken Boys and Girls High School Principal Bernard Gassaway reiterated charges he has leveled for years: The city is keeping him from turning around his long-struggling school.

Just that afternoon, he recounted, he confronted and sent away an unwanted teacher assigned to him by the Department of Education.

“They sent a nut job here,” Gassaway said, to cheers from the crowd who turned out a meeting held by the department as part of a process to determine whether the school should close.

“But that’s what they think about kids,” he added as part of the 11-minute address. “You don’t think that’s not done intentionally?”

With a 37 percent four-year graduation rate and a 2.4 percent college-and-career-readiness rate, Boys and Girls ranks as one of the lowest-performing schools in the city and has for years. Demand for the school has also waned, as enrollment has dropped 40 percent — from 2,000 to 1,200 — since 2010. (more…)

If the city and its teachers union do not agree soon on new teacher evaluations, class sizes will likely rise, teacher training suffer, after-school activities be eliminated, and guidance counselors cut, Chancellor Dennis Walcott predicted this morning.

Walcott spelled out the doomsday scenario during a brief talk about teacher evaluations at the Manhattan Institute this morning. He said he had called UFT President Michael Mulgrew — at 7:50 a.m. today — to say he wanted to conclude negotiations by Dec. 21, or two weeks from Friday and the last regular workday before Christmas.

Reaching an agreement by Dec. 21 would give state education officials, who have expressed increasing anxiety about the city’s timeline, nearly a month to review the plan and request any necessary adjustments before a deadline that Gov. Andrew Cuomo set last January.

State education law requires that districts adopt new evaluation systems when they next negotiate contracts with their teachers unions. But Cuomo vowed to withhold increases in state school aid from districts that do not have evaluation systems in place by Jan. 17, 2013.

In a statement, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said there was no need to commit to a Dec. 21 agreement and said politics were again impeding the union’s good-faith effort to negotiate new evaluations. (more…)

• The city wants to move a transfer high school to let Upper West Success Academy expand. (Daily News)
• Seven cities, including NYC, are getting Gates Foundation charter-district collaboration funds. (Times)
• The UFT says its own testing found reason for mold concern at P.S./M.S. 114. (SchoolBook, NY1)
• Lehman High School underwent its third closure hearing in a year on Monday evening. (GothamSchools)
• StudentsFirstNY’s Micah Lasher: Which will it be for the city’s schools: Chicago or Newark? (Post)
• A growing number of technical education high schools in the city offer college degrees. (Daily News)
• The State Education Department is holding a meeting about spreading the technical school model. (AP)
• Latinos now make up a quarter of the country’s students, but children’s books haven’t caught up. (Times)