GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Michigan won’t have a law letting guns into schools, and the AFT is taking credit. (Beltway Confidential)
• Michelle Rhee told officials internally in her advocacy group that she opposed the bill. (StudentsFirst)
• Previously, StudentsFirst had said it would abstain from weighing in on gun control policies. (HuffPo)
• Principals also say they would not want to be armed, as some have suggested after Newtown. (Atlantic)
• A video about school discipline from 1947 is dated yet still applicable to schools today. (Answer Sheet)
• The city’s ex-accountability czar see three education management theories at war. (EdWeek via Russo)
• A series of open letters to “reformers” has morphed with a response from one of them. (Gary Rubinstein)
• Parents who organized a brainstorming sessions about post-Bloomberg schools recap it. (Insideschools)
• A teacher reports from the launch of the Museum of Mathematics, soon to host many field trips. (B Niche)

Frank Macchiarola, schools chancellor from 1978 to 1983, died today at age 71.

City officials and longtime education insiders today are mourning the death of Frank Macchiarola, who served as chancellor from 1978 to 1983. After he resigned to lead a business and civic group, no chancellor had a tenure as long until Joel Klein.

In fact, even though previous city superintendents had held office for longer, Macchiarola was the longest-serving chancellor until Klein: The title was created when legislators decentralized the city’s school governance in 1970.

Most chancellors during the period of community control ran into trouble with mayor, who nominated them, or the Board of Education, which hired and fired them, but Macchiarola — who started the job at age 37 — left on good terms with Mayor Ed Koch, the board, and the teachers union.

“His tenure as schools chancellor under Mayor Koch proved that bold reforms were possible and helped set the stage for the work we’ve done over the past decade,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement today, and his chancellor, Dennis Walcott, said in a statement of his own that Macchiarola “was instrumental in redefining the role of the principal as the key leader of a school community.”

Here’s how the city’s principals union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, described Macchiarola’s tenure today:

He revitalized direct services to students, opened schools to the community after hours, developed a curriculum and instruction program that served as a national model, relentlessly strived to strengthen special education, and placed a huge emphasis on offering educational support to financially disadvantaged children. (more…)

Not having a teacher evaluation agreement puts New York City in an increasingly elite group: Of the state’s 694 school districts, just 27 haven’t agreed on an evaluation system.

And almost all of the other lagging districts have much less ground to negotiate with their teachers unions than the city does: They have fewer students, on average, than some city high schools.

According to the latest update from the State Education Department, 442 districts have already had their evaluations systems approved. About 180 have received feedback from the department and are expected to revise and resubmit before the Jan. 17, 2013, deadline set by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And about 45 have submitted plans recently and are waiting to hear whether they pass muster.

That leaves just 27 districts that have not submitted even a first draft of a teacher evaluation plan, despite increasingly strident admonitions that state officials at least six weeks to review whether plans adhere to legal requirements and department guidance. (more…)

College and career readiness isn’t just about what students know — it’s about whom they know, too.

That’s the philosophy behind the Opportunity Network, a 10-year-old nonprofit organization that aims to develop professional skills in students who might be the first in their family to attend college. Last Wednesday, that development came in the form of two-minute conversations with an array of young professionals during an event that the organization bills as “speed networking.” (Watch part of the event in the video above.) (more…)

• The state does not audit preschool special ed providers despite their steep cost, an audit found. (Times)
• A man pleaded guilty to billing the city for special education services he did not actually provide. (Times)
• As teacher eval talks continue, a top union official lambastes the city’s rollout so far. (GothamSchools)
• This week is the anniversary of the murder of P.S. 15 principal Patrick Daly while on duty. (DNAInfo)
• The state will refund CUNY and SUNY tuition to students who were disrupted by Hurricane Sandy. (NY1)
• The Success Academy charter network is the latest to try to expand to high schools. (GothamSchools)
• Nationally, schools struggled on the first day after Connecticut’s deadly school shooting. (USA Today)
• Sandy Hook Elementary, where the shooting took place, is being relocated down to the last book. (WSJ)
• Safety planning at one Chicago school prompted a co-located school to go into lockdown. (Tribune)
• A Tennessee county will overhaul its juvenile justice system to keep minor offenders out of jail. (Times)
• Students in Charlotte, N.C., collected dozens of boxes of supplies for Queens’ P.S./M.S. 114. (Observer)