GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A Philly KIPP teacher argues that sometimes the high-expectations scale should slide. (Notebook)
• Study: high VAM teachers are not more likely to improve students’ non-cognitive measures. (Ferlazzo)
• Fewer districts with strong unions applied for the district Race to the Top competition. (Flypaper)
• Los Angeles’s UTLA will be a test-case for the future of teachers union reform. (This Week in Education)
• Four of five Newark teachers eligible to opt in to a bonus program have not. (NJ Spotlight via Hechinger)
• Ten big early-childhood stories to track in 2013, from budgets to effective teaching. (Early Ed Watch)
• The race for the council seat being evacuated by ed committee chair Jackson gets uglier still. (Capital)
• A teacher argues the evaluation law makes the UFT’s efforts to get a fair system moot. (NYC Educator)
• A group is petitioning the governor and mayor to intervene after the Horan School incident. (Change.org)

The city and the union continued their back and forth over a labor complaint this week, with union president Michael Mulgrew disputing the city’s gripe as misguided.

In the latest swipe as the city and union struggle to reach a deal on teacher evaluations, the city filed a complaint with the state’s labor board Dec. 27 alleging that the UFT was negotiating in “bad faith.” The complaint also accused the union of unfairly trying to tie a deal to perks that were unrelated to the evaluation negotiations, including guaranteed “economic credit” toward a future contract, fewer school closures, and less paperwork for teachers.

Mulgrew’s reply, in a letter to Chancellor Dennis Walcott sent yesterday, asked the city to drop the complaint, which Mulgrew said reflected a ”serious misunderstanding.” Although the union cancelled a negotiation meeting with the city two weeks ago, the UFT still wanted to talk, Mulgrew said.

The letter was the latest in a back-and-forth being closely watched by observers who wonder whether New York’s largest district will come to a teacher evaluation deal. Governor Cuomo has set a deadline of Jan. 17 for districts to strike deals, saying that those that don’t meet the deadline will lose $250 million in state aid. (more…)

GothamSchools commenters didn’t take much of a vacation this year. This week, they were already back in action, releasing some steam and sparking a few debates worth highlighting in our regular weekly roundup.

(As a reminder, each Friday we highlight a sampling of our favorite comments from the week. Review our commenting policy to find out more about what we like.)

Our story describing the report out this week from Governor Cuomo’s education reform commission sparked a discussion of education technology. Digging into the report, readers picked up on one of the recommendations we’d given less attention — the suggestion to create “innovation zones” to spark novel uses of technology in the classroom.

A technology teacher named Steve Kinney who said he works at a school involved in city’s iLearn pilot applauded the recommendation. “I can only imagine,” he wrote, that the “innovation zone” idea “is based on the similarly named program in New York City,” which he applauded for improving on itself each year.

The program has allowed us to offer courses to our juniors and seniors that we would not have been able to offer otherwise (most notably: AP courses). It allows us to be more flexible with our scheduling and use the time students spend with their teachers having rich discussions about the content they were introduced to outside of the classroom. Additionally, as part of the program, we now have access to a wide number of instructional media like NBC Learn and Discovery—not to mention the equipment we’ve received as part of the program, which has been a tremendous blessing.

Basically, it’s saved us money and allowed us to do a better job serving our students and I’d like to see something similar at the state level and based on what’s happening in New York City.

“I noticed that…” replied skeptically, pointing Steve to a dispatch by Diane Ravitch about the Rocketship program’s blended-learning model, which Ravitch described as a way to cut costs by replacing teachers with computers. The commenter wrote: (more…)

A flyer distributed by the city's school bus drivers union warns parents against the city's conditions for new contracts.

The city and its school bus drivers union are each appealing to parents as they stake out their positions in a contract dispute that could cause a bus strike.

On Thursday, the city held a required meeting to explain its conditions for new contracts for school bus companies. One condition that it isn’t including, citing a 2011 legal decision, is a seniority clause guaranteeing that current drivers can keep their jobs even if the bus companies they work for do not win a new contract. That omission has drawn the ire of the bus drivers’ union, the Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 1181, whose members authorized a strike over the issue when it first arose in 2011.

In a flyer handed out at the city’s meeting and being distributed by email, the ATU asks parents to lobby the city on bus drivers’ behalf. Telling parents that “there will be a stoppage to service to you,” the flyer warns parents that doing away with seniority protections could put children at risk.

Update: ATU 1181 President Michael Cordiello said through a spokeswoman today that the union is “exploring every option to avert a strike” but that it remained a likely possibility if the city does not cave.

“Please support us in our cause because you don’t want, ‘just anybody’ driving your children,” the flyer says. A few sentences later, in bold letters, it says, “Don’t put your child on an unsafe bus!”

Chancellor Dennis Walcott dismisses safety concerns in a letter to parents that students are taking home today. (more…)

Joanna Dolgin's "Tragedy" class at East Side Community School focused on Shakespeare's Othello in December.

Joanna Dolgin uttered only a few words during her first period “Tragedy” class one Monday last month, and she thought even those might have been too many.

Dolgin’s junior and senior English students at East Side Community High School were holding a formal discussion of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Tragedy is one of four English electives offered this semester at East Side, a small secondary school whose students, mostly Manhattan residents, are not required to take the full slate of Regents exams typically required for graduation. Instead, students complete projects, make presentations, and participate in discussions to show that they have mastered course material.

Dolgin’s Tragedy class is one of 52 high school courses citywide that the Department of Education has certified as being good preparation for college.

GothamSchools spent a morning in the class, observing as students discussed a central question about Othello’s plot. As when we have chronicled other classes in the past, we’ve included both a description of what we saw — and, in block quotes, a description of what the teacher was thinking.

9 a.m. ”Who or what is to blame for Desdemona’s death?” The debate prompt was written on the board when students entering Dolgin’s makeshift classroom on the seventh floor of the Norman Thomas High School building, where East Side Community moved in October after its building was found to be structurally unsound. (more…)

The United Federation of Teachers ratcheted up pressure on Mayor Bloomberg over teacher evaluations with a new television ad campaign that will run daily between now and Jan. 17.

The 30-second spot — and an accompanying statement from Michael Mulgrew — take aim at Bloomberg’s education legacy during the 11 years he’s been in office.

The ad begins with a still shot of a young student who has grown up through the city school system during the Bloomberg’s tenure, entering first grade during the mayor’s first year in office.

“And while she’s changed a lot, he hasn’t,” the narrator says, as negative tabloid and op-ed headlines fill the screen. “It’s still his way or the highway, at whatever cost.”

The ad also implores Bloomberg to “put politics aside” and “agree to a fair evaluation system that gives teachers the support they need to help children succeed.”

The $1.2 million campaign, which will run on local broadcast stations and cable television networks in the New York area, comes amid stalled negotiations between the city and the UFT over how to evaluate teachers. The city has until Jan. 17 to come to a deal on an evaluation system or else it will lose an estimated $250 million in state aid funding. (more…)

• Sandy Hook Elementary students returned to a new school with remade classrooms. (News, Post, Times)
• Connecticut created a policy panel to examine gun violence, mental health and school safety. (WSJ, AP)
• An audit found that many school purchases were not properly recorded. (GothamSchools, Post)
• The city owes back pay to thousands of teachers for requiring them to work overtime. (GothamSchools)
• After aligning closely with ed reform groups, Cuomo is gravitating back to the middle. (GothamSchools)
• And the head of an ed reform policy group issues the stiffest criticism for why that’s a bad thing. (Post)
• Catholic schools at risk of closing pitched themselves to the priest who will decide their fate. (Daily News)