GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A parent and child psychologist says attendance is a problematic way to screen students. (SchoolBook)
• Advocates for physical education in schools will rally Thursday, not for the first time. (Insideschools)
• An Idaho legislator wants to make all students read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” (Spokesman-Review)
• The new early childhood education chief in North Carolina has lobbied against pre-K. (WRAL)
• Negotiations over education legislation are an essential plot point of Netflix’s “House of Cards.” (Russo)
• A student at the Seattle school where teachers are boycotting state tests offers support. (Facebook)
• Even states that collect lots of data about teachers collect little about principals, a study found. (EdWeek)
• Germany’s education minister was found to have plagiarized her dissertation but won’t resign. (BBC)

Leilany Andrade left P.S. 224 on Tuesday, after her first day back since the school bus strike began.

Edith Rodriguez’s daughter Leilany Andrade went back to school on Tuesday for the first time since the bus strike began three weeks ago.

Andrade, a first grader, has special needs and requires a classroom environment not available in her neighborhood. So she attends P224, a District 75 school in northern Queens not served by the subway.

Rodriguez and her husband would have to spend six to eight hours a day in transit — with their three-year-old son in tow — if they wanted to take Leilany to school and pick her up. And they couldn’t afford to front the money for cab fare or miss their shifts at the bakery where she works mornings and the restaurant where he works afternoons. So they kept Leilany home.

“All the last two weeks, she was asking me, ‘Why aren’t I going to school, when can I go back?’” Rodriguez said. “I tried to explain to her a little that there were no buses.”

Leilany’s story is one of many advocates say show that the Department of Education’s efforts to support families during the bus strike have fallen short. (more…)

Harriet Tubman Charter School students were among several groups to visit Bronx Assemblyman Erik Stevenson's office on Tuesday.

When elected officials visit schools in their district, they generally follow a scripted routine. They cut ribbons, make speeches, and smile for pictures.

When the roles are reversed — as they were on Tuesday, when hundreds of charter school parents, students, and teachers convened in Albany to lobby lawmakers — the conversations aren’t always so predictable.

Some of the charter school advocates stuck to talking points determined in advance by the lobby day’s organizers. The New York City Charter Center and the New York Charter School Association want the legislature to give charter schools the right to operate pre-kindergarten programs, something state law currently precludes.  The agenda is a response to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to give $25 million to district schools that offer more full-day pre-K seats.

But in interviews and individual meetings with lawmakers, students and parents spoke about education issues that affected them personally. Almost all said they love the schools they attend, but they expressed concerns about their schools’ safety, space, and resources. One parent from an upstate charter school said her child’s special needs were not being adequately addressed. (more…)

• A lawyer who’s won funding fights before is suing over the state’s teacher evaluation budget cuts. (WSJ)
• The Bloomberg administration wants to set charter school co-locations to would start after 2013. (Post)
• Celia Cruz HS’s principal is in hot water over woes staff say are not the school’s worst. (GothamSchools)
• Even after paying for cabs and Metrocards, the city says it is saving funds in the bus strike. (Daily News)
• The city’s charter sector wants legislators to let its schools receive state pre-K funds. (GothamSchools)
• Bill Phillips says Cuomo’s “charter lockout” will end up hobbling his push for better pre-k. (Post)
• A report about toxins that forced the city to move P.S. 51 in the Bronx is still not out. (Daily News)
• Changes to the GED test, which the state hopes to replace, will make it harder and costlier. (Daily News)
• The Collegiate School, a elite private boys school, solved its space-sharing woes by buying land. (Times)
• Folks in Cincinnati are noticing that their “community schools” model is big in New York City. (Enquirer)
• D.C.’s city council is weighing a bill to make cheating on standardized tests illegal. (Washington Post)
• Connecticut might let districts slow down on new teacher evaluations to soothe fears. (Hartford Courant)