GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A PSA: City schools are open tomorrow, but that could change between 4 and 6 a.m. (GS Twitter)
• A teacher says grading class participation is important, especially for the shiest students. (Atlantic)
• The city’s bid to get a higher court to hear its case for not releasing Cathie Black emails fell short. (Scribd)
• For New Yorkers for Great Public Schools, a former teacher criticizes Michelle Rhee’s policies. (NYGPS)
• Charter advocate James Merriman criticizes UFT chief Michael Mulgrew’s pre-K comments. (NYCCSC)
• Park Slope’s new school will be named for the late, great children’s author Maurice Sendak. (DNAInfo)
• At an upstate residential school, just one city student has gotten there during the bus strike. (Motherlode)
• A deep dive at a Los Angeles “blended learning” school highlights the strengths of the model. (Ed Sector)
• At the Brooklyn New School, students stay engaged by picking what to study. (Investigating Choice Time)
• Achievement First charter schools have broken teacher evaluations into 10 criteria. (PBS 1, 2)
• A Chicago program to get more poor students into elite high schools seems to be working. (Catalyst)
• The N.Y. Fed found that New Jersey’s poorest districts had their funds cut most. (Liberty St. Economics)

City Department of Education officials think they’ll be able to train 1,600 principals and 80,000 teachers to use new a evaluation system by the end of the year, and they plan to let the state know before a deadline next week.

The deadline is one that State Education Commissioner John King set last month after the city and teachers union failed to agree on a new teacher evaluation system: By Feb. 15, he said, the city would have to detail its implementation plans or lose more state funds.

A summary of the draft memo, that department officials released today, is light on details and focuses almost entirely on how administrators will be trained to use a new rubric for classroom observations. It promises real-time training for principals, extra support for administrators at struggling schools, and instruction for network officials and superintendents.

It also includes a proposed requirement for six hours of training for teachers, which a teacher who saw the plan last week said would not be enough.

“A lot of teachers are frustrated about that because there is a lack of resources for teachers to learn how to apply the rubric or shift their practice to the rubric,” said the teacher. (more…)

According to this weekend’s lead New York Times Magazine story, teachers would probably be doing students a favor by pitting them against each other more often.

The story, ”Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?“, surveys neuroscience research to try to figure out why top students sometimes freeze up on high-stakes exams. One answer, researchers say, is that people who usually have an optimal level of a neurotransmitter called dopamine go into overload in stressful settings, while others only reach the optimal level in those settings.

Simply put, one researcher told the Times, “The people who perform best in normal conditions may not be the same people who perform best under stress.” It’s a lesson educators know through experience, confirmed through cutting-edge neuroscience.

Critics of high-stakes tests tend to argue that when schools prepare students for tests by giving practice exams and emphasizing the exams’ importance, they stress students out even more.

But researchers say there’s value in test prep: (more…)

• State GOP leader Dean Skelos wants a private tuition fund for students of illegal immigrants. (Times)
• Skelos’ plan was criticized by an advocate who says public funds are needed. (Daily News)
• In a Newsday op-ed, Shelly Silver calls for passage of Democrats’ version of the DREAM Act.
• Three months after Sandy struck, a school in lower manhattan still has no phone service. (DNAInfo)
• Parents are still struggling to get their children to school during the bus strike. (GothamSchools)
• To reduce street gun violence, a Philly hospital is giving young students grisly lessons. (Times)
• Charter school backers lobbied Albany lawmakers on a wide range of issues. (GothamSchools)
• More city schools are preparing teachers and students in response to Newtown. (Riverdale Press)
• The Post says the city’s secret morning-after pill program in schools hurts mayoral control’s credibility.
• The city  launched a website for students interested in attending CUNY colleges. (Daily News)