GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• States that have adopted more complex teacher evaluations haven’t handed out lower scores. (EdWeek)
• The state has put out a draft of its new Global Studies courses’ thematic arrangement. (EngageNY)
• Andy Rotherham: Unions aren’t being smart by recruiting members at weak charter schools. (Eduwonk)
• North Carolina newly appointed pre-K director who lobbied against pre-K has resigned. (HuffPo)
• A UFT delegate reports on this month’s meeting, which he said focused on politics. (ICE UFT)
• Philadelphia schools set to accept students from schools slated to close aren’t any better. (Notebook)
• Today’s PSA: All Department of Education events scheduled for Saturday are canceled. Stay warm!

Chancellor Dennis Walcott takes questions from Robert Jackson during a City Council hearing on the school bus strike.

Agitated City Council members spent more than two hours today grilling Chancellor Dennis Walcott about the city’s refusal to restore job protections for school bus drivers or intervene in their nearly monthlong strike.

The hearing took place more than three weeks into the strike on a day when many families’ tenuous transportation plans were complicated by the start of a snowstorm. Attendance in schools for students with disabilities, which have been hardest-hit by the strike, fell from 76 percent on Thursday to just 50 percent today.

Maria Uruchima, whose nightmarish commute includes 8 buses and 4 trains, said her son wasn’t feeling well, “so I just kept him home because it’s going to be crazy out anyways.”

Even before the inclement weather, at least 2,500 students who attend schools in District 75, which serve special education students with the highest needs, “were still home,” Maggie Moroff, Special Education Policy Coordinator at Advocates for Children, said in her prepared remarks. For students that made it to school, Moroff said parents sacrificed hours of their work days to get them there and many students arrived late anyway.  (more…)

This week, commenters debated whether attendance should count in middle school admissions, students should spend school days in Albany, and new academic standards for student athletes will help or hurt students and schools.

A Remainders link to a parent and child psychologist’s article on why school attendance shouldn’t be used to screen students for selective middle and high schools sparked a conversation about what role attendance plays in academic performance and whose responsibility it is to get students to school.

A.S. Neill also wrote in favor of taking absences into account, arguing that they pose problems for individual students and for their schools:

Whatever the reasons for excessive absences in elementary school, by middle and high school, these students become problems for schools both because it lowers their rating scores, and they require extraordinary efforts to correct the deficiencies in their lagging education, often unsuccessful. As such, they pose difficulties for other students in the classroom as well, which is why parents know to try to get their kids in schools where the “good” students are. 

(more…)

Grady High School students gathered in the classroom that has been used by Good Shepherd Services, a nonprofit group that has provided support to the school. The end of a grant program means the services and partnership will end.

A month ago, administrators at William E. Grady Career and Technical High School had no reason to think the school’s after-school and enrichment offerings were at risk.

A year after getting the surprising news that the city would try to close the school, nine months after learning that the closure plan was off, and five months after reopening with a dramatically reduced student body and budget, the school was finally back on firm footing.

Administrators expected a new round of funding for extra services to kick in this fall. Since 2008, the school has offered after-school programs with the support of a state 21st Century Community Learning Center grant secured through a partnership with Good Shepherd Services, a youth and family development agency.

But last week, the school learned that in the next round of the grant, Good Shepherd wouldn’t be working with Grady, and the funding — at least $150,000 a year according to Good Shepherd — would no longer flow. The news came too late for the school to sign on to a different organization’s grant application. (more…)

• Two recent studies show many city schools are breaking state law for required gym time. (NY1)
• Tales of resistance at schools that faced closure often have different outcomes. (Schoolbook)
• Plans to rollout teacher evaluations involve extra training for principals, needy schools. (GothamSchools)
• A costly desegregation order in Tuscon schools, meant to improve equity, has come to an end. (Times)
• A gay assistant principal running for Robert Jackson’s council seat supports “education reform.” (News)
• A charter school found space on public housing property in an unusual arrangement. (WSJ, Crain’s)
• P.S./I.S. 276, opened in 2009 to ease overcrowding, could lose pre-K in a space crunch. (Tribeca Trib)
• Early childhood education figures to be a major part of Obama’s State of the Union speech. (AP)
• John King said Congress should require that teacher evals be tied to employment decisions. (LoHud)
• The reporter suing for access to Cathie Black emails expects them to reveal the city’s PR ploy. (Post)
• Test stress could be relieved by more classroom competitions. Vocabulary, perhaps? (NYT Magazine)
• A 30-year-old Bronx principal is getting heat for appearing in suggestive music videos. (Daily News)
• An elite private school mistakenly sent an email with revealing admissions data. (NY Post, Times)
• The state comptroller found another special ed preschool provider that stole from the city. (News)