GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Mayor Bloomberg is pouring $1 million into three races for Los Angeles’s school board. (L.A. Weekly)
• A professor who trains school counselors says providing guidance is only part of the job. (SchoolBook)
• Someone else who has been to Union City, N.J., says its schools are good but not a model. (Sara Mead)
• For the next two weekends, “This American Life” will be broadcast from a violent Chicago school. (TAL)
• A retired teacher pens a letter to higher ed explaining why his students aren’t ready for it. (Answer Sheet)
• A special education teacher says busing for her students was not great before the strike. (MsSpeducate)
• Just why scores on new teacher evaluations are similar to scores on old ones is not clear. (Teacher Beat)
• A new site uses dating technology to match compatible teachers and schools. (Dowser via Eduwonk)

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said on Monday that she thinks students who have missed weeks of school due to the city’s school bus strike should not have to take the year’s state math and reading tests.

Today, Chancellor Dennis Walcott said they should. Speaking at a briefing for reporters about bids for new contracts the city received from bus companies, he said,

They should sit [for the tests]. This year has been a very dramatic year for our students, both with the hurricane [Sandy] and with this strike, but we’ve also been working very closely with the schools and working with our principals and providing materials for parents to receive at home as well. (more…)

With a transition to computer-based testing on the horizon, the state is preparing to hand out millions of dollars so schools with low-income students can buy the technology they’ll need to make the switch.

State Education Commissioner John King announced today that $87 million in unclaimed vouchers from a 2006 class-action settlement with Microsoft Corporation would fund technology spending for 1,878 low-income schools, including more than 1,000 in New York City. The funding will give the schools $67 per student to spend as they wish on approved kinds of technology.

The windfall comes as state education officials are coming to terms with the fact that districts are not prepared to make the change from paper-based tests to online tests. New York is part of a consortium of states that are planning to adopt tests aligned to the new Common Core learning standards that would be administered entirely online by 2015. But many schools in the state do not currently have enough computers, or bandwidth, to be able to administer computer-based tests to all of their students.

“What I hear is alarm over the prospect of having to make that shift,” said Bob Lowry, deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents. (more…)

Staten Island's John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School is the only school in the city and the only charter school in the state with a state-approved teacher evaluation plan.

In the aftermath of New York City’s failed teacher evaluation negotiations, a small detail has gone unnoticed: There actually is one city school with a state-approved teacher evaluation system.

Surprised?

“We were surprised, too,” said Ken Byalin, president of John W. Lavelle Preparatory Charter School, a Staten Island secondary school with an emphasis on serving students with emotional challenges.

“When we saw there were no approved plans by charter schools, we thought, ‘Oh my god, what are we doing?’” Byalin said. “We were out in front in a way we hadn’t expected to be.”

Though alone among charter schools, Lavelle is hardly the only school in the state to beat the city Department of Education to creating a teacher evaluation system: More than 700 districts did. But as the smallest school in the state to write a system in line with the state’s requirements, Lavelle offers a unique look inside what teacher evaluation requires. (more…)

• Sixty-seven companies submitted bids for the city’s seniority-protection-less school bus contracts. (NY1)
• Bus companies sued for the right to curb seniority rights in current contracts. (Daily News, SchoolBook)
• Hard times are setting in for striking bus drivers, who have not worked or been paid in weeks. (WNYC)
• Michael Benjamin: That new bids were submitted means that Mayor Bloomberg has won the strike. (Post)
• Strike- and Hurricane Sandy-induced absences are causing a closer look at state tests. (GothamSchools)
• The city’s theoretical plan for evaluations implementation is in but remains thin. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• A city private school for the “gifted” has hired the head of the public Hunter College gifted schools. (WSJ)
• An longtime Board of Regents member says the state should not have joined Race to the Top. (Lo-Hud)