GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Mike Petrilli: Could the end of NCLB augur an end to the accountability movement? (Flypaper)
• Debate on Sen. Tom Harkin’s ESEA bill has been scheduled for next week. (Politics K-12)
• The bill would require the weakest schools to undergo one of six overhaul tactics. (Quick & Ed)
• Andy Rotherham: Schools are more like the Boston Red Sox than the Oakland A’s. (Time)
• Teachers in San Francisco protested outside Murdoch’s ed conference appearance. (HuffPo)
• A South Bronx area is among 80 communities to focus on third-grade reading. (Curriculum Matters)
• The principal of Telecommunications HS quotes poetry in support of the “we.” (Schoolbook)
• Newark Mayor Cory Booker is looking for an education policy assistant. (On Ramps)
• Chicago’s union is claiming a victory in its fight against the city’s extended day plan. (Catalyst)

• School bus companies that get pricey city contracts have little incentive to improve services. (Daily News)
• Comptroller John Liu: The city is wasting pre-K funding. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News, NY1, WSJ)
• Investigators: A Bronx man cashed a teacher’s pension checks after her death. (GothamSchools, Post)
• Millennium High School plan to build a gym has run into space and money woes. (Downtown Express)
• A mom said she spent $20,000 to keep her disabled son from having a two-hour commute. (Daily News)
• Ongoing investigations at Shuang Wen Academy have the community in crisis. (The Villager)
• Teachers lost licenses in the first punishments meted out in Atlanta’s cheating scandal. (AJC, AP)
• In Texas, online courses are being used to open doors for students with special needs. (Times)
• A New Jersey teacher is under fire after bashing homosexuality on Facebook. (Times)

• An interactive, visual map of the K-12 education technology market. (New Schools Venture Fund)
• A teacher at P.S. 149 says the irresponsible teacher Steven Brill described doesn’t exist. (Ed Notes)
• The DOE is hiring a Director of State Legislative Affairs, budget permitting. (City Limits Jobs)
• New York is one of just 13 states that have not signaled they want an NCLB waiver. (Politics K-12)
• The former CEO of the Innovation Zone joined a for-profit education company. (PR Newswire)
• An overview of the Gates Foundation’s $200 million NYC schools investments. (Gotham Gazette)
• The UFT is holding a conference for charter school teachers this weekend. (Edwize)
• A list of education wonks who can offer reporters a conservative perspective. (Rick Hess)
• A snapshot of how two teachers juggle the demands of differentiation. (Sam Chaltain)
• “School avoidance” is a medical malady that keeps many kids home on weekdays. (U.S. News)
• Scrutiny of Comptroller John Liu’s mayoral campaign contributions found improprieties. (Times)

The city’s teacher pension system is being taxed by more than just unrealistic expectations. It has also handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars to a retiree who died in 2000.

That’s the conclusion of a report issued today by the Special Commissioner of Investigation, which is charged with looking into allegations of fraud and malfeasance in the school system.

Last year, the state’s Teachers Retirement System tipped off city investigators that checks issued to Maria Sicardo, a Bronx teacher who retired in 1993, were being cashed by someone else. Investigators discovered that not only had Victor Rosa begun cashing Sicardo’s checks after her death in April 2000 but that he had repeatedly submitted paperwork to the state and teachers union certifying that she was still alive. Employees at a check-cashing company in the Bronx told investigators that after they challenged Rosa, he took the checks elsewhere.

In total, Rosa pocketed about $241,000 over a decade from the state and from the UFT’s Welfare Fund, the union’s health fund for current and retired teachers. SCI is recommending that the pension system move to recoup the funds and has referred the case to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The full report is below. (more…)

• How to persuade parents at struggling charter schools to vote with their feet. (Eduwonk)
• A six-year teaching veteran felt alienated by Michael Mulgrew at a recent event. (LinkEd)
• A new book shows how economic inequality is driving educational inequity. (Hechinger)
• The modal years of teaching experience is now at 1, from 15 twenty years ago. (Atlanta J-C)
• The author of the California math standards praises the Common Core. (American Educator, PDF)
• In Philly, protesting not dropouts, but “pushouts” — a deliberate rebranding. (Notebook)
• A push to make teacher evaluation demands a part of a reauthorized NCLB. (Ed Week)
• Relate: a guide to the first draft of legislation circulating in the Senate. (Politics K12)
• Inside a “flipped” classroom, where lectures are assigned as digital homework. (USA Today)

• Patrick Sullivan said PEP failed to vet contract that bilked millions from taxpayers. (GothamSchools)
• Assigning Khan Academy lectures for homework, and homework for school time. (Ed Week)
• Cartoonists are conspiring against standardized tests, or at least they don’t like them. (Larry Cuban)
• GAO: States used federal recovery funds as stopgaps for major budget shortfalls. (Ed Money Watch)
• Former NYC Schools Chancellor says Governors at NBC summit still don’t get it. (Hechinger)
• The complete 90-minute video of the Miseducation Nation panel is now online. (GEM Vimeo)
• After SAT cheating scandal, a prosecutor calls for more test security, photos of every test-taker. (AP)
• A New York City teacher finds lessons for his profession in Jay-Z lyrics. (Ed Week)
• GothamSchools is off Friday due to the holiday. Enjoy the weekend and we’ll be back Monday.

• Two city charter networks are among a small group getting federal dollars to expand. (Hechinger)
• Meet the Tiffany Lopez Test: Do reform efforts help the most motivated poor children? (Pondiscio)
• A contractor with the city violated contracts and defrauded the city for millions. (Daily News)
• StoryCorp’s big oral history of Americans talking about teachers is coming soon. (Ed.gov)
• Coaching is in the spotlight; here’s a Q+A with an instructional coach. (Larry Ferlazzo)
• Duncan will make a major teacher education announcement this Friday in DC. (Quick and the Ed)
• Obama reminded students that they are “this country’s future” in his back-to-school speech. (NPR)
• The Alabama law requiring schools to collect students’ immigration status will stand. (EdWeek)
• In ethnically diverse districts, teachers at schools with more minorities get lower salaries. (Teacher Beat)
• Singapore’s head of education is pushing a new program focused on character and “grit.” (Hechinger)

Readers, we have some questions for you.

Should we export GothamSchools to other cities? Should we do more coverage out of Albany? Is the comments section a welcome forum for honest conversation and real accountability — or did reading that description make you laugh out loud? What about the Community section?

These questions and more are part of a new survey that we’d love for you to take. The survey, meantime, is part of our ongoing efforts to keep GothamSchools alive and well. Lately, we’ve been working with a partner in that endeavor: EdNews Colorado, a news site covering education in Colorado (think RockyMountainSchools-dot-org), and this survey is one of our joint efforts.

We believe strongly that we should not have any beliefs about education (and indeed, the last time we surveyed you, we found that a majority of you agree with us that we have succeeded at being objective). But the one belief that we and EdNews unashamedly share is that successful school improvement efforts will require high-quality, independent journalism. And we know that far too little such journalism exists today. But we need your help figuring out how to build up education’s Fourth Estate.

Please take the survey, and leave any other thoughts (as always) in the comments section.

The city teachers union will have to go to the State Education Department to protest rising class sizes in New York City, rather than skip straight to the courts, after an appeals court today dismissed a 2010 suit by the union.

The suit aimed at forcing New York City to dedicate a certain pot of state funds toward making class sizes smaller. The union charged that the city misused the funds, sending them to offset budget cuts rather than using them as they were intended — as a means of reducing class sizes. The NAACP also signed onto the suit.

But in a decision handed down today, an appeals court unanimously dismissed the union’s suit, saying that the union must take its complaints to the State Education Department before going to court. (Read the full decision below.)

The union president, Michael Mulgrew, vowed to continue protesting rising class sizes. “Lowering class size is a key issue for the parents and teachers of New York City and we intend to pursue it vigorously,” Mulgrew said in a statement this afternoon.

The appeals court did not address the heart of the disagreement: whether the city actually did, as the union charges, improperly fail to lower class sizes — and use Contracts for Excellence funds instead to stave off budget cuts. At issue is the state Contracts for Excellence funding stream, and in particular, a specific clause forcing New York City to write a plan to reduce class sizes.

What’s not disputed is that class sizes have creeped up for the last two years even as funds aimed at bringing them down have flooded into schools. Class sizes for the coming school year aren’t yet available, but all signs point to likely increases, which principals are preparing for. It’s not clear, however, that the Department of Education deliberately sought to prevent schools from lowering class sizes by sending funds elsewhere. (more…)

Rupert Murdoch takes a strong interest in his newspapers' education coverage. (Photo by WorldEconomicForum on Flickr)

How involved is Rupert Murdoch at the newspapers he owns? When the subject is education, Murdoch’s views directly influence the coverage in the New York Post and, at the least, the sorts of meetings taken at the Wall Street Journal.

Azi Paybarah at the Observer reports today that at the New York Post, education stories are ordered up according to Murdoch’s visits:

One former reporter said his own editor requested a week’s worth of stories about the New York City public schools because “Rupert was going to be in town.” It was coveted real estate in the paper, and the reporter reluctantly obliged.

We have previously chronicled the Post’s open campaigning on behalf of the Bloomberg administration’s education policies and its effort to renew mayoral control. The coverage prompted Education Secretary Arne Duncan to praise the newspaper for its “leadership” in covering mayoral control.

There are some exceptions — New York City education beat reporter Yoav Gonen is even-handed and columnist Michael Goodwin takes no prisoners. But on and off the editorial page, the newspaper often matches Murdoch’s education views: aggressively dismissive of the teachers union and ridiculing of critics of the mayor.

At the Wall Street Journal, the line between news and opinion and newspaper boss seems to be thicker. But it has some holes. Last week, the New York Times reported on a meeting arranged between Joel Klein, then still the schools chancellor, and reporters:

When Mr. Klein visited The Journal last year to discuss education issues with news and opinion writers, Mr. Murdoch interrupted to lavish praise on the chancellor, much to the surprise of the writers. “Just listen to everything that Joel is saying,” Mr. Murdoch insisted, according to one person who attended the meeting.

(more…)