GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• A teacher recalls a conversation with her non-teacher husband about testing. (Miss Eyre/NYC Educator)
• Arne Duncan said he doesn’t know why states keep offering free tutoring that doesn’t work. (Politics K-12)
• Education writers from across the country have convened in Philadelphia. Read their updates. (Twitter)
• The director of fiscal strategy for StudentsFirst says LIFO causes more teachers to be laid off. (Flypaper)
• Students who left a Denver school suspected of cheating saw their scores fall later. (EdNews Colorado)
• The UFT has issued the RFP for community social services grants that it promised last week. (Edwize)
• “Top-rated” teacher Maribeth Whitehouse offers 10 explanations for why she teaches. (Learning Matters)
• A Camden principal fired six years ago for whistle-blowing thrives; the district struggles. (Inquirer)
• Rishawn Biddle calls New York City’s latest ed policy news “all in all, not a bad move.” (Dropout Nation)
• The chair of L.A.’s Democratic party wants DFER to stop using the party name. (LACDP via Ravitch)

Even without a new teacher evaluation system, New York City will ramp up efforts to weed out teachers who “don’t deserve to teach,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced today.

In an early-morning speech to the Association for a Better New York, a business and political group, Walcott said the city would adopt new policies to insulate students from teachers deemed “unsatisfactory” under the current evaluation system. Under the new policies, no student will be allowed to have a teacher rated unsatisfactory multiple years in a row, and the city will move to fire all teachers who receive two straight U ratings.

“If we truly believe that every student deserves a great teacher, then we can’t accept a system where a student suffers with a poor-performing one for two straight years,” Walcott said. “One year of learning loss is bad enough — but studies indicate that two years could be devastating.”

The policies would go into effect if the city and union do not agree on new teacher evaluations by September, when the new school year begins. Under the existing evaluation system, two consecutive U ratings can trigger termination proceedings but do not have to. Two “ineffective” ratings on teacher evaluations now required under state law would automatically trigger termination proceedings.

Walcott also announced that the city would capitalize on a clause in its contract with the teachers union to offer a resignation incentive for teachers who have spent more than a year in the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers without permanent positions. Buyouts would have to be negotiated for each teacher, and Walcott promised that the incentives would be “generous.” The move represents a shift in approach for the Bloomberg administration, which has previously sought the right to fire members of the ATR pool.

Walcott’s complete speech, as prepared for delivery, is below. We’ll have more on his proposals later today. (more…)

• Sitting too close together cost hundreds of students their SAT scores. (NY1, Times, Daily News, WSJ)
• A school “study tour” is the next step in an initiative to link charter and district schools. (Daily News)
• The state is preparing to set high-need student enrollment goals for charter schools. (GothamSchools)
• A new study finds that 15 percent of students nationally can be considered chronically absent. (Times)
• A judge encouraged arbitration in the union-city suit over turnaround. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook)
• Tottenville High School staff members were honored for saving a student’s life with a defibrillator. (NY1)
• A lucky conversation led to a new Joffrey Ballet program for Fort Hamilton High School. (Daily News)
• Comptroller John Liu found improprieties in payments to a tutoring company. (GothamSchools, Post)
• The parent council for Queens’ District 29 is weighing a middle school choice proposal. (Daily News)
• Downtown families who are still on kindergarten waiting lists are growing frustrated. (Tribeca Trib)
• Parents from P.S. 195 in Queens rallied against the slow pace of the city’s PCB cleanup. (Daily News)
• Across the state, voters overwhelmingly okayed school budgets set under a brand-new tax cap. (Times)
• Chicago aims to add 60 more charter schools in the next five years and go from 110 to 170. (Tribune)

Holes in the Department of Education’s oversight of tutoring companies that work in city schools allowed one of the companies to collect payments without proving it had delivered services, according to an audit by Comptroller John Liu.

Liu found that Champion Learning Center collected about $860,000 in the 2009-2010 school year for tutoring students who had not signed into tutoring sessions or for tutoring sessions that officials had not certified had taken place.

The audit highlights the murky world of “supplemental educational services” providers, companies that offer tutoring mandated under the No Child Left Behind law. They are private entities but are subject to a host of city and state regulations, and the city must both monitor them and give them access to students.

The audit comes weeks after the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against another SES provider, Princeton Review, for falsifying attendance records and bilking New York City out of millions of dollars. In that case, investigators found that the company had submitted false signatures showing that tutoring sessions had taken place. (more…)

• Common Core standards architect David Coleman will head the test-making College Board. (Times)
• The city’s response to the union “turnaround” suit says a delay would be damaging. (GothamSchools)
• A janitor at P.S. 160 in the Bronx is being hailed for foiling a potential kidnapping. (Post, NBC)
• The principal removed after being accused of lewd behavior is being demoted. (Post, Daily News, NY1)
• A growing emphasis on standardized testing nationally has given rise to scattered rebellions. (WSJ)
• The backlash has led to intense criticism of testing firms even as the firms continue to expand. (WSJ)
• Florida schools won’t be penalized for low writing test scores after all scores fell. (Orlando Sentinel)
• Michelle Rhee’s ongoing advocacy through StudentsFirst continues to win big funders. (Reuters)
• A lawsuit funded by reform advocates takes aim at California’s tenure and seniority rights. (L.A. Times)

• A Los Angeles teacher says a robust teacher evaluation protocol has turned into a checklist. (Hechinger)
• Jay Mathews says he changed his mind about value-added ratings: They won’t work. (Class Struggle)
• A city teacher with top students scored low while her students aced an advanced exam. (GS Community)
• Analysts say the “Pineapple” debacle isn’t likely to hurt Pearson’s growing education arm. (Crain’s NY)
• Two Denver schools are under scrutiny after test scores fell amid tighter security. (EdNews Colorado)
• Reading materials at city schools are likely to change under Common Core standards. (Learning Matters)
• A teacher and union leader reports that a principal sent to sensitivity training has resigned. (JD2718)
• A Park Slope parent makes and sells maps showing the zones for neighborhood schools. (SchoolBook)
• A teacher worries what will happen to a depressed student over the summer. (Miss Eyre/NYC Educator)
• Tech leaders are showing an increasing interest in public schools and their students. (Fast Company)
• A half-hour show on education innovation by Channel 13 features Chancellor Walcott. (Metrofocus)
• A parent asks whether she must honor her child’s teacher’s summer school suggestion. (Insideschools)

During her brief stint as city schools chancellor, Cathie Black pulled the brakes on a planned rollout of special education reforms. Now, educators and parents are asking the city to slow things down once more.

They say the departure of the city’s top two special education officials will leave the Department of Education ill-equipped to carry out the planned reforms. They are also charging that the city’s proposal to change the way special education instruction is funded could encourage schools to place disabled students in settings that are not ideal for them.

The special education reforms are meant to encourage schools to move disabled students to settings that are less restrictive. The shift is in keeping with best practices in special education, and students are supposed to have their services changed only if it makes sense for them. But the city wants to add an incentive: Under a proposal likely to be approved next week, students who receive special education services for only a portion of the day would bring more city funds than students in self-contained settings for the entire day.

It’s a proposal that has educators and parents alike concerned. ”When it comes to special education we all know that as you move a child to a less restrictive environment, it’s a better thing, but it only works when it is appropriate for the child,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said at a union conference on Saturday. “When you start pushing to make that decision based on budget, then we have to start to question whether it’s appropriate or not.” (more…)

For Abraham Moussako, a 2011 graduate, working on the student newspaper at Bronx High School of Science was an exercise in frustration.

He writes today in the Community section:

Getting an article approved in your school newspaper covering an incident that garnered the institution bad publicity citywide is the sort of thing that probably would be a chore in any circumstance. But it was an even dicier situation at the [Science] Survey, where the administration took its power of prior review over the paper seriously.

Moussako’s description of several run-ins that he and other editors had with the school’s famously hands-on administration fans a longstanding debate about the role of school officials in reviewing student journalism. Reports from advocates of student journalism suggest that many city principals exercise their legal right to review and curb reporting that appears in school newspapers.

Bronx Science Principal Valerie Reidy is one of them. (more…)

• Manhattan Beep Scott Stringer: Exam errors should make the state halt new evaluations. (Daily News)
• The Daily News says Stringer’s teacher evaluation stance puts him on the fringe and should be rejected.
• A labor panel again backed mediation for the city’s evaluation talks. (GothamSchools, Daily News)
• Another Brooklyn chess team, from Sunset Park’s P.S. 503, won a national tournament. (SchoolBook)
• Walcott maintains a blistering pace of school visits, especially compared to Joel Klein. (GothamSchools)
• A senior at Fordham wants the university to “adopt” high schools at the Roosevelt campus. (Daily News)

• A series of articles tackles the growing clout of big advocacy groups, and their mixed results. (EdWeek)
• A teacher at a turnaround school says he’s not getting clear details about hiring. (Chaz’s School Daze)
• The city’s scoring of the state’s math and reading tests should be finished by Wednesday. (SchoolBook)
• Parents are upset after New Jersey’s state test asked third-graders to reveal a personal secret. (CBS)
• Educators are signing a petition to keep the state Global Studies Regents exam. (Mr. D’s Neighborhood)
• A teacher describes five test-prep strategies that work for him — but also make him sick. (NYCDOENuts)
• A teacher who taught AP Calculus for the first time this year explains why it was also the last. (JD2718)
• Ravitch notes the nasty names that charter advocates called her and other critics in emails. (DR’s Blog)
• A teacher asks why his colleagues are surprised by the charter backers-Joel Klein emails. (Jose Vilson)
• Since David Wakelyn resigned as Gov. Cuomo’s education deputy, no one is in charge. (Ed in the Apple)
• In Georgia, students in every grade will complete surveys that help evaluate their teachers. (Hechinger)
• When the math gets ahead of one teacher, she tells her students she needs to slow down. (Mrs. Ripp)
• A teacher singles out a former student who makes her feel like she has made a difference. (SchoolBook)