GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The New York Post editorial board doesn’t want KIPP teachers to unionize. (Via Leo Casey.)
• A fight between Jay Greene bloggers and the UFT over who’s to blame for the rubber rooms.
• Jonathan thinks the Department of Education’s web site needs help.
• Help building data systems is definitely in the stimulus. Wonder if DOE will apply.
• Study: Taking more than four years to graduate high school is much better than getting a GED.
• DFER, the New York-based lobbying group, is getting its staffing wishes at the federal ed dept.
• Said group points out that a Rochester mom was jailed for sending her child to the wrong school.
• A 17-year-old Dalton student killed himself today, while at school, which was in session.

• Class sizes are up in city schools for the first time in years. (GothamSchools, Times, Post)
• Fashion icon Giorgio Armani gave $1 million to city schools’ art programs. (Post, Women’s Wear Daily)
• A new law aimed at reducing pollution near schools is now in effect. (AP)
• The stimulus bill could transform schools. (AP)
• A study finds that Chicago’s charter high schools aren’t better than other city schools. (Chicago Sun-Times)
• Philadelphia is planning to overhaul its schools on the Chicago model. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
• What happens to students when a charter school runs out of money? (Washington Post)

• No more private school kids applied to specialized high schools than in the past. (Post)
• The application process for two new schools in Tweed has many parents confused. (Downtown Express)
• The Daily News says the city’s AP scores show that New York City needs mayoral control.
• The stimulus bill would double federal spending on schools. (Christian Science Monitor)
• A top-ranked suburban district is giving more opportunities to average students. (Times)
• A lone New Hampshire town doesn’t provide public kindergarten. (USA Today)
• The Los Angeles teachers union has organized a top charter school there. (L.A. Times)
• Jay Mathews: New research shows rap music isn’t to blame for low reading scores. (Washington Post)

Councilman Bill deBlasio at PS 154, which stopped using Styrofoam trays this spring. Photo from Gowanus Lounge

First Councilman Bill deBlasio waged war on Styrofoam lunch trays. Next Councilman Lew Fidler took up a crusade for energy-efficient light bulbs, pushing the issue at one and then another recent Council hearing. And now, there is a new petition urging Governor Paterson to make the state’s schools “incorporate green-minded curriculum into the classroom.”

So far, the Department of Education has made no indication it is boarding this bandwagon. But there was a little bit of tree-saving inside this week’s Principals Weekly, the regular memo from Chancellor Joel Klein. The memo discloses that the DOE is launching a pilot program to make surveys of teachers and students paperless. The Learning Environment Surveys, used to determine schools’ progress report letter grades, now are mailed to schools and completed by hand. Under the pilot, parents would still fill out the surveys with paper.

That could be a baby step towards footprint-reduction. Or, it could just be a way to cut costs.

On Monday, the Today Show spotlighted public school travel programs, including New York City’s Beacon School’s famous field trips to India, England, Venezuela, and many other parts of the world.

In honor of Constitution Day, which was Wednesday, we give you a little Schoolhouse Rock:

Teachers, what did you do to celebrate the Constitution in your schools?

Here’s a clip from CBS about the Nurse-Family Partnership mentioned in Paul Tough’s recent New York Times Magazine article, 24/7 School Reform. Learn more about the program model and studies of its impact from the Nurse-Family Partnership website. New York City program information is available from the Bureau of Maternal, Infant, and Reproductive Health.

Marrakesh - olives, by goofball12.

From average to perimeter to speed, students at a school in Morocco practice mathematics in the context of the school’s small olive grove. This 15-minute documentary — too large a file to embed here — shows the ways one Moroccan math teacher integrates math and real-life experience for his students.

“I need to know how many olives you think we’ll get from one tree,” the teacher asks his students, and they go to work making predictions in small groups. Later, they help harvest the olives, observe how they are processed, and even help sell them at market. Along the way, they put a variety of math skills to use.

The video left me with many questions about how this ongoing project fits into the school’s overall math curriculum, and how typical this style of teaching is for Moroccan schools (here’s an overview of education in Morocco). I also wonder what equivalent projects teachers in New York City are doing or would like to do, and how they would square with the current standards and curriculum. Math teachers, any thoughts?

A little rock’n'roll as summer comes to a close…