GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Has President Obama finally picked a side in the education wars? Three prominent New Yorkers are worrying that he is at least leaning — and that it’s not in the right direction.

Deborah Meier, the respected small schools pioneer, said President Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as education secretary “leaves me sad.” Today, Diane Ravitch, the NYU historian and Meier’s blogging partner, described Duncan as “Margaret Spellings in drag.” “This is not change I can believe in,” she wrote in Politico. And on Saturday, Ann Cook, another small-school movement doyenne, said she is also concerned about  Obama’s choice of Duncan.

All three women sympathize with the “Broader, Bolder” manifesto, which argues that schools alone cannot be expected to close the achievement gap and whose members are more suspicious of popular innovations such as charter schools and test-driven accountability systems. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein leads another camp, which strongly supports test-based accountability, the No Child Left Behind law, and charter schools. Klein’s Education Equality Project circulated a rival petition.

Obama made a point of not selecting a side in the debate. He chose two top education advisers, one from each camp. And he touted his chosen education secretary, Duncan, who had signed both petitions, as a pragmatist. But in the last few weeks, concerns about Duncan have begun to surface. (more…)

In his remarks before signing the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, President Obama today singled out New York City as a place where the bill’s effects are likely to be felt.

“In New York City alone, 14,000 teachers who were set to be let go may now be able to continue pursuing their critical mission,” Obama said. He mentioned only three other specific places where the stimulus will make an impact: Columbus, Ohio; North Dakota; and Colorado, where he was speaking.

Obama spoke in the conditional because it’s up to the state, which will disburse the stimulus funds, to help the city avoid layoffs. But city officials plan to push the state to roll back some of its proposed cuts. In a memo to the mayor today, his deputy in charge of operations wrote:

We are optimistic that by working with our partners at the State level, we can apply this funding to existing needs at the Department of Education so we can avoid the severe headcount reductions you mentioned as a possibility.

(Thanks to Liz Benjamin at the Daily News for pointing out Obama’s New York City reference.)

Flypaper and Politics K12 report dramatic differences between the House and Senate stimulus bills’ education allocations. The House bill includes funds for three things teachers unions often oppose: performance-based pay, education data systems, and a separate pot for charter schools. The Senate bill has none of these things.

Mike Petrilli says this reflects the divide inside the Democratic Party on education issues, and it’s hard to argue against that. The question I’d like answered is, which bill did the Obama administration have the most say in writing?

Update: As Leonie points out in the comments, I originally said Senate where I meant House and vice versa. House version has the reformier stuff.

People at Educon in Philadelphia (via Flickr)

Last week, I chronicled an academic discussion on the subject of where school reform should go under President Obama. Over the weekend, a bunch of tech geeks had a conference on the same subject — and their ideas will probably end up being just as important to the future of schooling.

The conference, called Educon, attracted members of the increasingly large but sorely underlooked education movement called Learning 2.0, the MySpace/Twitter-inspired approach to school, in which technology facilitates extra interaction between students and teachers (and students and students and teachers and teachers). Among the people gathered in Philadelphia was at least one group from New York City: 20 staff members at CIS 339 in the Bronx, a middle school whose approach to technology I profiled in the Village Voice a few months ago.

You can read 339 Principal Jason Levy’s takeaways from the conference at his Principal 2.0 blog, here, including notes from the panel he ran, on what to do if your principal says no to a new idea. (One apparently good consideration is “The ‘Media’ Test:  Where in the NY Post will this story end up?”)

David Warlick also provides good notes from a panel discussion on the direction President Obama should take education. The conference’s convener, Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, made the case that “accountability has to be a richer more complex conversation.” Another person talked about making accountability more “intelligent” with tests that assess for deeper learning, not just memorization.

Naturally, Warlick communicated his own takeaway via Twitter:

I just twittered: “The point of ed reform is having classrooms where it just doesn’t matter if kids are getting tested — to them or the teachers.”

On Tuesday morning, the 98 students at NYCiSchool gathered in their school’s common room to watch the inauguration of President Barack Obama. This is a report about that experience from Raquel and Angelica, two students who are writing occasional columns for GothamSchools on their experiences attending a New York City public school.

Raquel: Returning to school after a 3-day weekend to sit in front of two flatscreen televisions and watch Obama’s inauguration was nothing short of amazing, because we were glued to something more than a television screen. We were glued into history.

We also created historical artifacts of our own. A school-wide assignment required each student to write a list of the topics we wanted to hear Obama address in his speech. As the speech progressed, we recorded what topics he actually covered. This way, we were able to document not only what we heard, but what it meant to us.

I predict that unlike many school assignments, we’ll remember this one as not just one more piece of paper. Instead, we will be able to use this assignment as a tool to evaluate whether Obama has kept his word to America, and to us.

Angelica: We are teenagers, a rowdy group to tame, especially when concentrated all in one room — and yet the sound of Barack Obama’s even voice, fierce and calm, muted us. (more…)

Here’s an idea for the new president: Make people happy by giving them pennies. According to a story in triptych form by Miah Mansour, a kindergartner at PS 130 (not sure which borough), that’s what it would take to stave off the foreclosure crisis. Miah sent the story, which you can view in full below the jump, to the state teachers union, NYSUT, after it asked schoolchildren to offer advice to Barack Obama. Other letters suggest insulating schools against budget cuts, reducing class sizes, and providing bigger file cabinets for teachers. (Via Edwize) (more…)

Bored-looking students at yesterday's Harlem Armory celebration

All over the city yesterday, teachers interrupted their lessons so they could watch the inauguration with their students. Last night, a number of them blogged about their experiences, which ranged from exhilarating to disappointing.

At Is Our Children Learning?, elementary school teacher Ruben wrote that his kids didn’t seem to understand why they were watching TV during the school day:

There’s nowhere else I’d rather have been, nor a more special location I can think of, than with my students. …

I wish I had more time last week to prepare my kids for today. While there was a palpable excitement throughout the school, it was clear that much of the real, historical significance was lost on the students. They clapped and cheered at pretty much all the appropriate moments, but when it was time for the important parts, they were just plain bored. As one student said to me when Barack began his inaugural address, “These words is for lawyers.” I myself was pretty moved, but I can imagine how much of the language could be lost on 1,000 K-5 students, most of whom are a couple of grades behind in reading and writing.

Below the jump, reactions from four more teacher-bloggers, whose students ranged from attentive to angry during the inauguration. (more…)

Democracy Prep Charter School students have been studying electoral politics all year. This is how it felt to be among them, and thousands of their peers, at the Harlem Armory today just after CNN announced that Barack Obama had officially became the country’s 44th president.

I reported in our feature today that the Harlem Armory inauguration party included a pre-written postcard to Obama, on which students were supposed to give their advice about how to improve America’s schools. Above Ayanna Mason, a 13-year-old eighth grader at Democracy Prep Charter School, gives me her advice. The video cuts off at the end but what she said is that good schools should get more funding, while bad schools should be shut down.

I also spoke to students at CIS 313, pictured in a video below, who said they hope Obama brings home the troops and ends slavery. (more…)

Philissa and I spent the morning watching the inauguration in Harlem with thousands of public school students. They came from 34 public schools, including about 18 charter schools, and when Obama took the oath of office they exploded in cheers, waving American flags and jumping up and down. Here’s a slideshow of some of what we saw, and we’ve also just posted a feature describing the day.

I spent much of the morning sitting next to Douglas Noble, an eighth-grader at KAPPA II in East Harlem. Here’s what he told me about Obama’s influence on him:

He said Obama’s rise changed his life goals. He had wanted to be a basketball player, but now he’s set his sights on engineering. “Everybody wants to be a basketball player, but I want to be something that’s harder,” he said. “A basketball player, all you have to know how to do is dribble and shoot. An engineer, you have to know a lot more.”