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The city teachers union teachers union is catching no breaks on its proposed mayoral control position, which last night sailed through the first of two hoops required before it becomes official union policy.

First, the Department of Education and the group supporting mayoral control, Learn NY, dismissed the union’s proposal as a step backward, comparing it to the way the public schools were run before mayoral control. Both don’t like the union’s proposal to empower the Panel for Educational Policy, now seen as a rubber stamp, into an effective school board that would have to approve policy decisions.

Now, the mayor controls a majority of appointments on the panel, and can dismiss any of these members at a moment’s notice. Under the union’s proposal, the mayor would control only 5 of 13 seats, and term limits would protect board members from overnight removal.

“We can’t have it both ways,” Learn NY board chair Geoffrey Canada said in a statement. “Either one person is in charge, or no one is.”

The union is also receiving criticism from a group of its own members, who late last night released a minority report suggesting that the legislature carve even more power away from the mayor. (more…)

Stephen Colbert, who has in recent months hosted KIPP charter school founder Mike Feinberg, cash-for-grades guru Roland Fryer, and New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, this week spent a few minutes talking with Geoffrey Canada.

Canada, who started the Harlem Children’s Zone, got his message across, loud and clear: Helping poor kids get a good education, go to college, and start careers is great news for the national bottom line.

Who’s the next ed-star Colbert should interview?

[Via This Week In Education]

Learn NY also solicits parents' ideas on its web site.

The lobbying group that is campaigning to preserve the mayor’s control of the public school system is making good on its promise to reach out to parents. Today a staffer at the group, called Learn NY, sent an introductory message to e-mail lists run by public school parents.

The staffer explained the group’s mission, promised to send follow-up messages about the positive effects of mayoral control, and asked for feedback.

She wrote:

the more we hear from parents, the more we can improve the mayoral control law when it comes up for renewal next year. I would love to gather some feedback from you to help us better inform lawmakers in Albany of what’s working and what’s not.

The messages went out to at least two list-serves, one for parents in District 3 and one for parents of gifted and talented students, at about the same time today, 11:50 a.m. and 11:52 a.m, respectively. One list has already seen some responses, a mix of confusion and suspicion.

Here’s one parent’s reaction:

In the interest of fairness, I suppose this person should be allowed to post. (more…)

Children growing up in poverty have brains that are substantially less developed than children who grow up more comfortably, a new study finds. The under-development is so substantial that the children’s brains resemble those of an adult who has suffered brain damage.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley measured the brain’s electrical activity as children completed a task. They found lower levels of activity in a part of the frontal lobe that controls creativity and problem-solving.

The researchers posit that children’s brains can be affected by growing up in a stressful environment and having less exposure to cognitive stimuli like conversations with adults and visits to museums. But demography isn’t destiny, they say:

“This is a wake-up call,” Knight said. “It’s not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums.” (more…)

The Harlem Children’s Zone was just forced to cut 10% of its staff, but CEO Geoffrey Canada says he won’t change his standards about how to replenish the money he is losing from Wall Street donors. For one thing, he will take no donations from rappers, ever.

That’s what he told NY1′s Dominic Carter last night on “Inside City Hall,” after Carter got distressed about the cuts and tried to think of alternate sources of income.

“That’s like taking money from the tobacco industry,” Canada said.

Canada was appearing on the show to promote his new group, Learn NY, which is pushing Albany to renew mayoral control of the city’s public schools. But for 22 minutes, Canada talked not about the problem of school boards, but a list of others: a materialist culture that is a “road to destruction” for children, the “abysmal” state of community colleges, and why kids walk with their pants hanging down (it’s an export from the jail system, where belts are banned).

Then, with less than 10 minutes left in the show, like a movie star on a late-night show who at the last minute remembers he has to promote his film, Canada started talking about mayoral control. Whoops! Out of necessity, he made his argument succinct. (more…)

Another recommendation from the Suozzi report I wrote about earlier today, the one recommending ways for state schools to cut costs, is that the mayors of the Big Four cities — Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Yonkers — be granted control of their public school systems, like Mayor Bloomberg was in 2002. How could mayoral control cut school costs?

The commission makes two arguments. One is that handing control to the mayor would allow for more efficient spending. The schools could be linked with other services under the mayor’s purview, like parks, recreation, and social programs. The second argument is more long-term:

Most importantly, if mayoral control is successful in improving school performance, there may be a positive effect on economic development, retention of middle class families, and protection or expansion of the property tax base.

The arguments are interesting — especially because they provide two good yardsticks to measure New York City’s mayoral control experiment. (more…)

Another Wall Street Journal report on how the financial crisis is hitting foundations highlights the Harlem Children’s Zone. HCZ, run by the mayoral control proponent Geoffrey Canada, was promised $25 million grant by the Starr Foundation, which is run by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former chief executive officer of AIG.

Now, the Journal reports:

Anyone with a foundation whose endowment is heavily invested in AIG stock “is taking a bath,” says Mr. Greenberg, adding that he intends to fulfill current commitments but that gifts would inevitably be fewer and smaller in the months ahead. “You can’t give what you haven’t got.” …

Among the beneficiaries feeling the pinch are Harlem Children’s Zone Inc., to which Mr. Greenberg recently pledged $25 million. “I’m spending a lot of time now thinking about how we could replace the kind of support we’ve received from Wall Street,” says Geoffrey Canada, president of the organization, which provides parenting classes and charter schools for poor families. Mr. Canada says he is cutting 10% of his staff of 1,400.

Other New York City education projects could be affected. (more…)

The nonprofit pro-mayoral control advocacy group that was originally titled MASS, for Mayoral Accountability for Student Success, is now called Learn NY, and its official first day of existence is today. The group has close ties with the Bloomberg administration, but it is not being funded by the mayor, officials said in a background press conference with reporters this morning.

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters has already done impressive digging into the group’s media strategy. A spokesperson for the group confirmed to me today that the blog commenter Haimson noticed voicing his passion for mayoral control is indeed on the payroll of Learn NY. Brian Keeler, an online-media specialist who ran unsuccessfully for state senate in 2006 with the help of a following he built at Daily Kos, has been posting positive comments on this blog, Leonie’s, and others. He is also an employee of the Web design firm that built Learn NY’s Web site and will write a regular blog on the site, the spokesperson, Julie Wood, said.

Something that will surely be asked — especially by critics of mayoral control and the Bloomberg administration, including Haimson — is how much of a “MASS” organization Learn NY really is. (more…)

Harlem Children’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada announced this weekend that he’s launching a new nonprofit, Learn NY, to support mayoral control of the public schools.

Canada is toeing the Bloomberg administration line pretty close in this battle. But he does of course have a mind of his own — and sometimes his ideas are unconventional.

Last week at the Campaign for Educational Equity symposium at Teachers College, Canada semi-jokingly proposed a redistribution scheme for teachers. “All the lousy teachers, we should send to the upper-middle-class communities,” he said. “In those communities a kid could have a lousy teacher and still survive.” (more…)

IN NEW YORK:

• Schools graded D’s and F’s are more likely to have large black and Latino populations. (Daily News)
• To stop cheating, Stuyvesant might scan students for cell phones before final exams (New York Post)
• Geoffrey Canada starts a nonprofit to lobby for renewing mayoral control, with tweaks. (Daily News)
• Cynthia Nixon co-writes an op/ed saying the Center School fight is not dead yet. (Daily News)
• Joel Klein is in Australia today to tout a “revolution” planned for schools there. (Adelaide Now)
• Opposition to the Australia plan has Aussies criticizing New York City’s record of progress. (ABC)

AND BEYOND:

• Terry Moe hopes that Obama will side with his party’s rebels and fight teachers unions. (WSJ)
• Finding agreement on the federal role in schools will be a challenge for Obama. (Washington Post)
• Jay Mathews boosts a retiring Virginia superintendent for Secretary of Education. (Washington Post)
• 30% of superintendents are increasing class sizes to save money. (Christian Science Monitor)
• In San Diego, saving by exchanging central bureaucrats for outside consultants. (Voice of San Diego)
• High school homecoming dances are paring down because of the economy. (New York Times)
• The Georgia state schools superintendent is filing for bankruptcy. (Times)
• For the Obama girls, it’s Sidwell Friends, Chelsea Clinton’s private school. (Times)
• Meanwhile, in D.C. public schools, anti-prostitution lessons. (Washington Post)
• A move to raise math standards in Virginia. (Washington Post)