GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Cathleen Black has almost six weeks to get up-to-speed on public education in New York City before she becomes the new schools chancellor.

She appears to have gotten started on her prep work: Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, was spotted on Monday with a “thick stack of materials concerning public education,” according to The New York Times. She’s also made phone calls to the presidents of the teachers and principals unions, as well as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

When Chancellor Joel Klein was tapped for the job more than eight years ago, he told reporters that he planned to meet with 5,000 people — consultants, educators, parents, and community groups — in his first two months.

We don’t know what’s in Black’s stack of reading material, but we put this question to education experts: what should she be reading? (more…)

The news about the news profession is pretty depressing these days, and the news about local news is especially dismal. (Goodbye, Rocky Mountain News.) But I’m happy to report that education reporters are not letting the school news disappear without a fight.

Here’s a run-down of some relatively new efforts to keep local school journalism alive in the new media atmosphere:

• In Dayton, editorial writer Scott Elliott has won awards for his Get on the Bus ed blog.
• Kent Fischer of Dallas innovates with his Dallas ISD blog, whose readers helped him dig up big scoops.
• Emily Alpert of the new online-only, donation-funded Voice of San Diego writes great in-depth stories.
• The long-running site about the Philadelphia schools, The Notebook, has started a blog.
• Catalyst Chicago has a blog, and Russo’s Chicago schools blog is going strong. So is Catalyst Ohio.
  
• L.A. Times reporters give regular updates on the schools at a blog called L.A. Now.
• The Journal News, a lower-upstate New York paper, has a Hall Monitor education blog.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a blog called Get Schooled.
• A live-blog of a superintendent search was the recent topic at The Houston Chronicle’s School Zone.
• A D.C. writer has started a chronicle of school news there.

The new reporting format certainly has its problems. But innovation will be the only way for good journalism about schools to survive, and the only way to keep the new efforts up to par is to keep track of “best practices.” Please keep up the critiques of our coverage, and please send more good local education news sites that I missed. Or lay it all out in the comments.