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After slashing its test monitoring program in the face of budget cuts this year, the Department of Education is now making plans to build it back up.

The department is looking to hire a new test security chief and triple the number of schools that it sends monitors into, according to a job ad that appeared online this week.  The person who formerly occupied the position is retiring this fall, department officials said.

In 2011, the city monitored 97 elementary and middle schools during state testing days as part of a program that was meant to deter staff from violating test security guidelines. In 2012, the program shrank and monitors visited just 37 schools, most of which were already under investigation for cheating.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott blamed the reduction on budget cuts. Now for the 2013 exams, the city is putting renewed attention on test security, according to details provided in the job ad.

Key responsibilities for the new test security chief include creating a “unique” list of at least 100 schools every year that would be monitored by about 50 people, the ad says. The manager would also recruit and train monitors, then disperse them to schools during the testing period. (more…)

For the first time since the city imposed a hiring freeze two years ago, the number of teachers entering the classroom from alternative certification programs has risen.

While some senior teachers worry about finding positions, two prominent organizations, Teach For America and New York City’s Teaching Fellows, are contributing hundreds of new teachers to the city’s teaching force. The organizations estimate that they will bring about 800 new teachers into classrooms this fall.

That would be 25 percent more than last year, when the groups brought on just under 650 new teachers, about 2,000 less than in 2006.

The dropoff began in 2009, when the Department of Education enacted restrictions limiting most hiring to teachers who were already in the system. The policy severely curtailed recruitment plans for TFA and Teaching Fellows and in a matter of two years, both were producing just a few hundred teachers per year. Most of those teachers worked in shortage areas, such as science and special education.

Now, as the city has eased some longstanding hiring restrictions in new subjects, those numbers are inching back up in response to demand. (more…)