GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

New York City has launched an experimental model of teacher training that pairs inexperienced newcomers to the city’s schools with seasoned pros.

Developed by Hunter College, New Visions for Public Schools, and the Department of Education, the Urban Teacher Residency program aims to give new teachers the skills they’ll need to manage classrooms full of high-needs students. It also coaches them along as they do. Residents spend four days a week in their classrooms and the fifth at the Hunter College School of Education, taking courses intended to make education theory practical.

Danielle Ruggiero, a mentor teacher, said she showed up at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens, six years ago, armed with a degree that taught her much about the theory of education but glossed over many of the practical concerns she faced on her first day.

“When I first started teaching, I was thrown into a class of 38 kids who were all behind in their reading skills and I was this 22-year-old,” she said. “You’ve got to get on-the-ball really quickly.” (more…)

For years, one pesky paper has stalked David Steiner, the man elected New York’s education commissioner this morning. The paper, published in 2003, while he was a professor at Boston University, attacked education graduate schools as intellectually weak and ideologically slanted, marking Steiner as a brave “maverick” among those critical of traditional teacher education — and enemy no. 1 among those who defend it.

Steiner, who was raised in England but was born in America and spent one year at P.S. 41 on West 11th Street, has shrugged off the to-do in the years since. He kept a reasonably modest profile as dean of CUNY’s Hunter College School of Education for the last four years. In conversations, he calmly insists that there is a middle ground in the fierce debate about how to improve public schools.

But the paper that marked him also foreshadows some of the innovations he has tested out at Hunter and the thinking he might bring to the state Education Department, where he is set to become commissioner Oct. 1, replacing Richard Mills, who announced his intention to retire last year. Mills had served in the position since 1995.

The position means Steiner will run the state Education Department, the large bureaucratic organization that enacts education policy set by the state Board of Regents and oversees both universities and public primary schools. (more…)

JREC supporters at yesterday's demonstration

What was planned as a choreographed demonstration turned into a showdown in front of Tweed Courthouse yesterday between supporters of an Upper East Side school complex and backers of the construction project that would displace it.

Now 13 years old, Julia Richman Education Complex was one of the first school complexes in the city to hold multiple small schools, and its well-publicized successes with struggling students made it a model for the Department of Education’s efforts to break down many large high schools.

But for the last two years, JREC community members have been fighting a complicated real estate deal that would require it to relocate. (more…)

The Chicago Public Schools employee in charge of running a Web site for the district’s alumni recently created an iTunes mix featuring music by Bo Diddley, Kanye West, and other famous CPS grads.

And the person who started the playlist is issuing a “playful challenge” to New York and Los Angeles to come up with comparable mixes, the Chicago Tribune reports.

What would a New York City public schools iTunes mix sound like? I didn’t actually create one, but I did come up with some musicians who got their starts attending the city’s public schools:

Barbra Streisand, Erasmus Hall '59

• Tony Bennett, Art and Design
• Harry Chapin, Brooklyn Tech
• The Cleftones, Jamaica HS
• Bobby Darin, Hunter College High School
• Al Kooper, Martin van Buren HS
• Thelonious Monk, Stuyvesant
• Barbra Streisand, Erasmus Hall HS
• Suzanne Vega, LaGuardia

What big names am I missing? A Stuyvesant alum compiled a list of albums by Stuy grads on Amazon.com, but does some enterprising soul want to curate an actual playlist for download? You’ll have to do it on your own, because the closest thing the DOE has to an alumni office is the Fund for Public Schools, and all it appears to offer alums are links to a handful of individual high schools’ alumni groups.