GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Students criticized the city’s plan to relocate Cambria Heights Academy in a video published Thursday, saying “We are very comfortable to continue to grow our school here, in our home district.”

Under the plan, the high school would move from its spot on 91st Avenue in Queens’s District 29 to Junior High School 72 in District 28 in June. The schools are roughly three miles apart, and some students say the change would double or triple their commute times.

At a Parents Advisory Board meeting last week, parents and students said they worried the new location, which CHA would share with a middle school, would be unsafe, too far to travel to, and too crowded. DOE officials said the school may have no choice but to move because the city’s lease is up at the current building, which once housed a Catholic school.

In October, we reported that students at the iSchool had won a contest to have the surfaces of their school — walls, halls, and even tables — turned into interactive whiteboards.

Now, the glossy white paint is up, and the company that ran the contest, IdeaPaint, documented the process in this video.

Here’s how a teacher told us the paint job would influence learning at the school:

Christina Jenkins, an iSchool teacher who bought IdeaPaint for her classroom with donations last year, said the temporary nature of whiteboard writing encourages ideas to flow more readily. For students who might worry about making mistakes, “paper can be more intimidating,” she said, pointing to a wall in her room where students had jotted down ideas for their senior projects.

“I was raised on TV / Movies and magazines / Mama told me to believe/ I could be everything …”

That’s the opening verse to “Where Does the Time Go?,” a song co-written by 10 students at East Fordham Academy for the Arts in the Bronx. Fueled by coffee and nerves, the students, all middle school girls, took turns crooning into microphones at a recording studio in SoHo this afternoon.

According to sixth-grader Katherine Ocasio, the song is about their expectations for the future.

“It’s about how we feel and what we want to do,” she said. Each student was paired with a lyric about how they might envision a satisfying life to sing for the recording. “What I said was, ‘maybe I’d live in Paris.’”

When it was her turn to step into the recording booth and sing that line, Ocasio’s heart started to beat a little faster. She remembered her music teacher Zach Rifkind’s advice — keep your shoulders pulled back, and breathe from the diaphragm. (more…)

Watch the full episode. See more Metrofocus.

We’ve written about two interesting exchanges during Thursday’s “On Education” panel discussion, but there were many more over the course of the discussion’s 102 minutes. Now you can watch them all — at least until Hurricane Irene cuts your power out.

Of particular note: Prospective mayoral candidate William Thompson’s prognosis on teachers contract negotiations (starting at 27:40); Success Charter Network CEO Eva Moskowitz on her efforts to deal with “the burnout factor,” which include giving teachers 11 weeks of paid vacation (36:55); Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch decrying exaggeration in the city’s claims of improvement (1:09:00); and UFT Vice-President Leo Casey and Moskowitz debating whether schools should be run like businesses (1:12:00).

Manhattan Media organized the discussion, and City Hall News and GothamSchools moderated it. The video is provided by Metrofocus, a new project of WNET.

Fifth graders in P.S. 22′s famous chorus have been asked to sing at the Academy Awards next year.

Actress Anne Hathaway, who is co-hosting the ceremony, visited the students at their Winter Concert last night to deliver the invitation in person. The students are, naturally, delighted. They just about die with excitement. They’re also singing at DOE headquarters this afternoon for Chancellor Joel Klein’s goodbye party. Last January, the chorus sang Jay-Z’s “Run this Town” at Mayor Bloomberg’s inauguration.

You might want to turn down the volume before listening.

Some of the chorus’s hits: (more…)

I confess: I’m gripped by whether the fictional McKinley High School glee club will win regionals. But right now I also love a short documentary that finds a similar real-life drama closer to home — will Brooklyn Tech’s girls step team ever win a competition?

“Step Brooklyn” follows the high school team through the 2008-09 school year as steppers audition, balance rehearsals with heavy course-loads, and try to win for the first time in years. It’s fascinating, and it’s currently up for a Webby award. (Full disclosure: “Step Brooklyn” was produced by three former classmates of mine, so I’m partial.)

Here’s a teaser from the documentary. You can watch the full half-hour video here.

Last month, New York’s Race to the Top delegation traveled to Washington, D.C. to pitch its case for why the state deserved a slice of the $4.3 billion competitive federal grant pool. We already know the result, of course: New York was second-to-last among finalists, and was one of just three states that lost points after the interview round.

But today the U.S. Department of Education posted full videos of the presentation and the subsequent question-and-answer session, so we can now see precisely how the judges framed their questions and how the state defended itself. Many of the judges’ concerns are likely to drive how the state revises its application for the next round of competition. (more…)

If you weren’t at the GothamSchools party last week, then you missed a real treat: Diane Ravitch reading publicly for the first time from her forthcoming book, ”The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education.”

Reading from a selection titled “What I Learned About School Reform,” Ravitch explained why she has reversed her position on policies from test-based accountability to school choice. (more…)

As Schools Chancellor Joel Klein himself admitted, he’s provided a lot of grist for our site in its first year. His name has appeared more than 5,000 times on GothamSchools, far more than anyone else.

So we were excited when Klein agreed to speak at our party earlier this week. Love him or hate him, Klein is a great party guest.  The chancellor offered some kind words for the GothamSchools community and the role of education journalism.

“I think the work you’re doing —the ability to give people voice, and the ability for people to disagree, to argue, to learn from each other — is enormously powerful, in many ways much more powerful than the daily fare in the daily newspaper,” he said. “And in that respect, what you’ve done has made the process better, richer. I’ve learned from it.”

(Agree with Klein? Here’s how to help.)

For those of you who missed it (or for those who want to relive the magic), here’s a video of the chancellor’s remarks. Take a look:

As the country gears up for President Obama’s surprisingly controversial back-to-school speech on Tuesday, here’s a blast from the past: Ronald Reagan’s November 1988 speech to students, in which the outgoing president encouraged students to “ground yourself in the ideas and values of the American Revolution.” The speech was broadcast on C-Span and shown in classrooms across the country.

Dakarai Aarons at Education Week dug up Reagan’s speech and one given to schoolchildren in 1991 by then-President George H.W. Bush, who sounded the same theme of personal responsibility that Obama has said his speech will cover.