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Margaret McAuley, principal at Chappie D. James Elementary School of Science, questions the extent of support provided by the Department of Education to her struggling school.

Just hours after learning that Chappie D. James Elementary School of Science would be phased out, Principal Margaret McAuley publicly registered her concerns about the process that had brought the school to the point of closure.

McAuley testified Thursday evening at a meeting of the Citywide Council on Special Education, an elected parent group, which had been set aside to discuss closures well before the city announced yesterday that it would shutter 12 schools.

After the Department of Education’s director of engagement strategy, Meg Barboza, narrated a PowerPoint presentation about the city’s closure strategy, fielding challenges from council members along the way, McAuley took the microphone.

As music from a principals union event wafted into the second-floor meeting room at Brooklyn Borough Hall, McAuley described her efforts to serve students at her Brownsville school, which she started in 2008 after a previous school in the building had been closed because of poor performance. She said she had chased down resources and partnerships, sought out extra training for teachers, brought in computers and programming for parents, and put new expectations in place for students.

McAuley said she wasn’t surprised by the school’s first progress report grade last year, a D — scores remained very low. But she said they were improving, slowly but surely and unfortunately not in a way that this year’s report card grade, an F, could capture.

Most of all, she said, she hadn’t been informed that her school’s performance wasn’t up to par until October, when the city added it to the shortlist of potential closures. (more…)

The city’s Department of Education, Teach for America and several city charter school management companies are angling for federal money designed to encourage cutting-edge educational strategies.

They’re among 145 New York State-based entities that applied for grants under a new federal program known as the Investing in Innovation Fund, or “i3.” Details about the 1,698 applications submitted last month went online yesterday.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the ways local groups are hoping to cash in:

• The city is asking for $40 million to open 150 new small middle and high schools in the next five years.
• The city also asked for $5 million to grow the School of One technology program and $4.5 million to boost the arts in special education schools.
• Other groups angling to open new schools include Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Success charter network, which is seeking $25 million to open 13 in the next five years, and New Visions for Public Schools, which wants $26 million to create charter schools that serve 10,000 city students. (more…)

We’re on staycation, but we wanted to share what just popped into our inbox: The long-awaited evaluation of principals who graduated from the city’s controversial Leadership Academy.

The report concludes that graduates of the Leadership Academy took especially tough jobs, stopped their schools from getting worse, and posted reading test score gains that outpaced those made at other schools with new principals. In math, schools led by Leadership Academy graduates improved but not significantly more than other schools. And the study looked at too few high schools to conclude anything about the effect of Leadership Academy principals there.

The report’s authors, three professors at New York University, say more research is needed to identify what about the Leadership Academy graduates allowed their schools to make comparatively more progress in reading. They emphasize that the Leadership Academy, which fast-tracks educators into school administration, selects applicants that it believes will make successful principals, so the study could not cast light on how well the program prepares the average prospective principal.

The report was paid for by foundations that helped fund the academy before it moved onto the public dollar last year, Broad and Dell.

EdWeek has more detail about the report, which is posted in full after the jump: (more…)

The flier advertising today's rally.

Teachers at the Fordham High School of the Arts plan to rally today in protest of their principal, who they say has conducted a “reign of terror” that is partly responsible for a 70% teacher turnover rate. Teachers from across the Bronx are invited to join the Fordham protest, which is being billed as a larger statement against what teachers call Chancellor Joel Klein’s “support of abusive principals.”

I don’t know any of the context here. It seems like a case where it’s impossible, without a lot more reporting, to know which side to believe — but very clear that the school environment is not a peaceful and happy one.

A Department of Education official, speaking on background today, said the protest is likely linked to an incident earlier this month where a teacher was removed from the school after an investigation tied her to a threatening letter written to the principal. A poster advertising the rally declares that teachers are protesting the “unfounded removal” of a teacher. The DOE source said the letter is being investigated by the police. (more…)

Somehow this slipped between the cracks: The United Federation of Teachers is signing on to a letter urging the Department of Education to make dramatic cuts to at least five of Chancellor Joel Klein’s hallmark programs. Joining the signatories list — which also includes Time Out From Testing, the Working Families Party, and Class Size Matters — was the third thing the union decided to do Wednesday evening at its delegate assembly meeting, right after two higher-profile votes.

On the chopping board would be the annual letter-grade progress reports for schools; the quality reviews that supplement the test-driven progress reports with observed details; all standardized tests for children between kindergarten and second grade; the Leadership Academy, the nonprofit organization that trains principals; the periodic assessments that are supposed to help teachers prepare students for state tests; and ARIS, the data warehousing program contracted to IBM that has so far been a flop.

That’s not the entire Joel Klein agenda. But it’s a lot.

I noted this in a June post, but since the revised Contracts for Excellence continue to peg the Leadership Academy as a “district-wide,” discretionary allocation, it’s worth repeating: Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have long planned to use Campaign for Fiscal Equity money to pay for the controversial principal training program.

Back in 2005, the program was embattled and its three-year term of private funding was coming to an end. The Times reported then:

Mr. Bloomberg had originally planned on sustaining the Leadership Academy using money from a court order mandating billions of additional dollars in state education aid for the city schools. But the state has appealed the ruling. Absent that money, Mr. Klein said yesterday that he would most likely turn again to private donors but was intent on continuing the effort, suggesting that, if necessary, the city would pick up part of the tab.

Now that the Campaign for Fiscal Equity money is finally beginning to roll into the city — 15 years after the lawsuit was filed — Klein appears to be making good on his word. But the state has complicated his plans by requiring the money to be spent on new initiatives that benefit low-performing students and high-need schools. Members of the public, along with elected officials, are right when they say this particular spending line violates the intent of the law, as PS 41 parent Irene Kaufman alleged at the Contracts for Excellence hearing in Manhattan on Wednesday night.

Not convinced? Take a more detailed look at the Leadership Academy and the DOE’s creative approaches to funding it.

Photo by p_a_h

Elected officials, teachers, and parents offered up a litany of concerns about the DOE’s proposed Contracts for Excellence — regarding both their content and the process by which they were developed — last night at the final public hearing in Manhattan.

The hearing, chaired by Terence Tolbert, executive director of the DOE’s Department of Intergovernmental Affairs (and soon to direct Obama’s Nevada campaign), was well-attended by representatives from numerous organizations, including ACORN, Class Size Matters, the Coalition for Educational Justice, the Alliance for Quality Education, the City Council, school level PTAs, the UFT, and others.

Legally, Contracts for Excellence funding must “supplement, not supplant” existing spending; several speakers expressed concerns that the money will be spent to close holes in the budget rather than create or expand programs. Others worried that the new funding would be used to make up losses due to budget cuts in low-performing schools, rather than expanding services for high-needs children in those schools. Complicating these issues, several speakers noted, the plan includes little oversight of whether principals spend the Contracts for Excellence money as intended.

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