GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Two schools that had faced closure votes this week are being taken off the chopping block.

The Department of Education said today it would no longer seek to close the middle grades of Wadleigh Secondary School of Performing and Visual Arts or the KAPPA VII middle school in Brooklyn. Teachers reported getting the news at the end of the day today, one day before the citywide school board was set to vote ont he closure proposals.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the department had made the decision after listening to community input at public meetings and behind the scenes.

“While these two schools continue to struggle, what we learned is that they are also poised to quickly improve,” he said in a statement.

But supporters of the schools, particularly Wadleigh, said the city’s statement was a smokescreen and said they would still travel to Thursday’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting in Brooklyn to protest closure votes for 23 other schools.

The real reason for the unusual reversal, they said, was that influential politicians in Harlem had sprung to Wadleigh’s aid — and threatened the Bloomberg administration in the process. (more…)

Students at a charter high school who have been learning about state politics evidently think Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked the right questions during his State of the State address earlier this month.

During the speech, Cuomo argued that students are the only people in schools who don’t have advocates in Albany. Who should represent them? he asked. His answer: “This year, I will take a second job — consider me the lobbyist for the students.”

That answer satisfied students the Renaissance Charter High School for Innovation, who created a short video recapping Cuomo’s comments.

“Who’s OUR lobbyist?” one student asks. Later, she says, “My governor, my lobbyist.”

The video is part of the school’s preparation for Charter Advocacy Day on Feb. 7, according to Principal Nicholas Tishuk. It follows another video, about cyberbullying, produced earlier this month after legislators visited the school. (more…)

City Councilman Robert Jackson, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew addressing students at P.S./I.S. 187.

With a new round of budget projections already on the horizon, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent a clear message to City Hall today, warning Mayor Bloomberg that teacher layoffs would not be on the table to close gaps at the Department of Education.

“I cant imagine why you would go back to that idea again,” Quinn told reporters outside P.S./I.S. 187 in Washington Heights, where she spent more than an hour greeting students on their first day of school. “It didn’t work.”

It was just a couple of months into the last school year that Bloomberg announced his intention to lay off thousands of teachers in order to balance the city’s budget. But layoffs were ultimately averted after the city struck a deal with the UFT and City Council.

Quinn, who is planning a 2013 mayoral run, said she hasn’t discussed the prospect of teacher layoffs with the mayor yet this year. But she signaled that she would reprise last year’s fight if the mayor again levels a layoff threat.

“I think, and I certainly hope, that they saw how clear and strong we in the council felt about the idea of layoffs last year,” she said.

Quinn was joined by Councilman Robert Jackson, chair of the education committee, and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew at the school. (more…)

The Facebook campaign to make Weingarten senator.

The Times reports today that, early this morning, there were only two possible contenders to replace Hillary Clinton whom Governor Paterson had not called to say “Sorry, you’re not it”: Kirsten Gillibrand, a congresswoman from upstate New York, and Randi Weingarten, the local and now-national union president. Gillibrand is definitely Paterson’s pick, but just before that became clear, there was a groundswell to push Weingarten for the choice.

It didn’t come from teachers; it came from the gay and lesbian community. Above is the image from the Facebook campaign a BGLT group created on behalf of Weingarten, who publicly came out recently. There’s also this story on the Queerty blog.

Did Weingarten ever really consider taking the seat? At first, I thought she was having her name floated simply as a way to raise her image and political stature, not because she was serious. But lately I’ve been getting the sense from people Weingarten consults that she sincerely considered changing jobs. The fact that this Facebook campaign doesn’t hurt that idea.

United Federation of Teachers officials said Weingarten will have a comment on Gillibrand later today.

Hat tip to Examiner on the Facebook campaign.

Not allowed, says a federal court

I am pleased that the federal court agreed with us that teachers cannot wear political buttons while in our schools. Keeping politics out of the classroom was our primary concern here, and our position has been fully vindicated.

Background on the case, brought by the United Federation of Teachers earlier this month, who wanted teachers to be able to wear buttons, here and here.

UPDATE: I just got the actual decision, by Lewis Kaplan of the southern district court. It’s not as clear-cut a victory for Klein as his statement suggests. Teachers cannot wear political buttons, but they are allowed to do two other things: (1) post materials with “candidate-related political content” on union bulletin boards located close to students and (2) stuff staff mailboxes with “materials containing candidate related political content.”

An ED in 08 sign appeared behind Chris Matthews before the debate last night.

Despite having been written off for dead recently when its funders cut its pursestrings, ED in ’08, the campaign to make education a prominent issue in the election, was clearly alive during last night’s debate.

A campaign sign held up behind NBC commentator Chris Matthews during that network’s pre-debate coverage touted ED in ’08. The organization running the campaign, Strong American Schools, had about 75 employees and volunteers at the debate, according to spokeswoman Shannon Murphy. She said one of them probably held the sign behind Matthews.

Murphy also said ED in ’08 “had an idea” about the debate’s final question:

The U.S. spends more per capita than any other country on education. Yet, by every international measurement, in math and science competence, from kindergarten through the 12th grade, we trail most of the countries of the world. The implications of this are clearly obvious. Some even say it poses a threat to our national security. Do you feel that way and what do you intend to do about it.

For the record, ED in ’08 has said this issue can be solved with more time in school, better teachers, and national standards. Some of those policies appeared in the candidates’ answers.

Even without Ed in ’08‘s urging, education is likely to pop up during tonight’s town hall-style presidential debate, which focuses on domestic policy issues. For a primer on the candidates’ education views, read GothamSchools’ coverage of Barack Obama’s platform and John McCain’s platform.

Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect says she wishes the candidates would address the growing segregation in our country’s schools, which Sen. Ted Kennedy argues in a new article has received far too little attention from the justice department under the Bush administration. I’d like to hear more about which elements of their education plans they realistically think can be implemented in lean financial times. If the worsening economy crowds out these topics tonight, they’ll likely be on the agenda of the education-only debate between the candidates’ leading education advisers, taking place Oct. 21 at Teachers College. That debate will be streamed live online.

A couple of times during last night’s vice presidential debate, candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin departed from their talk of the war, Wall Street, and Main Street to extol the virtues of supporting and investing in education, which Biden called “the engine that’s going to give us the economic growth and competitiveness we need.”

That the candidates managed to mention education even though not a single question addressed the subject provided a bittersweet eulogy for Ed in 08/Strong American Schools, the bipartisan political action committee with the goal of increasing education’s profile in the national election. Ed in 08′s backers stopped pouring money into the campaign last month, far short of the investment that would have made it the wealthiest-ever single-issue PAC.

The Gates and Broad foundations, which had pledged up to $60 million for the cause, say the campaign accomplished its goal after spending only $24 million and doesn’t need any more funding before Election Day. “I think it is clear that we have embedded into the mindset of the campaign that the crisis of our schools is an essential part of the domestic policy program,” Marc Lampkin, executive director of Strong American Schools, told the Puget Sound Business Journal, which broke the story last week. (Alexander Russo of This Week in Education was the first blogger to pick up the story.)

Indeed, the founding members of Chancellor Klein’s Education Equality Project, which John McCain signed onto in August, included a number of Ed in 08 leaders, and last week the Education Equality Project and Ed in 08 released a joint statement asking for the moderators of the remaining debates to ask questions about education. (So far, they haven’t.) And a Strong American Schools spokeswoman told Education Week’s Campaign K-12 blog that both McCain and Obama supported at least part of Ed in 08′s policy agenda.

If a small group of consultants gets its way, Chancellor Klein could make a move from Tweed to City Hall next year when term limits push Mayor Bloomberg out of office.

Joel Klein

A group of eight political consultants is exploring the prospects for a Klein mayoral bid, reports Elizabeth Green in today’s Sun. Although DOE spokesman David Cantor says the chancellor isn’t planning to run for mayor, Klein himself hasn’t told the group to count him out, Green reports, and the group members have concluded that he would have a good chance of winning should he enter the race, which so far has attracted only candidates that many consider uninspiring.

With Mayor Bloomberg’s interest in changing the law to allow himself a third term roundly criticized by even his own staffers, a Klein mayoralty could ensure the continuity of the last seven years of Children First school reforms as well as bring the DOE’s emphasis on accountability to other city agencies. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is notoriously right-wing, so it was no surprise when, earlier this week, it endorsed John McCain’s education plan. But I was surprised to see that its editorial suggested that McCain cite Edison schools’ performance in Philadelphia as an example of a successful privately-run alternative to public schools — because no one, not even Edison’s leaders, disputes the company’s failure.

I was under the impression that Edison’s free-market glow had dimmed as its schools barely inched up academically, lost enrollment, were plagued by safety issues and high teacher turnover, and ultimately even were taken back over by the district that once saw the company as path out of persistent failure. The Journal mentions the six-school seizure in Philadelphia but attributes it to Democratic myopia, not market forces. Last month, the company announced that it was becoming EdisonLearning, an education technology and data management provider. Looks like the only folks who didn’t get the memo about the end of the Edison era were those penning the Wall Street Journal’s education editorial.