Applications for new charter schools due today

Posted by Philissa at 2:52 PM

Since the state announced in April that the cap on charter schools would increase to 200 from its current 100, charter school advocates have been salivating at the opportunity to start more schools. Today, the Charter Schools Institute at SUNY, one of three chartering agencies in the state, is accepting applications for new schools. The other chartering agencies, the State Board of Regents and the city's schools chancellor, have their own deadlines. [For background on how charter schools are organized, check out Insideschools' charter school primer.]

Parents in District 15 are applying to create a new middle school that will open in the fall of 2008, the Brooklyn Paper reported this week; Insideschools' director, Pam Wheaton, told the paper, "Parents have long complained about middle schools in District 15.”

In recent years, many charter school founders have been trying to help kids escape from failing schools. I'm wondering whether we'll now see folks trying to start charter schools so they themselves can escape from the strictures of mayoral control -- and to rescue kids from ever-increasing assessments. It will be interesting to hear next spring what charter schools have been approved for the city, where they will be, and who will be leading them.

Quid pro quo for Brooklyn schools

Posted by Philissa at 1:08 PM

The Brooklyn Paper reports today that the two schools that are being made to share their building with a new dual-language Arabic school will receive a host of enhancements over the summer:

At a Parent-Teacher Association meeting last week, Department of Education officials announced that the building housing the Math and Science Exploratory School and the Brooklyn High School of the Arts will get new computers, a renovated technology lab, and a dance studio. In addition, the math and science middle school will get, for the first time, its own gym.

This past year, so many schools resisted having new schools placed in their buildings, often to success. But if these promises actually come true for MS 447 and BHSA, perhaps other schools will take a different -- and more self-serving -- approach when the DOE comes knocking.

For some background on the Brooklyn situation, read our coverage of the controversy over the Khalil Gibran International Academy.

Parents, angry about DOE survey, post their own

Posted by Unknown at 10:59 AM

If you visited the DOE website recently, you probably saw ever more frantic calls to fill out the DOE Parent Survey. The survey was part of a major plan to get parental input, and Chancellor Klein assembled a parent focus group to help put it together.

Some of those parents were seriously disenchanted when the final survey was published, and it lacked questions about parent support for mayoral control, trust for Klein and Mayor Bloomberg, and other issues about public school policy-- all questions that those parents had called for during their focus group meetings. In response, some parents put together their own survey, one that asks questions the DOE survey didn't include.

The parent survey is sponsored by Class Size Matters, a NYC organization that has been at odds with much of the Klein reforms. Class size matters called for a boycott of the DOE parent survey, asking parents to return the form with the questions crossed out, instead writing "We want real parent input – as well as smaller classes, less testing, and new priorities at Tweed to deal with the real problems in our schools."

The survey includes questions like: "How responsive do you feel Joel Klein and the leadership of the New York City Department of Education have been to the needs and priorities of parents?" and "How much stress to standardized tests cause your child? (a) too much stress (b) too little stress (c) the right amount of stress, or (d) don't know."

Summer meals info now available

Posted by Philissa at 4:31 PM

The DOE's SchoolFood program will provide free breakfast and lunch to all students under the age of 19 starting today through the end of August. No registration, identification, or forms are required. Children can go to any of the more than 700 sites around the city. You can take a look at the list of sites -- and search them by neighborhood -- on the SchoolFood website.

Supreme Court rejects school integration

Posted by Philissa at 12:01 PM

This morning the Supreme Court issued decisions in two school integration lawsuits, in both cases rejecting cities' plans to ensure racial diversity in their schools. The blog of the School Integration Project at the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP has a complete rundown of the cases and the decisions, but it's important to note that Justice Kennedy, who concurred with the court's decision, issued his own opinion arguing that while these particular voluntary integration plans -- in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle -- are not constitutional, schools still have a right to promote integration. He wrote:

To the extent the plurality opinion suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken.

So while the court dealt a blow to the future of integration, it may not be fatal, as advocates of desegregation feared today's decisions could be.

In New York City, only two schools are affected by court-ordered desegregation plans. One, IS 239, the Mark Twain school, made headlines this week with the news that some white students are admitted to the school with lower scores on the entrance exam than some minority applicants. Chancellor Klein came out against the school's quota system.

Charter school news

Posted by Philissa at 7:44 AM

Two articles appearing in the Times today offer a mixed bag of news about charter schools.

The Times has an article about internal tensions at Beginning with Children Charter School, where the wealthy founders and benefactors have fired most of the school's Board of Trustees in an effort to move toward better performance, threatening the funding the school needs to survive and alienating parents in the process. Insideschools called Beginning with Children "noteworthy" after visiting in 2005.

With the recent expansion of the cap on the number of charter schools allowed in New York State, the Times also reports that a charter management organization out of Los Angeles is working with New York's teachers union to plan a new charter high school here. Unlike teachers at most charter schools, teachers at Green Dot charter schools are members of a union — although the terms of their contracts are somewhat different from the UFT's. Green Dot schools offer higher starting salaries but fewer long-term benefits like pensions and some job protection but not the public school's tenure system. Green Dot has had a tense relationship with the Los Angeles schools, but with such a charter-friendly administration in New York and the support of the teachers union, I can't imagine it will have the same difficulties here.

Congrats, kids and teachers!

Posted by Philissa at 8:27 AM

It's the last day of school, and kids and teachers should be proud of themselves for making it through another year, one replete with mid-year busing changes, reorganization announcements, and interim assessments. Enjoy your summers!

We hear so much about the challenges the school system and its students face, but there are always some success stories too, and a number of them have made it into the news lately. Today, the New York Times profiles six valedictorians, many of whom overcame great obstacles to graduate at the top of their classes. The DOE has also been highlighting a couple of top graduates each day, including a student at Eleanor Roosevelt High School who received a full scholarship to Franklin and Marshall College despite a period of homelessness and a Midwood High School graduate who left his family in Ghana to come to school in New York. He plans to be a teacher.

Taking a longer look at success, the New York Daily News checked in earlier this week with members of a 1994 kindergarten class at Harlem's PS 36. The students should be graduating from high school this year, and more than half are. Some, especially those who made the cut to attend the selective Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, have done quite well and been admitted to selective colleges. In a city where the four-year graduation rate has only recently topped 50 percent, it's no surprise that some PS 36 kids are still enrolled or have dropped out. But across the city, kids have worked very hard to graduate, and we should all be proud of them.

Special ed still more segregated in NYC

Posted by Unknown at 10:09 AM

Special ed students in NYC are placed in separate classrooms more often than in the rest of the state, and more than twice as often as the national average.

Today the New York Times published the results of a state report on special education, reporting that educational officials called New York City's statistics "disturbing." Of particular concern is the lack of special ed integration into regular classrooms:

New York State recommends that students with disabilities be integrated into the general population in regular classrooms wherever possible, saying that they benefit academically and socially from the broader contact.

But in 2006-7, 9.4 percent of students in New York City were taught in separate settings, compared with 6.8 percent for the state. The city’s number was more than twice the national average of 4 percent, state officials said. That is virtually unchanged from a decade ago, when 9.5 percent of special education students were in segregated classrooms in the city, the report said.

Although the article did contain some praise for Chancellor Klein's special education policies, overall the city's progress in this area is clearly lagging.

No big surprise: voucher results are "inconclusive" thus far

Posted by Unknown at 2:31 PM

The first test results from Washington D.C.'s voucher experiment were released late last week, and (not surprisingly) both sides of the debate are claiming victory, or at least not admitting defeat.

The Washington Post article linked to above does a good job of summarizing the results and the history of the issue there; the ultimate result, in my eyes, is that it's really still too early to tell whether the results are positive or not. Most programs that fundamentally change the game in public education take more than a single year to demonstrate results. So I wouldn't grant the naysayers too much credence quite yet.

That said, some on the pro-voucher side have said that the simple fact that students who switched schools didn't do worse is support for their position. I'm skeptical of this argument, too-- ultimately I think we just need more time to wait and see.

On a procedural note, I was heartened to read about how the effects of the vouchers were measured, comparing voucher applicants who received vouchers to those who applied but did not receive them. Since the vouchers were awarded by lottery, this method should accurately provide the random variation necessary for a good control group. If this method can be used in subsequent years, after the effects of school changes are more substantial, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to see the real results of D.C.'s program.

Cash for kids guru in at the DOE

Posted by Philissa at 4:40 PM

The DOE confirmed in a press release yesterday an interesting tidbit the Times reported the day before and then fleshed out in a profile: Roland Fryer, the man behind the plan to pay some kids for their academic performance, has been hired by the DOE as its "Chief Equality Officer," a title that doesn't appear to have been granted to anyone anywhere before. The position will have wide-ranging responsibilities, according to the press release, ranging from reviewing enrollment and choice procedures, to analyzing the DOE's capital resources, to monitoring principal and teacher recruitment and training. Fryer will donate his services to the DOE next year while he divides his time between Harvard and New York; in the fall of 2008, he will join the DOE full-time at a salary of more than $150,000.

Thursday night: Joel Klein at CEC 32 meeting

Posted by Philissa at 5:33 PM

Chancellor Klein is still making the rounds to tell parents and community members about the upcoming reorganization. Tonight, he will be speaking at 8 p.m. at the public meeting of the Community Education Council for District 32. It's at PS 377, 200 Woodbine St., Brooklyn. Map

A brief history of the DOE

Posted by Philissa at 5:17 PM

In the July 9 issue of the Nation, which is online now, Columbia professor Lynnell Hancock has a long article about the city's schools, titled "School's Out." For those of us who have been carefully watching the schools since Bloomberg and Klein took them over, there isn't too much new information, but if you need a refresher about the many changes that have taken place, it's a useful summary. Hancock touches on the administration's corporate contacts and connections, the bus crisis, social promotion, small schools, parent involvement, and testing, among other issues. Here's a taste of her take on the system: "No matter how competent and committed the players at the top, public-sector reforms on this imposing scale may be doomed if the people most affected are left outside."

Is Bill Gates wrong on schools?

Posted by Philissa at 9:19 PM

A column making the rounds of other blogs this week is “Schooling Bill Gates,” which proposes to let Bill Gates know what schools really need. Gates, who is funding a quixotic effort to make education a key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, advocates a standard national curriculum, more school hours, and merit pay for teachers. In the column, which originally appeared in Wiretap Magazine, Sarah Seltzer says what would help students most is actually making public schools more like the private school she attended: small class size, less class time and more extracurricular activities, and independence and respect for classroom teachers. While the column is long on ideas and a little shorter on policy, Seltzer does hint that improving the quality of life for teachers might do as much to attract and retain them as increasing their salaries — a dimension of the teacher-pay issue that is rarely discussed.

Seltzer writes that some of her ideas were borne of her year teaching English in the Bronx as a Teaching Fellow; she also blogged her experience, which she summed up as “not soooo horrible.”

Bill to ease college bills advances in State Senate

Posted by Unknown at 4:00 PM

The New York Senate Majority Conference has just advanced a bill that would help ease the burden of higher education expenses. The bill includes such things as an increase in the maximum tuition deduction and debt relief for graduates facing daunting student loans.

Klein: ELL students will wait longer before taking tests

Posted by Unknown at 10:02 AM

Yesterday NY1 reported on Chancellor Klein's new plan to allow English Language Learner (ELL) students more time before requiring them to take standardized tests. Whereas ELL students currently have to take the tests during their first year in school (even students who haven't yet been in the States for a full year), Klein plans to change that requirement, exempting those students from required tests for their first two years.

While I think Klein is probably correct to exempt ELL students from state tests, since those students hardly need to spend time taking exams that won't yield meaningful results, I can't help but be skeptical about Klein's motivation for the change. ELL test scores are, of course, far below the citywide average, especially the scores of ELL students during their first two years of NYC public education. Therefore removing them from the test pool will probably result in a significant jump in test scores, giving the mistaken impression that test scores have greatly improved. With the end of Bloomberg's administration in site, and mayoral control of the city's public schools sunsetting in 2009, I can't help but think this measure could be a last push to show test gains under the Bloomberg-Klein reforms.

Of course, I could be wrong-- one could avoid the misleading test results by removing from past averages the scores of first- and second-year ELL students when calculating improvement statistics. Then the statistics would truly track how the same types of students were performing from year to year-- comparing apples and apples-- which is the only way to accurately measure the effects of school reform over time. We'll see if the DOE takes this step, or if instead they forgo statistical accuracy for the sake of political gain and claim credit for a test gain that never occurred.

Parents "Ask Martine" about school changes

Posted by Insideschools Staff at 9:50 AM

Parents raised questions about special education, middle school admissions, parent coordinators, and changes planned for the new school year at the first of a series of “Ask Martine and Friends” meetings with the Department of Education’s chief parent officer, Martine Guerrier. Some 200 parents attended the Saturday session at Brooklyn Tech High School led by Guerrier and other Department of Education officials who answered questions submitted by audience members.

Although some questions were met with rather short and unsatisfactory answers, Guerrier and her colleagues did announce new information about the upcoming reorganization that parents were eager to hear, and said that additional questions would be answered on the website.

Read more...

Parents urged to write Regents about funding by Friday

Posted by Insideschools Staff at 9:44 AM

Do you want to make sure that additional funds for New York City schools are being well spent? You can send a letter to the State Board of Regents telling them to require that the upcoming historic increase in education funding be used for the purposes it was intended, including small class size and full-day universal pre-kindergarten.

Two advocacy organizations have created an open letter to the Regents, which must be submitted by this Friday, June 22, before the Regents meet in Albany next week. The letter asks the Regents to put specific accountability requirements into state regulations.

Read more...

Coming soon: cash for successful students

Posted by Philissa at 11:18 PM

In Ben's last post, he took a look at merit pay for teachers. Now, New York City is going to pioneer offering merit pay for students — offering kids cash prizes for academic achievement.

Last week, when the first rumors of the mayor's plan to introduce monetary "incentives" for strong school performance hit the newspapers, I hoped they would prove to be just rumors. But today the city announced a pilot version of the incentive program, in which families will receive cold, hard cash for getting kids to school, showing up at parent-teacher conferences, and applying for a library card. At the high school level, it looks like the money will go straight to teenagers who take the PSAT and Regents exams and who make progress toward graduating. The incentive schedule includes a $400 graduation bonus.

This program is just one of three privately funded initiatives that make up what the city is calling "Opportunity NYC" and billing as "the nation's first conditional cash transfer program." In addition to paying for school performance, Opportunity NYC includes financial incentives for adults who maintain health insurance and who hold down a job or enroll in a job training program. All of the programs will be launched this fall on a pilot basis — the education program will be open only to families living in one of six neighborhoods whose income is below 130 percent of the poverty level and who have at least one child in grade 4, 7, or 9. Schools can also volunteer to participate in a trial of a program that will pay students for high scores on the interim assessments that all schools are supposed to give next year.

These programs represent a major achievement for Roland Fryer, the Harvard economics professor who has spent his career (short so far; he is just 30 years old) investigating whether incentives can convince people to change their environment. A fascinating 2005 New York Times Magazine cover story about Fryer suggested that DOE officials were already interested in his plan, but that he was having a hard time selling it to principals, who worried that paying kids for test scores would send the message that learning itself is an insufficient incentive. Last month, Fryer pitched his plan in a letter to principals of empowerment schools. I'm curious what has changed to get principals on board now.

While I'm always eager to hear about innovative strategies to motivate students and their families, the notion of exchanging cash for school performance just doesn't sit right with me. I wonder whether the incentives are large enough to persuade people to improve their behavior, or whether some families will just be rewarded for what they are already doing well. I also wonder, as others have, whether cash incentives will make tests even more stressful for kids than they already are. These are probably questions that Roland Fryer is eager to answer — I just wish it weren't the city's kids and their families who have to be his test subjects.

Merit pay for teachers: the state of the debate

Posted by Unknown at 1:30 PM

Today the New York Times published an article by Sam Dillon on the growing trend toward merit-based pay for teachers. Although Chancellor Joel Klein's plan for incentive-based teacher pay in New York City has stalled, the Times article reports that the movement is gaining steam at the national level. Dillon cites University of Wisconsin's Allan Odden, a professor of educational administration who studies teacher pay. According to Odden, the merit pay trend has now reached "critical mass," and teachers unions (whose members have historically opposed merit-based compensation) have begun to cooperate with the movement in some regions.

In New York City, Klein has wanted to implement an incentive-based compensation program since he became chancellor, but the issue has stalled over conflicts with the city's teachers union.

Despite the standoff over Klein's incentive pay proposal, merit pay did see a recent boost in New York City when a group of NYC charter schools received a federal grant for $10.5 million from the Teacher Incentive Fund. Check out the New York Sun's article for more.

For more on the state of the merit pay debate, check out the Economist's May 10 article.

Teach for America grad new DC schools chief

Posted by Philissa at 8:28 AM

Last week, when Washington, D.C., named Michelle Rhee, a Teach for America alum who was running the New Teacher Project, its new schools superintendent, some pointed to a TFA "insurgency" in public education. Teach for America began placing graduates of top universities in hard-to-fill teaching positions in 1990, and the oldest of its 12,000 alums are now nearing age 40. The ones who have stuck in education have almost two decades of experience and are poised to make the leap from classrooms to leadership positions.

Critics of Teach for America say the program's structure — requiring its participants to teach in a high-need classroom for two years — does little to address the national problem of teacher retention, and they complain that the young teachers are ill prepared for the most challenging classrooms. These are legitimate critiques. Still, I've visited schools in the city where the infusion of youthful energy and enthusiasm have benefited the entire school. I've also met several young principals of new schools who launched their careers in education through Teach for America; according to the organization, more than 80 administrators in New York got their start in TFA.

Rhee's position as a superintendent marks a watershed moment for Teach for America, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. As much as it has been positioned as outside the mainstream, TFA actually promotes only what we all know works to improve schools: dedication, teacher quality, and a healthy dose of innovation. The ascendancy of TFA grads in educational leadership — whether in traditional bureaucracies or in non-profit reform organizations like KIPP, which one could argue are more influential right now — reflects less an "insurgency" than the trickle-up effect of getting smart young people hooked on teaching and reforming schools. There's little for critics to fault in that.

After school programs in trouble citywide

Posted by Philissa at 11:53 PM

More than 100 schools are slated to lose their after school programs in the fall, the New York Times reports today. Statewide, 207 schools are being forced to cut their after school programs because the federal grant that funds them is running out. By the time schools were informed that they would not be able to renew the after school grants, it was too late for them to find other funding sources. In the city, 118 schools are looking at cutting their programs -- these include IS 238 in Queens, PS 20 in the Bronx, and Lower East Side Preparatory High School, all of which the Times profiles. The Queens Tribune has some backstory on the timeline and blame game of the current funding crisis. We're hoping it gets resolved and schools are able to sustain the after school programs they've developed -- and we especially hope that other schools do not find themselves in the same position next year when their funding runs out.

For more information on this crisis and other after school news, check out the After School Corporation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and sustaining after school programs in New York.

Hemphill on ed reform: DOE "risks losing support"

Posted by Unknown at 6:20 PM

Bloomberg and Klein's reforms have been on the right track, but the DOE's upcoming reorganization could undermine recent gains, Insideschools founder Clara Hemphill told University of Chicago alums at an event Wednesday evening.

Hemphill said Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have implemented some positive changes, noting the increase in teachers salaries and regional consolidation of some of New York's worst districts with some of its best. She said Bloomberg has been "substantially better than previous administrations" when it comes to education, citing his and Klein's attitude that "public education was salvageable and worth saving" as an improvement.

Read more...

SATURDAY: Martine Guerrier public Q&A session

Posted by Philissa at 3:19 PM

If you're like us, you have a few questions about what the school system will look like -- and how it will work, or not work -- after June 30. Tomorrow morning you have an opportunity to ask those questions of Martine Guerrier, the new CEO for parent engagement, and several other DOE officials at "Ask Martine and Friends," a public meeting at Brooklyn Tech High School. The event runs 11 a.m.-3 p.m., but if you get there early, you can have brunch starting at 10 a.m. Lunch will also be provided. Map

More on math scores (updated)

Posted by Unknown at 12:32 PM

6/17 update: For a summary of the reasons to be wary of the new math test scores, check out Diane Ravitch's article over at the NYC Public School Parents blog. Ravitch urges readers to "wait patiently to see whether the recent gains on the state tests are reflected on the national tests when the results are posted in November 2007."

6/15 post: The math scores published last week have attracted a wave of commentary, everything from ecstasy to serious skepticism. Today a few more publications weigh in. Elizabeth Green at the New York Sun reports that city officials are touting charter school scores as evidence that charter schools are working. She writes:

This year, 74% of city charter students scored proficient on the state math test, up from 66% last year, a review of state data by a procharter group, the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, found. Just 65% of students citywide scored as well this year, up from 57% last year.

Meanwhile, the Times published a cautiously optimistic editorial, concluding that "all signs suggest that the city and state are on the right track."

Randall's Island playing fields update

Posted by Philissa at 12:18 PM

There's been some discussion on our forum about the city's plan to lease most of the playing fields on Randall's Island to private schools instead of making them available to East Harlem public schools. The deal seems unfair both because it deprives public schools of access to public parks for the next 20 years and because the city made the deal without seeking input from residents of the affected communities. Now, the Times reports that a group of East Harlem residents are suing the city over the deal -- they're seeking to have the deal canceled because they weren't consulted before it was made. They're being represented by Norman Siegel, the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union who also led the unsuccessful cell phone ban lawsuit. No matter what happens with this lawsuit, we hope it reminds the city that New Yorkers notice when they are excluded from discussions about their neighborhoods, their children, and their rights.

BREAKING NEWS: Andres Alonso leaving DOE

Posted by Philissa at 1:34 PM

The Baltimore Sun reported this morning that the city will name Andres Alonso as the new CEO of the public schools there. Alonso is currently the deputy chancellor of teaching and learning here in New York, and he was the chief of staff to Carmen Farina when she led the department.

Chancellor Klein has scheduled a press conference for 2 p.m. in which he will name Marcia Lyles as Alonso's replacement. Lyles is the current superintendent of Region 8, and in July she was slated to become the leader of the new Community Learning Support Organization. The roughly 165 schools that chose to join her LSO will now be led by Elaine Goldberg, Lyles' deputy.

Lyles will be the third instructional leader for the city's schools in just over a year.

Wednesday: Joel Klein at Citywide Council on HS meeting

Posted by Philissa at 10:46 AM

Chancellor Klein will be giving a presentation and answering questions from the public tonight at the monthly meeting of the Citywide Council on High Schools. If you're interested in issues facing high schools or in the upcoming reorganization, you might want to attend the meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at Tweed (52 Chambers St., Manhattan). CCHS President David Bloomfield is a tireless champion of the city's students, so you can expect him to ask some pointed questions tonight.

Math scores are out; NYC students are doing better

Posted by Philissa at 4:02 PM

The state released scores from the 2007 math exams today, and scores for New York City students seem to have jumped. About 65 percent of students in grades 3-8 scored at or above grade level on the state test, up from about 57 percent last year.

The New York Times reports that the city's scores were better than those of almost every other large school district and that they are closer than ever to the state average. Statewide, about 73 percent of students scored at or above grade level on the tests, up from 68 percent last year. The state's press release notes that scores for middle school students and students with disabilities jumped the most, and that the gap between scores for black and Hispanic students and white students narrowed somewhat. The Times suggests that the rise in test scores could be a result of students' growing familiarity with the test format and content, which changed last year, and teachers' familiarity with new state math standards.

Of course, what looks like a straightforward jump in test scores can sometimes be more complex when the numbers actually get crunched, as historian Diane Ravitch recently pointed out when she took a close look at this year's reading scores. So we're looking forward to seeing the numbers in more detail. For now, we're cautiously optimistic about the scores and proud of the city's students.

Public Schools: Community based institutions or real estate?

Posted by Judy at 11:20 AM

The following piece ran as a letter to the Insideschools mailbag last summer. A year later, the city's plan to move the schools in the building remains on the table, and the Save JREC coalition continues to fight against it.

The recent report that Hunter College wants to demolish the Julia Richman building and build a new bioscience center on its site is alarming and perplexing! Julia Richman Complex, as it is now known, is a model of how a dysfunctional high school can be transformed into a thriving educational center, both in sync with its community and at the same time avoiding either chauvinistic isolation or elitism. Kids go there because the building is safe and accessible and the schools are good. And some kids go to one of its units, the Ella Baker school, specifically because their parents work in the several medical institutions nearby. In fact, that is the express reason that the school was established. Now Hunter says it will exchange the site for a brand new “state of the art” high school to house the current Complex units – at 25th Street and First Avenue.

---

The prospect of an expanded Hunter College is literally and figuratively overshadowing the ongoing success of the complex and turning it into just one more piece of real estate. How many other venerable high school buildings, are ripe for takeover? How many neighborhoods would be saddled with another out-of-scale building casting its shadow – in this case over the extraordinarily popular St. Catherine’s Park?

According to Elizabeth Rose, a neighborhood resident and parent of a student at nearby PS 183, it is misleading for the Department of Education to characterize the bargain with Hunter as a free exchange. She points out that Hunter is also a taxpayer funded institution. She makes two other points as well. Demographic projections show a big increase in District 2 school children by 2014. Why give up any building that could help accommodate the additional kids, and finally, the site at 25th Street would be much more appropriate for Hunter’s projected science facility: It would be just south of the City’s projected bioscience building just announced in the 07 budget.

Larger issue involved

NYC is in midst of a huge experiment in transforming high school education. In a city with very little unused land, we are subdividing large school buildings into small units with the mission to establish new schools, each with a clear identity. Some of these groupings work well, others are struggling, still others are too new to tell. Many parents are wary. They are suspicious of the motivation (further segregation and achievement tracking) and wish their kids could have the kind of social and athletic experience that they remember or have seen so often in movies and TV. Shall we add to the community’s skepticism by holding a real estate bargaining chip over their heads?

Veteran city watchers are used to being outraged over real estate encroachments. For public school advocates, this latest development is compounded by top-down imposition. Like most of the initiatives that the Department of Education has implemented since the Bloomberg-Klein nexus began, the Hunter matter was negotiated without any consultation with the schools and parents involved. It was only when State Senator Liz Kruger tipped off Urban Academy’s leaders that the building was being eyed by others that they learned something of the plans. Evidently, talks had been going on since last November but there was no discussion with the school community until end of May. That only happened because the school persisted until the Department of Education sent a representative, Jamie Smarr, to meet with them. Yet the Department insists it would design a new building with the schools’ input. At this point, experience tells us to mistrust that promise.

By the way, many high school buildings are worthy of landmark status – they certainly play a key role in the history of the city and in the memories of their graduates. And they are important symbols in their neighborhoods. Who is keeping track of this little corner of city lore as we go boldly forth to new educational enterprises?

Insideschools bloggers of the past

Posted by Philissa at 5:25 PM

Philissa Cramer was a staff reporter at Insideschools for three years until June 2008. She was Insideschools’ founding blogger. See Philissa's posts.

Izzy was an 8th grader at a Manhattan middle school during the 2007-2008 school year, when she blogged about looking for a high school. See Izzy's posts.

Ben Lockwood was an Amherst College student who was a 2007 summer intern at Insideschools. See Ben's posts.

More reform on the way...

Posted by Unknown at 5:26 PM

A new organization is throwing its weight behind the ever-growing movement of school reform. Democrats for Education Reform kicked off its first major event last Wednesday in Manhattan. The group, led by several successful Ivy League-educated businessmen, aims to "return the Democratic Party to its rightful place as a champion of children in America's public education systems."

Although DFER was immediately criticized by some, including representatives of various unions, as a group of condescending paternalists who lack real experience in education, the pro-reform crowd is no doubt glad to have them on board. DFER's priorities are in line with much of Bloomberg and Klein's familiar education goals: accountability, school choice, local control, and weighted student funding.

The very evening of DFER's opening celebration, the school-reform crowd got some welcome news about elections in New Jersey: at least four of the six pro-reform candidates supported by DFER and Newark Mayor Cory Booker won in their primary elections against incumbent opponents. Check out the New York Sun's article for a bit more information.

Happy belated Brooklyn-Queens Day!

Posted by Philissa at 2:05 PM

For most of us, yesterday was just another strange mid-week teacher workday. But you might be interested to know that the first Thursday in June is actually when the schools celebrate Brooklyn-Queens Day, formerly known as Anniversary Day. Anniversary Day was first celebrated in Brooklyn and Queens in 1829 as a commemoration of the first Sunday schools in those boroughs — students paraded to honor their Sunday School teachers. There was some tension between Brooklyn and Queens and the rest of the city over the day off when the boroughs were consolidated in 1898, but the holiday continued to be celebrated, even though fewer and fewer people seemed to know what it honored. Last year was the first time that students in all five boroughs got the day off -- and also the first time that teachers didn't, as a result of a clause in the 2005 UFT contract with the city.

Gothamist has a rundown of some of the history of Brooklyn-Queens Day, complete with links to articles in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle dating back to 1861.

The kindergarten enrollment debate

Posted by Unknown at 11:12 AM

House Bill A03425 was the topic of a recent notice sent out by one of the area listserves. The bill would change the enrollment cut-off birth date for children entering kindergarten in the state of New York.

Currently, children enrolling in kindergarten are expected to begin attending in September of the year they turn five. Thus, any child with a birthday between the first day of school and December 31 will enter kindergarten as a four-year-old. This has raised opposition from some parents and policymakers, who contend that many four-year-olds just aren't mature enough for today's kindergarten. One such policymaker is Assemblyman Robert Barra, who proposed bill A03425 in January.

The bill would change the birth date cutoff from December 31 to September 1, ensuring that all entering kindergarteners would be at least five years old. Anyone whose fifth birthday falls after September 1 would be required to wait until the following year to enroll. Although the stated justification for A03425 says the new cutoff date is "more logical" since it coincides with the start of the school year, the roots of the kindergarten enrollment debate usually lie in disagreements over when children are ready for school.

This debate, covered last Sunday in a thorough New York Times Magazine article, has two parts. The first deals with what the optimal absolute age for kindergarten enrollment-- e.g., whether four-year-olds are mature enough for kindergarten. The second part deals with the relative ages in a single kindergarten class. This is really a separate issue from the cut-off date question; any cutoff date will inherently result in kindergarteners who are up to a year apart. As discussed in the Times article, a key issue in the "relative ages" debate is the issue of "redshirting":

The term ["redshirting"], borrowed from sports, describes students held out for a year by their parents so that they will be older, or larger, or more mature, and thus better prepared to handle the increased pressures of kindergarten today.

Although redshirting is legal in New York, the education system in New York City strongly discourages, and sometimes prohibits, the practice. Thus children in New York City kindergartens are not usually more than one year apart, and thus the debate over relative ages is less important. Nevertheless, the debate about what the cut-off date should be is more intense.

Although A03425 seems unlikely to be passed this year (the end of the legislative session is fast-approaching and the bill has been before the Education Committee since January), we encourage you to contact Education Committee Chair Cathy Nolan or your local representative to voice your opinion on the matter. Given this bill's multi-year history and the Board of Regents' interest in mandatory, full-day pre-K (a topic for another blog entry), we think the kindergarten enrollment debate is far from over.

Also, tell us your comments, either below or in the Insideschools forum!

Summer reading

Posted by Philissa at 10:14 AM

Last week the Times ran a humorous piece about the books that schools assign as summer reading. The author, essayist Joe Queenan, thinks most books students are assigned are kitschy and insubstantial or ponderous and boring, and he's skeptical that any of them help instill a love of reading in young people.

He writes:

Forty years after being pistol-whipped by Thomas Hardy, I am amazed that the summer reading list continues to exist. In a society that has dispensed with every other laudable cultural more, it bewilders me that students still allow adults to wreck their summer vacations by forcing them to feast on the passé cheekiness of “The Catcher in the Rye” or on mind-numbing kitsch like “The Alchemist.” I’m not saying it is necessarily a bad thing that schools require students to read books during the summer: culture, like vitamins, works best when imposed rather than selected. I am simply recording my amazement that in an age when urban high schools use weapons detectors to check for handguns, educators still make kids read “The Red Badge of Courage.”

Many high schools in the city require summer reading, and we've noticed mostly quality literature on reading lists. Unlike Queenan, we think kids can really benefit from reading "The Catcher in the Rye" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" (another object of his scorn). Of course, if kids don't complete their assigned reading, it doesn't really matter what is assigned.

What has been your family's experience with summer reading? Have your kids had to do it? How much teeth-pulling did it take to get the pages read -- or did the books sit around unopened all summer?

Welcome!

Posted by Insideschools Staff at 11:37 AM

Welcome to the official Insideschools.org blog! We will be posting here regularly to help visitors sort out education news in New York, answer questions from parents, students, and educators, and generally supplement the information found on the rest of our site.

Meanwhile, please explore our site, check out the forums, and sign up for our biweekly alert. We'll keep you posted. And feel free to leave comments about what information you'd like to see covered here!