Rise & Shine: Bloomberg’s budget cuts 6,400 teacher positions
- Without new funds, Mayor Bloomberg plans to cut 6,400 teachers. (Times, Post, NY1, Wall Street Journal)
- The Times says the coming teacher layoffs show the country needs a second education stimulus.
- The city is planning to spend $5 million a year on recruiting new teachers. (Daily News)
- For the first time ever, CUNY has a waiting list, for students who apply after this week. (Daily News, NY1)
- Political consultant Basil Smikle officially declared his plan to challenge State Sen. Bill Perkins. (Post)
- The director of the Harlem Success lottery documentary said her funders include charter backers. (NY1)
- The archbishop of New York outlines a strategic plan to boost Catholic elementary schools. (Post)
- Readers weigh in on whether charter schools work, representing a wide range of views. (Times)
- A TV documentary about for-profit education led to a selloff in for-profit schools stocks. (AP)
- Oklahoma City schools will try NYC’s failed cell phone incentives experiment. (The Oklahoman)
Remainders: High school info sessions begin for seventh graders
- State Senator Bill Perkins’ primary challenger will be political strategist Basil Smikle.
- New York and 37 other states formally said that they’ll apply for Race to the Top, round two.
- Wayne Barrett accuses the UFT of using for-profit charters as a “laughable canard…to inflame the debate.”
- May is the month for seventh graders to start thinking about where they will apply to high school.
- Should a student be forced to choose between dropping a class and going to prom? A teacher wonders.
- A major critic of Duncan’s ed policy, Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, won’t run for re-election.
- What can school leaders learn from the late principal of Murrow HS? A former teacher there has a list.
- Newsweek is up for sale, but Jay Mathews says he’ll compile his list of top high schools no matter what.
- An ELL teacher says her students gain language skills faster when they try to read more difficult texts.
- Teenage researchers in L.A. are examining how school budget cuts help erect barriers to college.
- And the ever-impressive P.S. 22 choir kids take on Icelandic singer Björk’s “All is Full of Love.”
Union contract limits options for school turnaround, city says
In an attempt to improve some of the worst schools in the country, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is offering states four methods of turning around their lowest performers. But New York City officials say the union contract here rules out one of the three — the so-called “transformation” model — even though it’s the only one that wouldn’t cause teachers to lose their jobs.
The other three methods either turn schools into charter schools, close them down, or force their principals and at least half of the staff to be fired. “Transformation” calls for the principal’s removal, but keeps the school’s staff in place.
Yet crucially, it also requires that schools use students’ test scores as a significant factor in evaluating teachers, that merit pay be put in place, and that teachers whose students don’t show enough improvement be fired. Since New York state law bars principals from using student data in teachers’ tenure decisions and the
The other three methods either turn schools into charter schools, close them down, or force their principals and at least half of the staff to be fired. “Transformation” calls for the principal’s removal, but keeps the school’s staff in place.
Yet crucially, it also requires that schools use students’ test scores as a significant factor in evaluating teachers, that merit pay be put in place, and that teachers whose students don’t show enough improvement be fired. Since New York state law bars principals from using student data in teachers’ tenure decisions and the