Big Education Ape: Jan 26, 2010

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "Folsom Prison Blues"

Brouhaha in Brooklyn: Live-blogging the PEP’s school closure vote | GothamSchools

Brouhaha in Brooklyn: Live-blogging the PEP’s school closure vote

Tonight’s school closure vote is underway in Brooklyn. Anna and Maura are on the scene and will be providing dispatches until the meeting’s bitter end.

12:45 a.m. I’m just going to go ahead and say it: Don’t expect Remainders tonight.

12:40 a.m. Just a reminder that there are a number of items on the PEP’s agenda that don’t involve school closures. One of those is the space plan for PS 15 and PAVE Academy in Red Hook. Julie Cavanagh, the PS 15 teacher who tried to win the right to picket outside Mayor Bloomberg’s house last week, explained why she’s still out on a school night: “I am going to make them look me in the eye when they vote.”

It may take a lawsuit to preserve schools

It may take a lawsuit to preserve schools:

"On Tuesday night at the San Francisco Board of Education meeting my administration brought forward a preliminary budget proposal that encompassed the next two fiscal years and contains cuts of a magnitude never seen in California public education to date. To say it is a bleak outlook would grossly underestimate the size of the tsunami that is about to hit not only San Francisco's schools but the entire state education system. Yes, these cuts will be greater than those imposed after Prop. 13 and even greater than those experienced during the Great Depression."

To provide some perspective, here simply is our situation: SFUSD has an unrestricted general fund budget of approximately $400 million. Due to the actions taken in Sacramento over the last 18 months, our projected deficit over the next two years will total $113 million, or $1,365 less per student. This means we will be getting $4,977 per student instead of $6,342 per student. So we face 21 percent less for teachers and counselors, for books and math texts, for computers and art classes, and for field trips and science labs.

Sacramento has presented us with this problem and no new math can help us. School districts throughout the state are required by law to make the numbers work or face being put under state receivership. California school districts have been fiscally prudent; this is not a problem created by educators. We've tried to do more with less in a state whose dwindling commitment to education has gotten so bad that by next year we will rank dead last in the country for how much we spend per pupil. How is it possible that the eighth richest economy in the world can have the lowest per-pupil expenditure in the

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/26/ED9H1BNOE4.DTL#ixzz0dmZJzWXm

President Obama to Propose Freezing Spending on Some Programs - Politics K-12 - Education Week

President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget will propose freezing some $447 billion in discretionary programs. The change will save about $15 billion next year (or to put in perspective, a little more than the federal government spent on Title I grants to districts last year).

The freeze doesn't apply, apparently, to military and veterans programs, as well as programs such as Social Security. And it likely would not apply to programs covered under the health-care-overhaul bill, the future of which is pretty uncertain. And it won't apply to any spending put into a "jobs bill," such as the $154 billion measure the House approved late last year, which included some substantial education spending.

It's not clear yet whether, and which, K-12 education programs will be subject to the freeze, since it is for overall spending levels not individual programs. (We know that at least one program, the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, will be slated for an increase of $1.35 billion and opened up to school districts).

But it certainly sounds as if programs such as Title I grants to districts and special education, or smaller Education Department programs, such as TRIO, could be in the mix for cuts or freezes. And if they see even a small increase when everything else is level-funded, that will be a big deal, symbolically.

But, at the same time, symbolism may not mean much to cash-strapped districts, which are still making program and staff cuts despite the $100 billion in

Eduflack: The NYC HIgh School Improvement Experience

Whenever Eduflack writes about the "successes" of New York City's school improvement efforts under Chancellor Joel Klein, I get publicly flogged by some audience or another. Most take significant issue with my conclusions that NYC Department of Education has improved the quality of the public schools. Others take issue with giving Klein (and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg) credit for such school improvement. And even if I can get the opposition to acknowledge an uptick in student achievement in NYC, they will immediately retort that the gains are minimal, and not nearly enough to declare turnaround efforts in New York a success.

My responses to such criticism have been relatively simple. The test scores, at least on New York's state exams, do show gains in both reading and math in NYC. If you don't believe the final tallies coming from Albany, you should at least acknowledge that NYC has won the Broad Prize, and that Broad similarly crunched the numbers and found academic gains across the city. And if the gains aren't big enough for you yet, first, give it time. Then remember how large the NYCDOE truly is. Upticks in a system that size are worthy of praise.

Always a glutton for punishment, Eduflack is going to raise the NYC achievement flag again. Today, we're going to reflect on a forum hosted yesterday by the Alliance for Excellent Education. Offering a multi-hour symposium yesterday under the banner of "Informing Federal Education Policy Through Lessons from New York City," the Alliance also put a spotlight on a new report it has released, "New York City's Strategy for Improving High Schools."

Villegas to resign from Southwest ISD

Villegas to resign from Southwest ISD:

"The Southwest Independent School District will soon be looking for a new chief after Superintendent Velma Villegas announced her retirement, effective June 30, during a Jan.18 school board meeting.

“This decision is one that has mixed emotions for me because I have come to love the Southwest community and my work as your superintendent,” she said in a letter to the board.

Villegas said she plans to spend more time with her family and do some consulting work, including helping Texas A&M-San Antonio develop its teacher preparation program.

A Texas native, Villegas has led the district since 2005. She previously was an assistant superintendent in Spring Branch ISD near Houston."

Daily Media Use Among Children and Teens Up Dramatically From Five Years Ago - Kaiser Family Foundation

DAILY MEDIA USE AMONG CHILDREN AND TEENS UP DRAMATICALLY FROM FIVE YEARS AGO

Big Increase in Mobile Media Helps Drive Increased Consumption

Most Youth Say They Have No Rules About How Much Time They Can Spend With TV, Video Games, or Computers

WASHINGTON, D.C. – With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth, according to a study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today.  And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today.
Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Foundation about young people’s media use.  It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth.
Mobile media driving increased consumption.  The increase in media use is driven in large part by ready access to mobile devices like cell phones and iPods. Over the past five years, there has been a huge increase in ownership among 8- to 18-year-olds: from 39% to 66% for cell phones, and from 18% to 76% for iPods and other MP3 players.  During this period, cell phones and iPods have become true multi-media devices: in fact, young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33).
Parents and media rules.  Only about three in ten young people say they have rules about how much time they can spend watching TV (28%) or playing video games (30%), and 36% say the same about using the computer.  But when parents do set limits, children spend less time with media: those with any media rules consume nearly 3 hours less media per day (2:52) than those with no rules.
Media in the home.  About two-thirds (64%) of young people say the TV is usually on during meals, and just under half (45%) say the TV is left on “most of the time” in their home, even if no one is watching.  Seven in ten (71%) have a TV in their bedroom, and half (50%) have a console video game player in their room. Again, children in these TV-centric homes spend far more time watching: 1:30 more a day in homes where the TV is left on most of the time, and an hour more among those with a TV in their room.

“The amount of time young people spend with media has grown to where it’s even more than a full-time work week,” said Drew Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation.  “When children are spending this much time doing anything, we need to understand how it’s affecting them – for good and bad.”Heavy media users report getting lower grades.  While the study cannot establish a cause and effect relationship between media use and grades, there are differences between heavy and light media users in this regard.  About half (47%) of heavy media users say they usually get fair or poor grades (mostly Cs or lower), compared to about a quarter (23%) of light users.  These differences may or may not be influenced by their media use patterns. (Heavy users are the 21% of young people who consume more than 16 hours of media a day, and light users are the 17% of young people who consume less than 3 hours of media a day.)

Black and Hispanic children spend far more time with media than White children do. There are substantial differences in children’s media use between members of various ethnic and racial groups.  Black and Hispanic children consume nearly 4½ hours more media daily (13:00 of total media exposure for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites).  Some of the largest differences are in TV viewing: Black children spend nearly 6 hours and Hispanics just under 5½ hours, compared to roughly 3½ hours a day for White youth.  The only medium where there is no significant difference between these three groups is print.  Differences by race/ethnicity remain even after controlling for other factors such as age, parents’ education, and single vs. two-parent homes.  The racial disparity in media use has grown substantially over the past five years: for example, the gap between White and Black youth was just over two hours (2:12) in 2004, and has grown to more than four hours today (4:23).
Big changes in TV. For the first time over the course of the study, the amount of time spent watching regularly-scheduled TV declined, by 25 minutes a day (from 2004 to 2009).  But the many new ways to watch TV–on the Internet, cell phones, and iPods–actually led to an increase in total TV consumption from 3:51 to 4:29 per day, including :24 of online viewing, :16 on iPods and other MP3 players, and :15 on cell phones.  All told, 59% (2:39) of young people’s TV-viewing consists of live TV on a TV set, and 41% (1:50) is time-shifted, DVDs, online, or mobile.

Effective Teaching Campaign grades contract | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

The Effective Teaching for Every Childcampaign gave the new teachers' contract mostly high marks in a report card, but said that it does not provide enough incentives to recruit and keep teachers in hard-to-staff schools.

While progress was made in site selection, teacher standards and evaluations, and tailoring professional development to the needs of specific schools, "we also see a larger missed opportunity," said Lauren Jacobs of the Cross City Campaign for School Reform, a coordinator of the campaign. More should have been done to make these schools more attractive places to work, she said.

At a rally and press conference in front of School District headquarters, about 60 students, parents and teachers gathered to express their opinion on the contract. To express their mixed feelings, they chanted, "Way to go, more to go."

The campaign is urgently concerned about distributing effective and experienced equitably across the system and creating stable staffs at the neediest schools. It gave the contract a D on incentives because:

Do you keep pushing when others can’t (or won’t) ’see’ your vision? � EducationCEO's Blog

Do you keep pushing when others can’t (or won’t) ’see’ your vision? EducationCEO's Blog

Approximately 1.5 years ago our organization, Millennium Scholars Academy (MSA), submitted a charter petition to the Gwinnett County Board of Education. We proposed to open the first K-12 Visual and Performing Arts (tuition-free) charter school in the county. At the time that we submitted our petition, we had enrollment commitments for 160 students, ranging from grades K-9; we even had parents whose children were not school-age who asked us to consider adding a Pre-K program!
The board denied our petition, citing several reasons, including the following: (1) looping/multi-year classrooms were already being implemented in schools throughout the county; (2) our plans for the arts program was too extensive to do during the traditional school day (Kennedy Center Arts Edge Standards); and (3) Understanding by Design was not research based. As required by the state, I responded to the board’s deficiencies. I even went so far as to imply that looping implementation must be based on the zip code of the

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - San Diego Schools' New Testing Idea: No Child Left Unmeasured

By EMILY ALPERT

Tom O'Malley knew that the fourth grade classes at Birney Elementary had been a success -- but the numbers said it had failed.

O'Malley said two years ago, he and a fellow teacher got a crop of children who were badly behind. They helped the students improve, making even bigger gains than the last classes they taught. But because the kids didn't do as well as the earlier class, who came in ahead and scored higher, test scores seemed to drop.

"I felt like a failure as a teacher," O'Malley said, shaking his head. "I'm not one of these teachers who are scared to be held accountable. I just want to be held accountable for what I actually do."

His story underscores a nagging problem with test scores, especially under No Child Left Behind: Schools are gauged by how well they do from year to year, but nobody is comparing the same children. When school officials say that fourth grade math scores sunk or soared, they really mean that one class of third graders -- the class from last year -- did well or poorly

The Educated Guess � Derek Mitchell, Partners in School Innovation, on teacher collaboration

Education Research Report: Achievement Effects of Four Early Elementary School Math Curricula: Findings from First Graders in 39 Schools

Achievement Effects of Four Early Elementary School Math Curricula: Findings from First Graders in 39 Schools

Achievement Effects of Four Early Elementary School Math Curricula: Findings from First Graders in 39 Schools reports on the relative impacts of four math curricula on first-grade mathematics achievement. The curricula were selected to represent diverse approaches to teaching elementary school math in the United States. The four curricula are Investigations in Number, Data, and Space; Math Expressions; Saxon Math; and Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics.

First-grade math achievement was significantly higher in schools randomly assigned to Math Expressions or Saxon Math than in those schools assigned to Investigations in Number, Data, and Space or to Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics.

The research described in this report is consistent with WWC evidence standards:

Schools Matter: Bill Gates Honors His Empire's Prime Directive on Uganda's Kill The Gays Bill

Schools Matter: Bill Gates Honors His Empire's Prime Directive on Uganda's Kill The Gays Bill

With Bill and Melinda softening any resistance to good old fashioned corporate colonialism in Africa with their foundation's unlimited supply of tax-sheltered handouts, Microsoft has established a lock on educational technology in Uganda and elsewhere on the continent. And just this week, Forbes reportsthat Gates has teamed with Coke and TechnoServe to assure Coca-Cola global advantage in the fruit juice market.

The project seeks to help local farmers whose fruit will be used for Coca-Cola's locally produced and sold fruit juices. TechnoServe will train farmers in improving quality, increasing production and getting organized into farmer groups, and it will facilitate gaining access to credit.

U.S.-based TechnoServe's corporate partners include Cargill, Kraft, Nestle-Nespresso, Olam International, Peet's Coffee & Tea and Unilever. Since its founding in 1968, TechnoServe has helped to create or expand thousands of businesses in more than 30 countries.

Hey, I wonder if TechnoServe will offer Ugandan farmers any

The DC VOICE Ostrich: DC VOICE City-Wide Reform Campaign Action Briefing

DC VOICE City-Wide Reform Campaign Action Briefing

| author: The DC VOICE Ostrich

On Thursday, January 28th at 12:30 pm DC VOICE is hosting a city-wide conference call and webinar to update the community about the status of the Demand Reform Demand Equality Campaign focused on Community Schools, Parent/Community Resource Coordinators, and Professional Development. Community members have demanded that community schools be a priority for education reform in the District, and DC VOICE intends to make sure we keep it a priority for policymakers during budget season.

Call toll free: 1-866-415-4341

Conference code: 634019443

Webinar: DC VOICE City-Wide Reform Campaign Action Briefing

Please join us in this movement to coordinate community partnerships within schools so we can offer our children and families the best education and comprehensive services possible. This city-wide action call and webinar will also give you a chance to ask questions and learn how you can get involved.

Mentoring: The New Activism in America - THE DAILY RIFF - Be Smarter. About Education.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker is on the move with a call for action in the
"education movement" in this 1:23 video below.

He is a participant in the upcoming movie "The Lottery" coming this Spring.

Booker should know. He is a member of numerous boards and advisory committees that are committed to education including: Democrats for Education Reform, Columbia University Teachers' College Board of Trustees, and the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

"Everyone should be involved . . . in some way to help out." Here are four ways to make a difference:

Be a mentor only requires four hours a month. "Everyone should be a involved in the life a child that is not your own or some way to help out".
There are also "e-mentors" - mentoring by e-mail.
Get involved in the local scene. Put political pressure on changing local schools.
Check out the organizations in every state that are fighting for change, innovation and choice.

10 Lessons Every College Student Should Learn from Mark Zuckerberg - Becoming a Computer Technician

10 Lessons Every College Student Should Learn from Mark Zuckerberg

It is a story that gets told hundreds of times over and will continue to be told a hundred times more. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, along with many of his Harvard computer science contemporaries, set up the wildly popular, time-sinking, “it’s complicated”-touting social networking site in 2004 from their dorm room. From single-school directory featuring a high-contrast male mascot with a hauntingly creepy expression to worldwide phenomenon, according toForbes it eventually led Zuckerberg to a net worth of $1.5 billion in 2008. Computer scientists and college students hoping to start their own business have a few broad lessons to learn from his success that may apply to careers and life alike.

1. Be open to change without losing sight of your goals.

Facebook grew because of Zuckerberg’s flexibility and willingness to change his product based on consumer demands and financial opportunities. “Change,” of course, does not have to necessarily indicate inherent compromise. As his brainchild expanded from a Harvard dorm room to a global community, Zuckerberg never strayed away from its two most basic premises. At no point did he charge users to take advantage of the networking service – profits came purely from advertisements. Nor did Facebook ever mutate beyond its core ideal of connecting people with one another. While the artifice grew and shifted and modified to fit requests, the social networking service never quit being a social networking service. Because of this, Facebook stands as a perfect example of exercising a great deal of adaptability without ever having betrayed its initial intentions.

Recovery School District's books are in better shape, but still flawed, audit finds | New Orleans Metro Education News - - NOLA.com

The state-run Recovery School District's problems with overpaying employees who no longer work for it have continued for a third straight year, although to a reduced extent, according to a new report released by the state's legislative auditor Monday.

'These findings have to stop happening. That's the bottom line,' State Sen. Ed Murray said.

The report also rapped the district for making some late payments to vendors for a second straight year and for failing to adequately track equipment such as laptops, among other concerns.

RSD officials said they've made significant progress on reducing overpayments, adding that most of the problems predate current district leaders, including RSD Superintendent Paul Vallas. In general, they attributed many of the findings to the fact that, because the RSD is a state agency that was created quickly after Hurricane Katrina, it's hamstrung by financial and accounting rules that don't apply to other school districts.

"A lot of these are penny-ante things that are a product of us being subjected to rules and regulations that no other school districts are subjected to," Vallas said.

However, members of the legislative audit advisory council, made up of state lawmakers, grilled Vallas and State Superintendent Paul Pastorek for hours on Monday morning at a meeting held in the Superdome.

Teachers challenging state's raid of funds | State News | eastvalleytribune.com

Teachers challenging state's raid of funds | State News | eastvalleytribune.com:

"Two teachers are challenging a maneuver by lawmakers to balance the state budget by taking money they say legally can go only to supporting public schools.

The lawsuit filed Friday at the state Supreme Court contends legislators are violating both constitutional provisions and state law by siphoning off 10 percent of the money that is raised from the sale of state trust lands. Attorney Tim Hogan of the Center for Law in the Public Interest said the move also runs afoul of the federal law which gave Arizona the trust lands when it became a state in 1912.

Hogan wants the high court to direct the state Land Department to return the nearly $10 million already taken from the special trust fund and a prohibition against future transfers."

SAISD exploring charter school increase

SAISD exploring charter school increase:

"When James Aden relocated here from Berkeley, Calif., he wanted to live near downtown and he wanted his children in good schools, so he moved into the coveted Alamo Heights school district.

But Aden toured a school there and decided he wanted something more for his kids — including a measure of diversity he felt was lacking at his neighborhood school. Now Aden's kids attend Hawthorne Academy, a district-run charter school in the San Antonio Independent School District that is open to students who live outside the district boundaries.

Parents like Aden are one reason the San Antonio Alliance, which represents SAISD teachers and other district staff, would like to see more district schools become charters."

Literacy to be schools' top job The Post and Courier - Charleston SC newspaper

Literacy to be schools' top job The Post and Courier - Charleston SC newspaper:

"Teaching students to read is more important than anything else in Charleston County School District.

The county school board unanimously agreed Monday night that that should be the district's top priority, and their historic decision will focus current and future superintendents on the problem of illiteracy.

The final approval of the board's first-ever literacy policy will translate into roughly $8 million being directed this year toward new reading initiatives and will prevent struggling readers from being passed to the next grade without extra help.

The new policy is the culmination of reactions stirred by a series of Post and Courier stories revealing the serious illiteracy problem in local schools; nearly 20 percent of the county's ninth-graders read on a fourth-grade level or worse"

Minnesota teacher pay raises small ... and still controversial - TwinCities.com

Minnesota teacher pay raises small ... and still controversial - TwinCities.com:

"As school districts across Minnesota scrambled this month to approve new two-year teacher contracts, teachers ended up with their smallest pay raises in years.

But maybe not small enough.

Cost-of-living raises averaged less than 1 percent, but many districts will shell out millions to cover seniority raises promised in years past and rising health insurance costs.

And that has irked some lawmakers who have tried to hold education harmless despite mounting state budget deficits. When the legislative session begins in February, they have to figure out how to erase a projected $1.2 billion shortfall over the next 18 months."

Gov. Charlie Crist backs easing class-size rules - South Florida - MiamiHerald.com

Gov. Charlie Crist backs easing class-size rules - South Florida - MiamiHerald.com:

"TALLAHASSEE -- Having already spent $16 billion to reduce class sizes -- and facing a multibillion-dollar budget deficit -- leading Republicans including Gov. Charlie Crist want voters to reconsider their 2002 vote in favor of smaller classes.

Crist, who in the past has opposed tinkering with the class-size amendment, said Monday he now supports essentially freezing it where it is now -- with mandated caps calculated as school-wide averages.

State Sen. Don Gaetz, a former Panhandle schools superintendent, and Rep. Will Weatherford plan to unveil such a proposal in the coming days as a new constitutional amendment that would be put before voters in November if the Legislature approves it."

Math school leader retiring - Education - NewsObserver.com

Math school leader retiring - Education - NewsObserver.com:

"The leader of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics announced his retirement Monday, following 10 years in which the Durham campus continued to grow but questions arose about the administrators he hired and the pay they received.

Chancellor Gerald Boarman said he wants to return to his home in Maryland to spend more time with his family, who had remained there.

The announcement surprised both the school's trustees and members of the UNC Board of Governors, who oversee the elite residential high school for academically gifted students. A spokeswoman for UNC President Erskine Bowles said that Boarman first broached the retirement with him shortly before Christmas."

Female teachers may pass on math anxiety to girls, study finds - latimes.com

Female teachers may pass on math anxiety to girls, study finds - latimes.com:

"Girls have long embraced the stereotype that they're not supposed to be good at math. It seems they may be getting the idea from a surprising source -- their female elementary school teachers.

First- and second-graders whose teachers were anxious about mathematics were more likely to believe that boys are hard-wired for math and that girls are better at reading, a new study has found. What's more, the girls who bought into that notion scored significantly lower on math tests than their peers who didn't.

The gap in test scores was not apparent in the fall when the kids were first tested, but emerged after spending a school year in the classrooms of teachers with math anxiety. That detail convinced researchers that the teachers -- all of them women -- were the culprits."

City Department of Education to shutter problem-plagued Brooklyn charter school - NYPOST.com

City Department of Education to shutter problem-plagued Brooklyn charter school - NYPOST.com:

"The city is about to pull the plug on a Brooklyn charter school that's rife with financial mismanagement, The Post has learned.

East New York Preparatory, which has booted low-performing students and shortened its year by a dozen days, would be only the fourth city charter school ever shuttered and the second to have its charter revoked by the chancellor, who authorized it to open in 2006.

The school, which yesterday received a 30-day notice of the city's intention to close it in June, was put on probation last February, after city officials caught wind of sky-high staff turnover and the dissolution of the school's board of directors.

In November, state Education Department inspectors documented a host of violations that led city officials to drop the hammer."

Panel To Vote On School Closings; Heavy Turnout Expected - NY1.com

Panel To Vote On School Closings; Heavy Turnout Expected - NY1.com:

"A citywide education panel is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to allow the DOE to shut down some city schools based on their performance rates. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
With 20 schools on the chopping block, and people energized by a new process that encourages public comment, Department of Education officials expect to face a large and unfriendly crowd at Tuesday night's public meeting.

Last summer, the state Legislature continued mayoral control of the schools but stripped the DOE of its power to close them. That's now the responsibility of the Panel for Educational Policy, whose members are picked by the mayor and the five borough presidents.

Since school closure decisions are no longer made behind closed doors, the PEP is required to vote in front of the public while also allowing them an opportunity to be heard.

'The participation that I've seen in this school closure issue this year has really been extraordinary and something that we really haven't seen a lot before,' said Kim Sweet of Advocates for Children of New York."

Rubber Rooms: NYC Teachers Paid To Do Nothing - wcbstv.com

Rubber Rooms: NYC Teachers Paid To Do Nothing - wcbstv.com

NEW YORK (CBS) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: CBS 2 HD's cameras witnessed firsthand as teachers who were waiting to hear charges sat around in rubber rooms and literally did nothing for days, all while being paid.

Hundreds of New York City teachers removed from classrooms on a wide range of allegations are sent to offices that are called "rubber rooms."

Many stay there for years, waiting for determinations of their guilt or innocence.

But while they wait they do nothing at all. And they're still paid -- with your tax dollars.

CBS 2 HD takes you "inside … the rubber rooms."

CBS 2 HD's hidden cameras recently got a rare look inside the rooms, which are located in every borough of New York City. As many as 530 teachers are paid to do nothing while the Department of Education investigates various charges against them. Many teachers say it's a nightmare -- being forced to sit in a room all day and not teach.

"The saddest thing is that there are some people doing nothing. Not even that," teacher Leevert Holmes said.

They're officially called "temporary reassignment centers."

Big New York High Schools Fall Hard but Are Not Going Quietly - NYTimes.com

As the Department of Education sent fewer students to Columbus, enrollment began to decline, but so did the academic level of its entering student body. By 2005, only 6 percent of the entering eighth graders were reading at grade level, and the proportion of special education students rose to nearly a quarter. Another reorganization led the school to create small clusters with names like “Equality” and “Justice,” and to form work-study and other structured programs that give students on the verge of dropping out a second chance.

The school stabilized, but its four-year graduation rate remained stubbornly low, and struggles continued. As measured by the city’s “peer index,” which takes into account over-age and special education students and the academic level of its entering class, Columbus had the eighth-lowest ranking among 380 high schools in 2008-9.

The Columbus student body is in constant flux. Because the school has unscreened admissions, it takes children expelled from charter schools, released from juvenile detention, and others on a near-daily basis: last year, 359 of its 1,400 students arrived between October and June. Even after the city proposed the school’s closing in December, it received 27 more students. Lisa Fuentes, the Columbus principal

More schools require students to learn personal finance - USATODAY.com

More schools require students to learn personal finance - USATODAY.com:

"MIAMI — Each day after school, 17-year-old Phyllis Quach goes to a warehouse filled with silk flowers, stuffed animals and other gift items her parents sell through their South Florida wholesale business.

The recession hit the family hard and they can no longer afford the building. Quach helps pack the goods for a move to a cheaper location. On weekends, her mother often goes door to door, hoping to find new retail customers.

'I never want to go through what they go through,' Quach said, tears gathering in her eyes."

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