A New Direction for NY Schools! - NY-GPS

A New Direction for NY Schools! - NY-GPS:

#EduElection             Weekly news, analysis and insight on what has failed in NYC public schools under Mayor Bloomberg and what success under the next Mayor should look like. Quote of the week: “School means accepting any and all students and figuring out the situation that works best for them, but the system we currently work under presumes guilt, error, fault. Let’s fix this, not simply with a reform that shifts chairs, but shifts attitudes.” - Jose Vilson, Teacher  Upcoming events: 1) TWU Mayoral Forum on Transportation  Friday, February 22nd 6-9pm at the CUNY Murphy Institute 25 W. 43rd St., 18th floor 2) Alliance for Quality Education: Parade & Lobby Day for Public Education in Albany  Tuesday, March 5th. Contact Julian@aqeny.org to reserve a bus seat. Good riddance to the Mayor of Education Failure! Mayor Bloomberg delivered his last State of the City address saving New Yorkers from having to hear more self-serving political spin, with a shorter-than-usual education portion.  In his speech, fearing the massive outcry on co-locations, as 3 leading Democratic Mayoral candidates, 35 Councilmembers and hundreds of parents across the city have called for a moratorium, Bloomberg defended the failed harmful policy, saying “How dare the special interests try to lock out our children!” Juan Gonzalez from the Daily News responded, “The very leader whose policies created ugly turf wars in scores of neighborhood schools has the nerve to condemn parents as divisive.” Well good riddance! The Mayor of Education Failure leaves our schools in a state of emergency, with only 13% of Black and Latino students graduating college-ready.   Brownsville Students & Parents Want REAL Success, File Lawsuit On Wednesday, more than 60 students and 5 parents from the Brownville Academy HS, a highly successful transfer school for former dropouts, filed a lawsuit in Federal court, arguing that Eva Moskowitz’s “Success” Academy co-location will endanger its learning environment and formula for success: smaller classes that provide students with more attention. Bloomberg said in his State of the City before he leaves he will “open 26 more of the charter schools that offer students the chance to learn in smaller, more academically rigorous settings.” Why aren’t all students treated equally under Bloomberg? Mayor’s DOE Concedes School Closure Policy Has Failed Before the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) even “rubber stamped” the 26 upcoming school closing proposals, Bloomberg’s DOE conceded to failure and announced anunexpected policy change that will allow students in these schools to transfer out before the school year is up. After 12 years, and 150 school closures, they have realized the policy has not worked, and that they have a responsibility to provide every student access to a high quality school. What would our schools look like if the Mayor understood this 12 years ago and truly focused on fixing all those schools instead of closing them? Dismantling Public Education From East to West Alienating education stakeholders from decision-making and pushing down failed reforms in NYC is not enough for Bloomberg, as he expands failed reforms all over the country. Following former schools-Chancellor, Joel Klein’s donation of $25K, Mayor Bloomberg gave Los Angeles a foul taste of education failure by pumping $1 million to a campaign to elect 3 school board candidates pushing a StudentsFirst style agenda ofteacher-bashing, online education and high-stakes testing. As Bloomberg’s failed schools agenda is rejected in NYC he is desperately throwing his millions around to see who will buy it.    A+ Policy Hub: What Actually Works in Our Schools "The A+ NYC Policy Hub seeks to contribute authoritative educational research to the public debate about schooling policy in the 2013 mayoral election. By making educational research accessible to elected officials, media, and the public, A+ NYC seeks to ground the public conversation about education in evidence about what works in the nation’s schools." Click here to check it out!