Spike in anti-school closure protests begins to heat up the winter | GothamSchools

Spike in anti-school closure protests begins to heat up the winter | GothamSchools

Tis the season to light candles, exchange gifts, visit family — and protest school closures?

Last week marked the beginning of what promises to be an unusually heated season of rallies organized by opponents of the city’s plan to close 20 schools.

Some activists point to a heightened sensitivity around this year’s school closings. But the spike in public demonstrations may also be due to changes in school governance law that has required DOE officials to explain and defend their closure proposals in public, where those decisions were once made behind closed doors.

“I think the amount of activity this year is definitely unusual,” said parent activist Leonie Haimson. “Among people who pay attention to these things, I think there’s an overwhelming sense of enough is enough and an attitude that we’re going to fight back.”

This afternoon, teachers union head Michael Mulgrew will join parents and City Council members to protest school closings on the steps of Tweed Courthouse.

Last week, hundreds of students, parents and teachers rallied against the closure of Jamaica High School in Queens. Smaller protest gatherings were also held at Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan, Metropolitan Corporate Academy and Maxwell High School in Brooklyn. Much of last week’s four-hour-long citywide school board meeting was spent in public comment session as students and teachers vented

Education Week: States Struggle to Stitch Together Pre-K-20 Data

Education Week: States Struggle to Stitch Together Pre-K-20 Data:

"Spurred by the prospect of grant funding from the federal Race to the Top competition, as well as money made available from other parts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more states are taking strides to link K-12 data systems with postsecondary agencies to develop a more holistic picture of each student.

But despite the emphasis among policy leaders on K-20 data systems, the progress that states have made toward that goal varies greatly, and many challenges—both technical and political—remain.

Although the idea of linking precollegiate data with postsecondary databases has been around for years, the difference is “it is no longer something that seems to be a good idea to people just in education,” says Ben Passmore, the director of policy research for the Adelphi, Md.-based University System of Maryland, which represents 11 universities, two research institutions, and two regional higher education centers in that state."

Deloitte 2009 Education Survey | Barry Salzberg | Secondary Education Reform

Deloitte 2009 Education Survey | Barry Salzberg | Secondary Education Reform

The competitiveness of the U.S. economy in part depends on increasing the college-educated workforce, but too few low-income students are attending college.

It is with this reality in mind that Deloitte LLP CEO Barry Salzberg commissioned the 2009 Education Survey to explore attitudes among teachers, low-income parents and low-income students about college, student preparedness, and creating a college-going culture.

The results revealed a major disconnect on the role of high school and that the current education system does not do enough to encourage teachers and administrators to take a long-term view of student achievement.

When asked to identify the most important mission of high school, only nine percent of teachers chose preparing students for college. But low-income parents and students overwhelmingly rank preparing students for college as the most important purpose of high school.

With regard to long-term success, the results also show a gap between student aspiration and actual preparedness. While 70 percent of students indicated that they “definitely” plan to attend college, only 22 percent of students said their high school has done an “excellent” job in preparing them for college.

So what must be done? By redefining the mission of high school to become a launch pad rather than the last stop and instilling a college-going culture in our high schools, the U.S. can build a 21st Century workforce.

Standing up for victimized students | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/20/2009

Standing up for victimized students Philadelphia Inquirer 12/20/2009:

"The day after 30 Asian students were attacked by a group of mostly African American classmates at South Philadelphia High School, senior Wei Chen stood surrounded by a swarm of TV cameras.

Amid the glare and tussle, Chen assuredly answered reporters' questions, pointing out that many black youths had befriended Asian students, and saying it was school supervisors who had failed. Then he handed out something most teenagers don't carry: his business card.

People wondered: Who is this kid?

The answer: He's a whole lot of things.

Chen, 18, is articulate, smart, and frighteningly organized. He's never on time for meetings - he's there early, to help set up."

N.J. eyes expanded school choice | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/20/2009

N.J. eyes expanded school choice | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/20/2009:

"The program allows children to attend schools outside their home districts. In South Jersey, 5 districts take part.

By Rita Giordano
Inquirer Staff Writer

With a governor-elect who has vowed to support more educational options, attention has turned toward a little-known program that lets families send their children to schools outside their home district.

Known as the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program, it started in 2000 as a five-year pilot. The state Board of Education readopted the program's regulations Wednesday to keep it operating in its current form. It is in 15 districts statewide, including five in South Jersey, and last school year served a little more than 900 students.

Those numbers could grow substantially if the Legislature embraces a proposal to expand the program and make it permanent.

'This program has proven to be successful,' said Sen. Shirley Turner (D., Mercer), cosponsor of the Senate version of the bill, along with Sen. Thomas Kean Jr. (R., Union). Their bill was approved by the Senate Education Committee last month and has moved to the budget committee. An Assembly version is pending."

The Educated Guess � Leaky pipeline to college graduation

The Educated Guess � Leaky pipeline to college graduation:

"Measuring Success, Making Progress is a new site that pulls together data on student outcomes in one of the clearest presentations I’ve seen. It includes: current data on high school graduation rates, college readiness, college enrollment, community college progress and college completion rates. It makes the first stab at a six-year dropout rate, tracking students form seventh grade on.

The effort was led by MPR Associates of Berkeley and its senior researcher Jay Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer is nationally recognized for creating Florida’s longitudinal student data system and is the first to acknowledge that the new site will have more complete and accurate data once CALPADS, California’s new student"

Detroit Schools Push for Change - WSJ.com

Detroit Schools Push for Change - WSJ.com:

"Detroit's public schools took a step closer to financial stability over the weekend when the 7,000-member teachers' union ratified an innovative contract that will save the district $63 million over the next three years.

Under the deal, teachers, school counselors and other staff agreed to defer $10,000 each in pay over the next two years to help the district pay its bills.

In addition, union pay raises will be more closely tied to the district's financial health. In the third year of the contract, for example, teachers will receive a guaranteed 1% pay increase, but they will get a further 2% raise if districtwide enrollment increases and the district draws more state funding."

City Schools’ New Criteria for Diversity Raise Fears - NYTimes.com

City Schools’ New Criteria for Diversity Raise Fears - NYTimes.com:

"The Chicago public schools’ response to a recent court desegregation ruling — a plan to use students’ social and economic profiles instead of race to achieve classroom diversity — is raising fears that it will undermine the district’s slow and incremental progress on racial diversity."

Chicago schools, like the city itself, are hardly a model of racial integration. But a Chicago News Cooperativeanalysis of school data shows the district has made modest gains in the magnet, gifted, classical and selective-enrollment schools, where, for nearly 30 years, race has been used as an admission criterion. Those advances may be imperiled in the wake of court rulings that have prompted Chicago Public Schools to look for factors other than race when assigning students to such schools.

Nationwide, court rulings have prompted school districts to seek creative ways to diversify classrooms without using a student’s race as a factor. In Chicago, school officials last week moved ahead with their own experiment.
Instead of race as an admissions factor, they now will use socioeconomic data from the student’s neighborhood — income, education levels, single-parent households, owner-occupied homes and the use of language other than English as the primary tongue — in placing children in selective-enrollment schools.
A 1980 federal consent decree had, for nearly three decades, made the use of race a factor in admission to Chicago’s magnet and selective-enrollment schools. In September, a federal district court judge in Chicago vacated that decree. In the district’s neighborhood schools, race was not considered in assigning

Beverly Hills Schools to Cut Nonresidents - NYTimes.com

Beverly Hills Schools to Cut Nonresidents - NYTimes.com:

"BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Daniel Kahn has never lived in this city, but he has attended its legendary public schools since the fourth grade. Now in eighth grade, he is vice president of the student council, plays in two school bands and is an A student who has been preparing to tread in his sister’s footsteps at Beverly Hills High School"

But Daniel will almost certainly be looking for a new place to hang his backpack next fall. The school board here intends to do away with hundreds of slots reserved for nonresident children, most of whom live in nearby neighborhoods of Los Angeles where the homes are nice but the city’s public school system is deeply distressed.
The students used to be a financial boon for Beverly Hills, bringing millions of dollars in state aid with them. But California’s budget crisis is changing the way schools are financed in many wealthy cities, suddenly turning the out-of-towners into money losers.
The result has been raucous school board sessions,Facebook pages devoted to each side of the debate, severed friendships and an unflattering snapshot of the social dynamic between Beverly Hills — an incorporated city of “much-haves” that needs no introduction — and the often faceless Los Angeles neighborhoods of simply “haves” that surround it.
“Membership has its privileges,” said Lisa Korbatov, vice president of the Beverly Hills school board. “But anyone can be a member. I made a choice to spend more to live in a home here when I could have spent less on a bigger home in another area. But I made a choice and sacrificed.”
Children like Daniel and his parents say the board’s impending decision — which has so riled the community that the police will be called to watch over next month’s board meeting when a formal vote will be taken — is callous toward the many children who have spent years in

Class Struggle - When teachers reject the Internet

Class Struggle- When teachers reject the Internet:

"My former Post colleague Tracy Thompson has two daughters in a Washington area school district. I promised not to say which one. It doesn’t matter since the issue she raises involves all high-tech schools, of which we have many.

People aren’t using the new web features designed to help families. Is it because parents like me are techno-phobs? Not entirely. The reluctant participants that concern her are teachers.

Both of Thompson’s kids have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. They have trouble getting their work done. Her school district, like several in this area, has web sites where parents can see what assignments their children have. That way they cannot be fooled by sly evasions when they ask their children, sitting in front of the TV, if they have any homework."

NY1 | 24 Hour Local News | Politics | Schools Chancellor Announces Pay Raises, Layoffs For DOE

NY1 | 24 Hour Local News | Politics | Schools Chancellor Announces Pay Raises, Layoffs For DOE:

"Department of Education employees learned today that they are getting a raise, but state and city budget cuts could put many of the same employees' jobs at risk.
All of the more than 1,000 non-unionized DOE employees given raises by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein are central employees, instead of unionized teachers or principals.

The raises are also lower than those for other city employees. While Mayor Michael Bloomberg approved a 4-percent pay raise for city employees for both 2008 and 2009, Klein has decided to give DOE employees a 2-percent raise for this year and last year if they make less than $70,000 or a $2,800 raise if they make more than $70,000."

DOE to award $12 million in raises to central office employees | GothamSchools

DOE to award $12 million in raises to central office employees | GothamSchools:

"At the same time city schools are poised to suffer mid-year budget cuts, the Department of Education is awarding $12 million in pay raises over the next two years to non-union department employees, Chancellor Joel Klein announced this afternoon.

Central office employees have gone two years without raises and are getting less than the city set aside for them. Under the original plan, they would have received two four percent pay raises over two years, at a cost of $30 million total. DOE officials said today the $18 million savings would be used to soften budget cuts’ blow to schools.

In a memo this afternoon, Klein told employees they deserve raises, but following significant budget cuts to schools and the layoffs of hundreds of other central employees and school-based staff, he could not justify granting the full four percent raise.

“[A]t a time when the Department and our schools will have no choice but to make further large reductions, I cannot in good conscience fully fund raises, especially for people who are already earning substantial salaries,” Klein wrote. “We are in this together, and our schools in particular must be spared to the extent realistically possible.”"

Fix, don't close, 'failing' schools: Union head says Bloomberg and Klein have the wrong approach

Fix, don't close, 'failing' schools: Union head says Bloomberg and Klein have the wrong approach

The Department of Education recently announced the closing of 21 schools - most of them large high schools - in a stated attempt to provide better services to students. The truth is that the students in these schools are poised to become the latest victims of a failed educational strategy - one that ignores the possibility of strengthening schools, closes them on the basis of mysterious and ever-changing criteria and shuffles thousands of our neediest students from one struggling institution to another.

The first problem is how the schools were chosen. According to Mayor Bloomberg, the aim of the latest round of closings is to shut down the system's lowest-performing schools. While it is true that some of the high schools identified for closure have problems that require drastic action, the list also includes schools that have made progress on every measure. It includes schools where teachers and administrators have gotten bonuses for improving scores. And it includes schools that have never received a progress grade lower than C.

Meanwhile, schools with worse records are permitted to remain open.

What's more, some of the schools identified for closure are institutions that were functioning well until the DOE accelerated the process of closing large high schools. The plan was to replace the large high schools with smaller ones - but the DOE never created enough seats in the small schools to accommodate all the students who were displaced.

Columbus High School in the Bronx is a perfect example. For years, Columbus was a successful school with a widely diverse student body in terms of student ability and success. Then, DOE policy created a group of small academies that siphoned off many of the highest-achieving pupils - and closed nearby high schools likeAdlai Stevenson and Evander Childs. The result was an influx to Columbus of non-English speaking recent immigrants, disabled and special needs students, along with students

Read more:http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/12/20/2009-12-20_fix_dont_close_failing_schools.html#ixzz0aKtJp3Q3

Can she bring Bronx success to L.A. schools? - LA Daily News

Can she bring Bronx success to L.A. schools? - LA Daily News:

"Leaving New York will not be easy for Joan Sullivan.

Working in the South Bronx … the country's poorest congressional district … for the last 13 years as a teacher, principal and education reformer, Sullivan has established her dream school and been part of a revolution that's largely turned around the country's largest school district.

In three short weeks though, Sullivan will leave that work behind to embark on a whole new challenge as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's deputy mayor of education.

She starts Jan. 19 with an annual salary of $149,000.

The exit is bittersweet. Just this week Sullivan learned that one of the students at her campus … the Bronx Academy of Letters … earned a $56,000 scholarship to Columbia University."

Teachers' unions balk at Florida's bid for federal education reform money - St. Petersburg Times

Teachers' unions balk at Florida's bid for federal education reform money - St. Petersburg Times:

"Florida is suddenly in danger of stumbling in its quest for a share of $4.5 billion in federal education money aimed at school reform.

Teachers union officials on Thursday called the state's bid 'fatally flawed' and said there isn't a local union that can support it.

That could mean trouble for Florida, which stands to lose up to $700 million in federal Race to the Top funds to improve teacher evaluations, tie teacher pay to student performance and turn around struggling schools. Union partnerships are a requirement, as many of the reforms need contract negotiations."

EducationNews.org - A Leading Global News Source - Rhee passes on bonus

EducationNews.org - A Leading Global News Source - Rhee passes on bonus:

"Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's name surfaced in this week's Examiner story about the $15 million in bonuses awarded since Mayor Adrian M. Fenty took office in Jan. 2007. The paper reported that Rhee received $41,250 in 2007 'after barely two months on the job.' In fact, the sum wasn't for stellar performance during her first weeks in town, but a signing bonus paid under the terms of her contract with the city.

The agreement says she's also eligible for an annual 'performance incentive bonus' of up to ten percent of her $275,000 base salary. Existing contracts are not covered by the October law the council passed to curb the bonus spree, so Rhee remains eligible. But, for the second year in a row, she says she's passed on the extra dough.

'I don't think it's right to take a bonus when the city and district are in the financial situation we face,' Rhee said in an e-mail."

O'Malley wants to apply in Jan. for U.S. education grants -- baltimoresun.com

O'Malley wants to apply in Jan. for U.S. education grants -- baltimoresun.com:

"Gov. Martin O'Malley criticized state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick's decision to delay a request for federal stimulus money for education, saying Friday that he wants Maryland to go after the $150 million next month.

'I find it very unusual that in the area where we're recognized as the best in the nation, that this is the one department that's not applying as aggressively as every other department has for these things,' O'Malley said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun.

Maryland has been awarded more than $4 billion in stimulus money this year, making it among the most competitive in the nation, O'Malley said."

 

Detroit teachers' union OKs contract | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Detroit teachers' union OKs contract | detnews.com | The Detroit News:

"The Detroit Federation of Teachers approved a new 3-year contract early this morning that calls for salaried teachers to loan $10,000 to the district over a period of 40 paychecks, no pay increases until 2011, and nearly $28 million in savings on health care costs'.

By a 3,578 to 2,031 vote, teachers ratified the new agreement which goes into effect immediately and contains new academic reforms such as a comprehensive teacher evaluation system and school-based performance bonuses and a system of priority schools. It affects 7,000 union members.

'This was a contract that had to be negotiated under the most difficult of circumstances so it's not happiness on my part but relief that the membership paid more attention to our truth than the lies and rhetoric of the dissidents,' said Union President Keith Johnson."

Backgrounds of 3 MPS superintendent finalists detailed - JSOnline

Backgrounds of 3 MPS superintendent finalists detailed - JSOnline:

"The remaining candidates to be chief of Milwaukee Public Schools are two African-American men and one Hispanic man, all with experience in big-city school districts.

Philadelphia native Gregory Thornton, superintendent of the 7,800-student Chester Upland Public Schools in southeastern Pennsylvania, previously was in the No. 2 job for the Philadelphia School District.

Robert Alfaro is one of four regional superintendents for the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, one of the nation's largest districts with more than 300,000 students, though his responsibility is for a suburban region. He earlier had a post with the San Antonio school district.

Stacy Scott, one of six associate superintendents with Montgomery County, Md., schools outside Washington, D.C., has spent years as an education consultant, including for Milwaukee Public Schools, he said.

Those were some of the details available Friday about the three finalists to replace Superintendent William Andrekopoulos, who plans to retire in the summer."

Mayor, universities to address tuition tax at press conference

Mayor, universities to address tuition tax at press conference:

"Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has scheduled a news conference at 9:30 a.m. with city council members and local university officials to discuss his efforts to enact a first-of-its-kind tax on student tuition.

Council is scheduled to vote today on the 1 percent tax, but the news conference suggests that may not be necessary.

Mr. Ravenstahl wanted the tax to generate about $16 million a year to help pay for pensions of retired city employees, but council last week delayed voting on the tax after Ravenstahl says he was making progress in talks with officials from universities and other nonprofits about contributing money to the city instead of taxes."