Friday, May 7, 2010

A grant to create community schools makes strange bedfellows | GothamSchools

A grant to create community schools makes strange bedfellows | GothamSchools

A grant to create community schools makes strange bedfellows


The last time he led a New York City project, Geoffrey Canada, the founder of Harlem Children’s Zone, had the teachers union as his opponent. Now the two are partnering on a grant proposal that would take struggling elementary schools and surround them with the support services that barely exist outside their doors.
Naturally, the two have a buffer: Good Shepherd Services and the Children’s Aid Society, which is the lead applicant for an Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) grant — money that was set aside as part of the federal stimulus package. The grant proposal calls for $30 million to be used over four years to reduce absenteeism in nine schools in low-income neighborhoods like Harlem, the South Bronx, and Central Brooklyn.
All of the schools that are eventually chosen for the grant will have low-performing students, but they must also have a large number of students who don’t attend class. At least 30 percent of their students must be chronically absent, meaning they miss a month or more of school, hence the grant’s name: “Attend, Achieve, Attain,” or “a3.”
The idea is to keep more children in school for longer by lengthening the school day, adding after-school and

Remainders: Rhee doubling senior staff to raise school standards

Joel Klein heading to Jerusalem to tout school reforms

A poster advertising the Jerusalem education conference where Joel Klein will be speaking.
A poster advertising the Jerusalem education conference where Joel Klein will be speaking.
If the past is any guide, Israel could be the next foreign country to import New York City-style school reforms.
Chancellor Joel Klein is leaving Saturday night for a two-day trip to Israel, during which he will argue that education reform is both possible and necessary at a day-long education conference hosted by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat.
The last country Klein visited in his capacity as chancellor, Australia in 2008, adopted a New York City-style school grading system shortly afterward. Klein also visited the United Kingdom shortly before its education minister announced plans to adopt a similar school grading system, according to Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte.