Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall | Diane Ravitch's blog

Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall | Diane Ravitch's blog

Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall

Kathleen Cashin has been a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent in New York City in high-needs districts. She is currently a member of the New York State Board of Regents, which sets policy for the state.

In this article, which appeared in the New York Daily News, she explains her hope that school district will use their new money to invest in most successful school reform that works: reduced class size. (Mayor de Blasio, by contrast, says he wants to pour $500 million of the city’s windfall into more testing and tutoring.)

Cashin writes:

In 1999, when I was superintendent of the city’s District 23 in Ocean Hill Brownsville, fourth graders had to take a multi-faceted standardized state test for the first time, which included reading, writing and listening. The first thing I did was to reduce class size as much as possible.

The results were astounding. Not only were there significant gains in test scores the following year, but I noticed a stunning development: Students were able to forge closer relationships with their teachers, and their teachers had their morale lifted because no longer did CONTINUE READING: Kathleen Cashin: How Schools Should Invest the Biden Windfall | Diane Ravitch's blog

Richard Carranza resigns, Meisha Porter to be new NYC schools head - New York Daily News

Richard Carranza resigns, Meisha Porter to be new NYC schools head - New York Daily News

NYC schools head Richard Carranza resigns, Meisha Porter to become system’s first Black woman chancellor

Richard Carranza, the New York City schools chancellor who ignited fiery conversations about race and segregation in education and oversaw the seismic shift to remote learning throughout the coronavirus pandemic, will step down March 15 after a three-year tenure, Mayor de Blasio announced Friday.

He will be replaced by Meisha Porter, who currently serves as executive superintendent for the Bronx. Porter will become the first Black woman chancellor of the nation’s largest public school system.

Carranza’s departure will take effect a year to the day after the hectic Sunday last March when officials shuttered city school buildings in an unprecedented response to the growing threat of COVID-19

A year later, roughly 250,000 of the city’s nearly million public school students are attending in-person classes.

City officials say Carranza is stepping aside by his own accord, and doesn’t have a new position lined up. The schools chief has suffered a brutal personal toll from the coronavirus, losing multiple family members to the illness, he’s said on multiple occasions in recent months. CONTINUE READING:  Richard Carranza resigns, Meisha Porter to be new NYC schools head - New York Daily News

Arthur Goldstein Asks Michael Bloomberg to Stop Disrespecting Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arthur Goldstein Asks Michael Bloomberg to Stop Disrespecting Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Arthur Goldstein Asks Michael Bloomberg to Stop Disrespecting Teachers

Arthur Goldstein has taught ESL for decades in New York City. He is tired of being lectured by billionaires like Michael Bloomberg about how to teach or what a slacker he is.

He writes in The New York Daily News:

There’s lots of talk about whether or not school buildings should be open. European school buildings recently shut over concerns that children do indeed spread the virus. Yet former Mayor Mike Bloomberg now says, “It’s time for Joe Biden to stand up and to say, the kids are the most important things and important players here. And the teachers just are going to have to suck it up and stand up and provide an education.”

In fact we’ve never stopped doing that, but Bloomberg seems not to have received the memo. Bloomberg says kids are most important. Twelve years of working in New York City schools under Mike Bloomberg tell me to him, CONTINUE READING: Arthur Goldstein Asks Michael Bloomberg to Stop Disrespecting Teachers | Diane Ravitch's blog