Remainders: Look to Brooklyn for hot pre-k and gifted programs
- About 600 students walked out of school today in support of continued free student Metrocards.
- Open less than a year, the Brooklyn School of Inquiry is the city’s second most coveted gifted program.
- And Park Slope’s P.S. 321 was the hardest pre-school to get into in the city.
- Pissed Off Teacher has trouble mustering enthusiasm among her students for a diagnostic test.
- Arthur Goldstein submits his remembrances of layoffs past.
- A professional development skeptic confesses that he found yesterday’s PD useful.
- A teacher in the Bronx questions why the state allows teachers to grade their own Regents exams.
- The UFT’s Jackie Bennett has more analysis of data on charter schools retention and achievement.
- To plug a budget gap, a NJ school asked parents to pay schools for their children’s housework.
- Two Brooklyn Tech students discuss their “SAT hangovers.”
- And P.S. 22’s choir wishes you a happy weekend with a nice cover of “I’ll Stand By You.”
Last year’s cue-card incident cost UFT’s political chief his job
I never figured out what the changes were — until today. After the incident, Marvin Reiskin, the union’s political director, retired. He was due to leave at the end of the year, anyway, but the retirement happened a month or so
Details on city’s plans to improve failing schools delayed a week
The federal government is giving New York State $308 million to help fix its lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, 34 of which are in New York City. To receive the funds, school districts must explain to the state which of four pre-approved models of school improvement they plan to use. The city’s plans were originally due today, but they’ve been delayed as city and teachers union officials haggle.
“While we work to finalize labor issues, we’ve been granted a one week extension on our application,” Department of Education spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld said. “Given the wide variety of schools involved, we want to make sure we have as many options as possible to fix these struggling schools.”
One major issue is whether the union contract limits which of the four models can be applied to schools. City officials have argued that the only model that does not require that teachers lose their position — the so-called








