I’ve been more or less off-line for a month, and haven’t looked closely at Gotham Schools in even longer. A hot day is a good time for A/C and a return.
1. A 4th year Teaching Fellow is being used by TfA and promoted by Gotham Schools to advocate against tenure and against seniority. Ruben Brosbe. His situation deserves more discussion. But for now, why do you think, of all the teacher-bloggers in New York City, GS runs him? It’s not for his mastery of teaching – he claims not to be there. Why do the editorial boards of the News and Post quote him and not some other not-so-special teacher? And why do the TfAers running E4E not get a regular Ivy League TfAer to be that prominent voice?
You probably know the answer to some of these questions. Gotham Schools largely created this guy, and marketed him. If you have a problem with what he writes (and you should) you should respond by refusing to comment, by starving GS of the RB attention it craves. If you really have to say something, go directly to his
Being able to move forward with plans to close and co-locate schools isn’t enough for Mayor Michael Bloomberg — he said this morning that the UFT and NAACP should feel ashamed for trying to stop the changes.
Bloomberg used his weekly appearance on “The John Gambling Show” to celebrate yesterday’s late-night decision by Judge Paul Feinman to allow the city to move ahead with 22 school closures and 15 charter school co-locations. The UFT and NAACP sued in May to stop the closure and co-locations.
“There are thousands of families whose children have been in limbo because of this lawsuit, and now we can give them a clear direction. This is a big victory for the kids, and I think those that brought the suit should be ashamed of themselves. There’s no other way to phrase it,” Bloomberg said.
UFT officials bristled at the suggestion, saying that the lawsuit — which will now move into a new phase — was
by Katie O’Hare
“You can’t make a decision, then say you are giving a space for feedback because that’s really false democracy…it’s such a missed opportunity.”
-PS 9 Parent Advocate Committee (PAC) member Ivana Espinet
On July 20th, the NY State Education Department dismissed an appeal filed by parents at PS 9 in Brooklyn against the co-location of Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter School (BECCS) in their building. It looks like BECCS will be moving in while MS 571 phases out, but that doesn’t mean the larger push for co-location reform
Something that we take for granted far too often is the power of “the school community.” Whether we always recognize it or not, schools play a vital role in our society, and as such their involvement and significance to our communities can’t be easily dismissed.
http://goo.gl/0o9Ru
Many times throughout the school year our facilities are used to host a plethora of activities from all different sectors of the community. Schools have and will continue to provide safe and centralized facilities that many communities have become accustom to when it comes to scheduling and planning local events. Though it may
As an educator and strategic planning facilitator over the past four decades, Tom Olson has advised 13 different states on their education reform efforts, and has consulted with more than 500 local district and state strategic reform projects. He also served as a volunteer member on several Stand for Children (SFC) State Task Forces, and was a board member of the SFC Political Action Committee. He wrote the following letter to Jonah Edelman, the founder of Stand for Children, joining Susan Barrett as a former member now speaking out publicly about how the organization has profoundly changed.
Dear Jonah:
I’ve viewed the video of your recent presentation to the Aspen Institute about how
In a recent email newsletter dispatched to alumni, Teach For America officials said they were "deeply disappointed" by a recent National Education Association resolution opposing TFA efforts—but they also vowed to engage more with professional associations.
It's the alternative route's most explicit response so far to the NEA slap, which you may remember took place at the union's Representative Assembly earlier this month. At the convention, delegates took a strong stance against the program, saying they opposed TFA contracts in districts "where there is no teacher shortage or
The Department of Education official in charge of opening and closing schools has proposed drinking to the news that some of his plans can go forward.
In an email to at nearly 80 top-ranking DOE employees — but not to Chancellor Dennis Walcott — Deputy Chancellor of Portfolio Planning Marc Sternberg announced a happy hour to celebrate last night’s State Supreme Court ruling in the lawsuit filed by the UFT and NAACP. He wrote:
Last night:
New York Supreme Court Justice Paul Feinman denied the UFT and NAACP’s request for a preliminary injunction preventing the Department of Education from moving forward to close 22 failing schools and co-locate 15 public charter schools in DOE buildings. The judge’s ruling allows
Hyatt said that the decision to turn on the heaters was made by a manager. "It was clearly a decision that was not in line with our values
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| School District officials and parents from around the state met to let the public know that the state budget cuts are curtailing students’ opportunity to learn. |
School board members, district administrators and parents from across the state gathered in Greenfield on Wednesday to speak about how the $1.6 billion education state budget cut impacts schools, families and communities. Their message was: “It’s not OK.”
According to Bruce Quinton, superintendent of the Pepin School District, Governor Scott Walker’s recent cuts
Below is a press release from Mona Davids of the NYC Parents Union. Just a few months ago, Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn sponsored legislation in Albany that would require a one year moratorium on closing schools in NYC; he also opposed a charter co-location in his district. Today, just hours after the Judge Feinman ruledthat the school closings and co-locations could go forward, Jeffries co-authored an oped for the Daily News, along with AM Karim Camera, attacking the NAACP for suing to stop these same closings and co-locations.
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Researchers have long found differences in how schools and juvenile facilities discipline minority and white students, but inconsistent data collection has made analysis difficult.
An increase in civil rights complaints arising from disciplinary actions has caught the eye of the U.S. Department of Education. Currently, eight of the agency's 13 civil rights investigations on discipline are in Southern states. Some investigations are based on formal complaints, but others are initiated by the department to determine if a district is complying with civil rights law.
In St. James Parish, La., the DOE followed up on a complaint and found that when black students broke
1. That it was set up to to bring basic instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic to the children whose families did not have the means to hire tutors or send their children to private schools.
2. That it was set up on the factory model to train workers to work in the proliferating factories of the beginnings
I had a twitter argument the other day about a blog posting that compared the current debate around “de-selection” of bad teachers to eugenics. It is perhaps a bit harsh to compare Hanushek (cited author of papers on de-selecting bad teachers) to Hitler, if that was indeed the intent. However, I did not take that as the intent of the posting by Cedar Riener. Offensive or not, I felt that the blog posting made 3 key points about errors of reasoning that apply to both eugenecists and to those promoting empirical de-selection of fixed shares of the teacher workforce. Here’s a quick summary of those three points:
These are critically important, and help us to delineate between smart selection and, well, dumb selection.
Earlier today I stumbled across this brilliant post by RiShawn Biddle over at Dropout Nation.
Biddle boldly claims:
Despite the arguments (and the pretty charts) of such defenders as Rutgers’ Bruce Baker, there isno evidence that spending more on American public education will lead to better results for children.
Now, regarding the “no evidence” claim, I would recommend reading this article from Teachers College Record, this year, which summarizes a multitude of rigorous empirical studies of state school finance reforms finding
Library rental fees take from the needy and give to the greedy
Sent to the Atlantic, July 22
Barry Greenfield suggests that public libraries charge public library patrons a "rental fee." (July 21). Much of this would have to come from low-income patrons: Research in library services shows that members of high-poverty families are more likely to use the public library than members of higher-income families, a tendency that is more pronounced when times get hard. The library is often their primary source of books and the only way they can access the internet.
If we accept Greenfield's suggestion and charge 50 cents per item, this would raise about one billion dollars per
