A proposal by the Department of Education to base tenure on classroom performance was met with heavy opposition Thursday by the teacher’s union.

The DOE along with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have proposed linking tenure to a teacher’s results in the classroom and to student test scores.

Of the 7,000 teachers up for tenure this year, about 700 will be impacted — most of whom are third year teachers.

The change will also only impact some fourth to eighth grade teachers who have been teaching the same grades and subjects for at least two years.

In a letter to teachers, Chancellor Klein said, “Unfortunately, over the years tenure has become an expectation more than an honor. And a loose tenure system isn’t good for anyone — it hurts students,
it disrespects successful teachers, and it leaves those who are not up to the difficult job to struggle.”

Klein also says classroom observations, teacher work products, and professional skills will be considered.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew says if the proposal takes shape, the union will likely sue the department.

“We will take all of our legal remedies, right now we have all the paperwork that was sent out, the lawyers are looking at all of this. But it all comes back to the part of, why would you tell people to use broken tests, why aren’t you working with us at the state level, to move this issue forward,” Mulgrew said.

The proposal calls for the top and bottom 15 percent of eligible teachers to be flagged. Principals granting tenure to anyone in the bottom 15 percent or refusing tenure to the top 15, will have to explain their decision.

According to the DOE, 93 percent of teachers who were eligible for tenure last year received it — including teachers with a prior unsatisfactory rating in the classroom.

Source NY1

Parents who rely on free after-school programs and communities that benefit from keeping unsupervised teens off the street could lose out if New York lawmakers approve $11 million in program cuts proposed by Gov. David Paterson.

With less than two months before the state budget is due, advocacy groups are raising their voices and holding out their hats, pleading “not me.”

The “Advantage After School Program” would be cut to $17 million under Paterson’s proposal, and advocates said Wednesday that would force 79 of the 303 program sites to close when their contracts expire this year.

Paterson has said he doesn’t like having to plan for deep cuts, but he’s trying to close an estimated $8.2 billion budget deficit.

The after-school program, along with one designed to help youth secure summer jobs, was partially funded with money left over from the state’s welfare program. Now with the struggling economy, a recent increase in the welfare grant and rising demand, there simply isn’t Temporary Assistance for Needy Families money left over.

The closures would eliminate after-school programs, which are operated through YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs and other groups, for more than 6,000 children and eliminate thousands of jobs, said John Albert, a spokesman for The After-School Corporation.

“These activities help provide our youth with the resources they need to grow into healthy adults,” said Brendan Cox, assistant chief of the Albany Police Department. “They also deter the youth from getting involved in self destructive activities such as juvenile delinquency and gang activity … These activities help our youth to act like children, like the kids that they are.”

The Advantage budget was already cut by $2.4 million earlier this year from $30.5 million in the original budget.

Advocates argued Wednesday at a press conference in Albany that the program for children, ages 6 to 18, should be restored to its 2009 levels. The programs help the community by keeping kids off the streets, and it helps students by offering tutorial and other academic support programs, they said.

Advantage also makes it possible for many parents to work because it gives them a childcare option between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Advocates and many Democratic legislative leaders also have objected to a proposed $35 million cut to the state’s summer jobs program.

Advocates say federal, state, and city money combined to put about 52,000 young people to work last summer in the city. Almost 140,000 applied for jobs. Earlier this month, several young people at a rally supporting the jobs program said it provided their first jobs, helping them acquire basic skills, make money and stay out of trouble.

Source: AP

David Paterson says he’ll keep pushing legislation to lift the cap on charter schools in New York.

Paterson says the state is close to reaching its limit and there are now 30,000 students enrolled.

Noting that the Legislature last month didn’t approve his measure to lift the cap, Paterson says he’ll try again either in revisions to his proposed budget legislation or as a separate bill. He says the move would improve New York’s chances of getting $500 million to $700 million in federal “Race to the Top” aid.

He’s still looking at raising the cap from 200 to 460 schools, a benchmark in the application for the federal money.

Paterson spoke Tuesday to a few thousand cheering charter school supporters who came to Albany to lobby and demonstrate.

Source: AP

The city’s Panel for Education policy voted to shut down 19 chronically underperforming schools.

The hearing, which began Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Technical High School in Brooklyn, stretched into the morning before a single vote was held. The panel voted 9-4 to close the schools at 3 a.m. after a raucous nine-hour meeting.

The hearing was met with protests from families, teachers and United Federation of Teachers President, Michael Mulgrew.

There were initially 20 schools on the list, but the Alfred E. Smith School in the Bronx was pulled off t the last minute. Its fate will be decided at a separate meeting next month.

The move will affect over 10,000 students; the first schools will close this June and the rest will be shuttered over several years.

Department of Education officials cited years of low-graduation rates and poor performance among the schools in their decisions to close them.

The Panel for Educational Policy, whose members are picked by the mayor and the five borough presidents, are required to allow the public to be present for its voting procedure and also allows the public the chance to be heard. Each person is allowed up to two minutes to speak.

The meeting was initially to be held on Staten Island, but was moved to Brooklyn Tech to accommodate the large number of people attending.

List of schools closed by Department of Education:

• Academy of Collaborative Education (Manhattan)
• Academy of Environmental Science (Manhattan)
• Beach Channel High School (Queens)
• Business, Computer Applications, and Entrepreneurship High School (Queens)
• Choir Academy of Harlem (Manhattan)
• Columbus High School (Bronx)
• Frederick Douglas Academy III (Bronx)
• Global Enterprise High School (Bronx)
• Jamaica High School (Queens)
• Kappa II (Manhattan)
• Metropolitan Corporate Academy (Brooklyn)
• Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence (Brooklyn)
• Monroe Academy for Business Law (Bronx)
• New Day Academy (Bronx)
• Norman Thomas High School (Manhattan)
• Paul Robeson High School (Brooklyn)
• School for Community Research and Learning (Bronx)
• W.H. Maxell CTE School (Brooklyn)
• PS 332 (Brooklyn)

Source: AP

Responsible city principals who save up their funds won’t have to spend them or lose them.

After complaints by some principals, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein reversed course Thursday, saying he’d worked out a deal.

“We have adjusted our budget plans to enable schools to roll money forward from their current budgets to the next school year,” Klein wrote in an e-mail to principals yesterday.

The Daily News reported yesterday that Klein was requiring principals to spend their savings out of fear he’d have to hand over unspent funds in June to the Office of Management and Budget to balance the city’s overall budget.

Roughly 800 principals saved more than $95 million from last year, which helped them save programs in the face of two budget cuts this school year.

“I applaud the chancellor for relooking at this matter,” said Edward Tom, principal of the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics. “Initially, it appeared like they were punishing those principals that were good fiscal managers.”

Source: NY Daily News

Lawmakers will pass a bill to boost the state’s looming cap on charter schools “within a week and in time for the deadline” to compete for up to $700 million in federal aid, a senior legislative official told The Post yesterday.

“It’s a good compromise that will meet the White House’s test,” the official said. “It’s a compromise that the teachers union will have some problems with and the charter-school advocates will have some problems with.”

The guarantee comes just days after Gov. Paterson called on lawmakers to immediately pass a package of dramatic education reforms designed to improve New York’s chances in the Obama administration’s $4.4 billion “Race to the Top” program.

State education officials believe the state could lose out on the funds if several laws — namely the nearly exhausted 200-school cap on charters — aren’t changed by a Jan. 19 deadline.

Only 23 open charter-school slots will remain after Tuesday, when the state Board of Regents is expected to approve seven more publicly funded, privately run schools in the city.

Some Paterson proposals are opposed by the powerful teachers unions, which back competing changes to increase oversight of charter-school spending and make it easier for charter teachers to unionize.

The legislative official would not provide more details on the compromise bill.

“With a good compromise, nobody is happy,” the official said. “But it will meet the federal requirement, which means a lot of federal money for New York.”

Source: NY Post Continue Reading this Article Here

While state math test scores make it seem students are doing better in the subject, results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released today indicate otherwise.

The study shows that students in New York State have made no progress in math over the past two years.

According to the state tests, fourth grade math scores rose nine point and eighth grade math scores rose 18 points. But the national test showed no improvement at all for those same grades.

The NAEP is considered to be the only solid measure on whether state tests are accurate.

At least one educator who spoke to NY1 said the discrepancy could mean what students are learning is not so much math as how to take state math tests.

“The state tests cover less material and schools have learned to teach to the content of those tests, which makes it appear that students are learning more, but, in fact, it is really an illusion,” said Dr. Aaron Pallas of Teachers College.

Dr. Pallas said the results raise serious questions about whether the rapid improvement that state and city officials have been pointing to, really hold up.

It’s worth highlighting that while all students take the state test, only a sample takes the NAEP. Federal officials said the New York results showed no statistically significant change.

The new New York State Department of Education commissioner, David Steiner, issued a statement saying he was greatly concerned by the NAEP scores and, in particular, the discrepancies between the state and national results. He said that he would be taking action, raising the standards of the state test and revising its design, to keep test preparation from skewing the results.

Only the state-by-state math scores were released today. English scores , and data on how city students performed in both subjects, is expected in the next month or so.

Source: NY1

Next week, education budget cuts will cause 530 school aides to be laid off, even if their schools can afford to keep them on.

The Department of Education says there are currently more aides than jobs.

While no school that budgeted for an aide will lose the position, union rules may force individual aides could be replaced by those with more seniority.

Source: NY1

In an effort to combat childhood obesity, the city’s highest school board voted Wednesday to change vendors for school vending machines.

The new machines will dispense drinks and snacks that adhere to strict nutritional guidelines. Snacks such as wasabi peas, diced peaches and seven grain crackers will now be sold.

That means food companies will need to develop new nutritional products.

“Leading the way for Pepsi for example to develop new products and we expect exactly the same thing to happen on the snack side as well,” said David Ross of the New York City Department of Education. “We know that starting with there will be much healthier products in the machine but we hope going forward that there will be more healthy products. So we’ll have, in effect, led the way for the country.”

Some parents who attended the vote voiced their concerns over the recent regulation of school bake sales.

They claim the Department of Education is forbidding bake sales in order to drive more business to the vending machine companies.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein argues the bake sales are being regulated due to health concerns over obesity.

Source: NY1

More charter schools may be coming to the city under a plan proposed Wednesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Speaking at a 10th anniversary celebration of charter schools at the Sisulu-Walker Charter school in Harlem, the mayor said if reelected, he would fight to abolish the cap put on charter schools by Albany.

Bloomberg’s plan would double the amount of charter schools in the city to 200. He is proposing that by 2013, almost 10 percent, or 100,000 public school seats will be charter.

“Charter schools like Sisulu have succeeded because they empower teachers and principals to set high expectations,” said Bloomberg. “They encourage innovation in the classroom. They create competition among schools for students. But most importantly, they give parents more options in deciding what’s best for their children.”

In addition, he pledged to raise $100 million in private funds for charter school facilities.

He is also pushing to use part of President Barack Obama’s “Promise Neighborhoods” funds for the creation of two new Children’s Zones, one in Brooklyn and one in the South Bronx.

Bloomberg said he would like to also see mayoral control extended to charter schools, with the schools chancellor gaining independent chartering authority. Currently the Board of Regents has final approval of charters.

His opponent in the mayor’s race, William Thompson, the city comptroller, says that while he favors increasing the number of charter schools, he disagrees with the mayor’s plan to lift the cap.

“I’ve talked about increasing the number of charter schools, but not lifting the cap. I still think it needs to go through the larger approval process,” Thompson said. “And I also I heard, I guess, they’re talking about having one board having multiple schools. That wasn’t the intention of charter schools. It isn’t to create little charter school corporations run by a board of directors. It’s to involve parents directly.”

Currently, there are 40,000 students on charter school wait lists.

Source: NY1