Word comes from Joyce Szuflita of  NYCSchoolHelp that an interim acting principal was named at PS 20 in Fort Greene. The new principal, Lena Barbera, comes from a popular Boerum Hill school, PS 261, where she has been on staff since 1996, most recently as assistant principal. Check out the PS 261 website for more information about her. According to PS 20 PTA President Ayanna Blaize, Barbera has already reached out to both the PTA and staff .

PS 20 was in the news last  spring when it was slated to become one of three new citywide Gifted and Talented programs to open in September. The program was nixed after too few families applied. In May,  Principal Sean Keaton was arrested for allegedly assaulting a teacher.  (The New York Times Local Fort Greene/Clinton Hill blog covered the story extensively this spring but there’s been no word on the fate of the former principal. According to Blaize, school officials say they are “still investigating.”)

UPDATE (7/31): According to The New York Post, Sean Keaton, the former principal, “has been assigned to the district office pending the outcome of his criminal case.” The article quotes Keaton’s lawyer saying he expects his client will be cleared and return to the school “in good standing.”

Q: I am on Facebook a lot with my friends, just to, like, stay in touch, share photos, nothing serious. Sometimes we use four-letter words in our conversation, it doesn’t really mean anything. My mom saw my page and really got on my case for this. She says college admissions people read applicants’ Facebook pages and judge them on that. I think she’s over-reacting. First of all, those people probably don’t have time to search for every applicant on Facebook. But also, most of the people using Facebook are teenagers and you have to expect that language. I mean, it’s just for fun, no big deal, right?

A: Using Facebook to “stay in touch” is not wrong, of course, and it is fun. In fact, it’s so much fun that thousands of people who are far beyond their teenage years use it. (Go ahead, look me up.) But it is wrong to assume that admissions people do not take the time to check applicants’ entries on social networking sites. They do. They don’t have the time to check every applicant; but they check many. Silly, frivolous things don’t turn them off. But entries that reflect bigotry, racism, homophobia, intolerance, or a violent nature definitely set off alarms. The admissions people aren’t trying to spy; they are trying to gather any additional information that could help them decide if a person should be admitted to their academic community. (more…)

 Have a question for Jane?  Search archives | Contact the College Counselor

Dear Readers,

Last week’s question concerned a student theft of another student’s property. Judging from the number of comments this column received, this question clearly struck a nerve with parents. Debate among readers ranged from blaming the incident on the student for bringing a forbidden cell phone to school, to the school’s not having the personnel to adjudicate incidents.

To be fair, it can take many hours of a teacher’s or guidance counselor’s time to resolve incidents like this, to the detriment of other work. And yes, cell phones are banned from school, although some schools turn a blind eye to the rule. But my bottom line is this: it is the schools’ responsibility to respond to parents’ concerns. Schools may not be technically guilty in cases of theft, but they are guilty of ignoring or dismissing parents’ and students’ problems. Schools should develop a specific routine and designate personnel to handle such incidents, the routine should be included in the safety plan, and the safety plan should be given out to all parents. The Parents Association must be part of the team that sets up the plan.

An even more important question not mentioned by commenters is, how can the school establish a climate that engenders respect for the school community and reduces student-to-student crime, bullying, and other discipline problems? My answer: spend a lot of time working toward that goal. Here are some ways to do that: (more…)

 Have a school question for Judy?  Search archives | Contact Judy

Dear Judy,

I have a question about an incident in my daughter’s school. One of her classmates disposed of my daughter’s home keys and a cell phone in a garbage can. He admitted going through her book bag when she wasn’t around. The school officials had a meeting with his parents, and the boy said he is sorry. Nobody contacted me from the school. I found out what happened myself. I called the assistant principal this morning, and she told me that school is not responsible for lost items, and I can file a police report if I want to be reimbursed by the parents of that boy. Could you please tell me what should I do in this case? Is the school really not responsible for anything? What about safety?

Upset Parent

Dear Upset Parent,

Is the school responsible for the loss? Although there is a process, spelled out in Chancellor’s Regulation A-412, that the school must follow when a student is robbed on or near school property, including writing up an incident report and a range of punishments for the student who is responsible for the theft, there is no mention of the schools’ liability for the items stolen. The Department of Education’s Discipline Code, which you should have a copy of, also has a detailed list of possible infractions and punishments but does not mention a victim’s compensation or a school’s liability. You should also ask for a copy of your school’s specific safety plan to check if it includes any options for recourse.

Even if the school is responsible, going through a legal process will probably take more time and legal fees than the items are worth. You should still, however, file a police report. The police report and the school’s report of the theft, which is called an incident report, are important documentation in case you need to establish the need for a safety transfer.

If the school is not legally responsible for your daughter’s items, it is still responsible for handling the situation properly. They have already failed to notify you and show you the incident report, as the Chancellor’s Regulation requires. Now the principal or guidance counselor should set up a conference with the boy’s parents to discuss how you can be repaid. Depending on the age of the child, there might be an arrangement for him to earn the money, or the parents might agree to reimburse you. If the principal or his designee won’t help arrange this meeting, call the district family advocate and other Department of Education contacts, such as office of School and Youth Development, (718) 935-4357, or the Office of Legal Services, (212) 374-6888
I hope this resolves in a peaceful way.

Judy

 Have a school question for Judy?  Search archives | Contact Judy

At a jam-packed and raucous meeting on Monday night, the Community Education Council of District 28 in central Queens passed a unanimous resolution recommending the immediate removal of Dr. John Murphy as principal of MS 8 in South Jamaica. The resolution came at the end of the monthly meeting, attended by upwards of 150 parents, teachers, and community members. They crowded into the makeshift basement auditorium of PS 182, which quickly became a standing-room-only venue. The CEC voted on the resolution minutes after Rev. Charles Norris read a litany of complaints against Murphy, ending each with a rousing declaration of  “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Although a recent incident thrust MS 8 into the media spotlight, the press (WCBS, Daily News, Queens Chronicle, and the New York Teacher) reports that there is a long history of abuse by Murphy at MS 8, as well as at other schools. CEC member Emily Ades spoke from the stage, saying she issued her own report in November 2008 after performing a walk-through of the middle school, which she likened to a detention center.

Ades, a former elementary school teacher in the district, said she received no response from the Department of Education about her report, which detailed a school where “there was no School Leadership Team, the principal made all decisions, there were numerous safety issues, and the children were on lockdown,” she said.

Martine Guerrier, Chief Family Engagement Officer from the DOE Office for Family Engagement and Advocacy (OFEA), came late to the meeting after notifying the CEC that she would not be attending, and sending two representatives in her stead. Her arrival was unexpected and was not met with a warm reception.

Both parents and CEC members said they had reached out to her office to no avail. Kenneth Williams, one of the CEC vice presidents, spoke of his dissatisfaction with OFEA after he sought their support following negative experiences with the principal of PS 30. “[The community has] been left out in the cold for two years. Not just MS 8. Not just PS 30. It’s the whole district,” he said.

Guerrier said, “A number of issues were raised to me today that have not been brought to me before.”

In a telephone conversation with Insideschools.org, Department of Education spokesperson Ann Forte said that there is an “ongoing investigation” of the principal.  “We don’t believe that his removal is warranted,” she said, noting that he “sent a letter home to parents a week ago trying to reach out and push to try to communicate better.” She said concerned parents should reach out to District 28 Superintendent Jeanette Reed. The superintendent’s office is ultimately responsible for the hiring of principals and for their dismissal.

Meanwhile, protestors gather each morning before MS 8 begins its school day. They hold signs and photos of Murphy and often cheer “get rid of the rat.” A rally will be held Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Jamaica branch of the NAACP.

Insideschools has learned that a sixth-grade student was mugged yesterday afternoon at J.J. Bryne Park in Park Slope, the city park that essentially serves as MS 51’s de facto schoolyard, lunchroom, social hub and outdoor gym. The boy, who was chatting with friends after school, was approached by a group of apparently older children at 3:20 pm. When a would-be mugger found only a stick of chewing gum in the boy’s sweatshirt pocket, he took out his frustration by giving the younger boy a beating, leading to facial bruises, a black eye, three and a half hours in the Emergency Room (and a bruised young ego, too). The aggressors scattered after the attack and the younger students returned to MS 51, where parents were called and an ambulance summoned.

This morning, the boy’s mother went to the school to speak with the principal — and as she waited, another youngster came into the office to report an attempted assault on her way to school.

Sixth-graders at MS 51 and other schools citywide have new freedoms — they may leave school for lunch, they may take public transportation, and they have time to socialize and visit with friends. But with freedom comes risk. “These kids are open targets, on their own for the first time, in the park,” says parent Deborah Hodge, who says she was surprised to learn that her son’s experience wasn’t unique, and that other sixth graders had been victims of physical attacks near the school.

“All parents should know this,” she said this afternoon, after talking with others whose kids have been roughed up. “If I had known what happened before, I might’ve acted differently.” Ironically, Hodge says the physical freedom was one of the things that attracted her family to MS 51 — but she rejects the notion that “you need to run from school to home,” and feels her son, along with his schoolmates, should be safe and feel secure after school in the park. (NYPD officers are on hand intermittently, although they are not a daily presence.)

Hodge is interested in hearing from other MS 51 parents; she says she’d like to take something positive out of this scare and help make her son’s school community stronger. Contact her at deborahodge@gmail.com or drop a note in our comments string.

Editor’s Note: the Safe Haven program on the Upper West Side is one community’s response to similar challenges.

For more on middle-schoolers’ independence, read one boy’s manifesto, his mother’s response, and this conversation about one mother’s controversial, kid-driven choice.

In today’s Times, a retired social studies teacher and very proud papa got in trouble at Brooklyn Tech — fined and reprimanded, for his decision as school librarian to showcase a comic-book version of ‘Macbeth’ his daughter had illustrated.

Whatever one feels about illustrated classics — some turn their nose up at anything derivative, others say any route into literature is worth celebrating — doesn’t it seem the city might have better, more urgent, or more important things to do than pursue a public-school librarian for potential conflict of interest?

In a disturbing, cross-town coincidence, NY1 reports that students at three high schools have been exposed to pepper spray this week, with more than two dozen kids evaluated for complaints ranging from chest pains to burning eyes, and two 14-year-olds, in separate incidents, detained by the NYPD.

What are kids doing with pepper spray, and what are they doing bringing it to school?

Persistent declines in level 4 middle school ELA scores and other hallmarks of flagging achievement from the top tier of New York City’s students have prompted many commenters’ heartfelt concern about the untoward effects of a test-driven education culture.

The point’s not lost on academe — eduwonkette’s post today substantiates what we’ve heard and seen, as does this study. The flip side is, no matter how dogged, test-linked, or slow, real progress is being made among the lowest-performing sets of kids; many connect the NCLB dots to rising achievement.

If moving under-skilled kids forward is the prime educational target, as Chancellor Klein has asserted multiple times, what is the cost to the city’s most-skilled students? Why do these students show poorer test scores? And how can the “two steps forward, one back” pace change to one that moves everyone forward, struggling learners and motivated, prepared, and ambitious kids alike?

G+T and other specialized, enriched programs are only part of the answer. Legions of kids just don’t ace the tests, and others aren’t offered the opportunity. The challenge, we worry, will outlast the Bloomberg era: While seeking to meet the needs of the least able, how can the city better support its top learners?

The kids who are middle- and high-school students today will quickly become the voters that define the city’s agenda. How can we best serve them to learn, and to lead, tomorrow?

Some folks may opt for picnics or the movies on the last day of school, Thursday June 26th. But if you, like thousands of city parents, worry about threatened school budget cuts, a late-afternoon visit to City Hall may be more your speed.

Join Class Size Matters activists and others to protest the budget cuts and crowded classrooms; meet on Broadway near City Hall at 3:30, ahead of a 4pm press conference.

There’s just another week before the City Council wrestles the proposed budget to some kind of compromise conclusion; if you can, before heading off to the beach, summer camp, the cineplex (or the nearest sofa), make your presence known.

A little-noted irony of the DOE’s many student incentives, the cell phones meant to reward middle schoolers — the ad campaign just won a prize in chic Cannes, France — are still 100% prohibited on school premises, by DOE regulation.

So, figure this: Give the kids a phone, but ban its use. Or, alternatively, teach kids that what you say — No Phones! — is far from what you do: Are you a good student? Here’s a phone, and you can ‘earn’ minutes, too.

No wonder kids say middle school is confusing.

Today’s tragic crane collapse on the Upper East Side, the latest in a series of construction accidents in city that’s experiencing a building boom, took place at the site of the new East Side Middle School, where developers tore down an old public school building to make way for a new condominium building that will also house a public school. The Times is reporting that the cab of a crane fell as many as 20 stories to the ground this morning, killing at least one person.

Groundbreaking for the new ESMS, a popular school currently located on York Avenue between 77th and 78th streets, happened last September. (View photos of the event.) The new, 34-story building, which will house an expanded ESMS as well as 118 condo units, was slated to be completed in 2011; it’s not clear how this accident will affect the timeline but I think we can hope that construction there and elsewhere in the city should not happen until we can be guaranteed it’s happening safely.

School officials in Dallas have started giving GPS devices to kids who regularly have trouble making it to school — so they can’t pass off illegitimate excuses when they’re truant. The GPS devices appear to be improving attendance for these students, and one expert notes in the Times article on the subject, “It’s far better than locking a kid up” — not to mention less expensive, despite paying for a full-time case manager to check in on students.

Still, some in Texas have complained about the tracking systems, saying the ankle bracelets used in an earlier iteration of the Dallas experiment, and currently used in a similar program in another Texas city, are reminiscent of slave chains. I, too, am uncomfortable with a program that eases kids to the indignities of being monitored electronically. On the other hand, perhaps if students at Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School were part of a program like the one in Dallas, they would make it to school in time for the starting bell, after which, according to the Post, students complain they are sometimes barred from admission. (Boys and Girls is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit over illegal pushouts filed in 2005 by Advocates for Children, Insideschools’ parent organization.)

Bad news for critics of the citywide cell phone ban in schools: Yesterday, a state appeals court upheld the ban, saying that “the department has a rational interest in having its teachers and staff devote their time to educating students and not waging a ‘war’ against cell phones.”

The author of the opinion also wrote, “If adults cannot be fully trusted to practice proper cell phone etiquette, then neither can children” — but that to me sounds like grounds for an etiquette lesson, not a costly rule that inconveniences families and causes students to feel alienated and persecuted.

Of course, many families won’t let the ban stop them from sending their kids to school with a cell phone. Louise at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, for example, recently wrote that she’s contemplating getting her soon-to-be-6th grader a cell phone to provide security during the trip to and from middle school next year.

Over at the Insideschools high school forum, user LeonDMatthew describes what happened earlier this week when the mobile scanning unit showed up at his school:

I came into school today and was surprises to see the police presence. I knew what was happening we were being scanned. This time I was determined to keep my belongings but was unsuccessful. I was told that if I did not surrender my cellphone and zune (like and i-pod), I would be handcuffed and they will be forcefully taken. So I surrendered them. While my belongings were being bagged and tagged I voiced my opinions to the school aid. I said “I can understand if they were taken because I was caught using them but the scanning and threatening and all the commotion were unnecessary.” All he said was this is what the principle says and I’m doing my job. I also petitioned to him all of the “what ifs” I could think of. For example I mentioned an incident that happened last week when there was a gang shoot-out in front of my school, but still no cigar. I was told my belongings would be returned on Thursday. What do you think? Was I and my fellow students wronged today? Please tell me what are your opinions about the whole no cell phone policy I want to know what parents are thinking. Please give me some adult insight.

So, adults, what can we tell LeonDMatthew? Hope you’re not caught without a cell phone next time gang violence flares up in your neighborhood? Shut up and obey the security guards — it’s the only way you’ll be able to get to class? There has to be a better way to deal with school safety.

Last week was a scary one for two Brooklyn high schools.

On Thursday, John Dewey High School was locked down for three hours after a student dropped his gun in class, then picked it up and fled. Dewey doesn’t have permanent metal detectors, although the roving detectors recently made an appearance. An insightful student wrote on the Times’ City Room blog, “First they manage to take all of our phones away but when someone brings a gun to school they cant find it.” Check out the comments there: students are mixed on whether they would like to see metal detectors installed, but there doesn’t appear to be any division on the subject of whether Dewey has grown less safe and why. The reason for the decline, commenters say, is an influx of students from Lafayette High School, which is phasing out due to poor performance.

Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn does have metal detectors, but that didn’t stop a student from being stabbed during a fight there on Friday; this weekend, he was in critical condition and his attacker had not been arrested. Officials say the attacker may have used scissors as a weapon, but students say the school has so many doors it’s possible to sneak illicit items inside.

Today is Super Tuesday — and in an unusual circumstance, New Yorkers will cast their ballots in a presidential race that has not yet been whittled to two opponents. Vote early or late, or on your way to celebrate the Giants’ Super Bowl win, but do make time to vote at your local polling place. Polls will close at 9 p.m.

Schools have never been closed on primary days, so they are open to students today — but some parents are concerned about having a record number of strangers in school buildings, the Times reports. Chancellor Klein says the schools will keep kids safe and notes that schools might use the opportunity to offer a lesson about democracy — a lesson not tested on standardized tests but one, apparently, worth learning nonetheless.

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling this summer raised our hopes that the city’s schools would finally receive equitable and more adequate funding, but it’s turning out not to be quite the banner year for school funding that some had hoped. First, Governor Spitzer reduced the amount of new money flowing to the city’s schools. Now, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a $324 million reduction in the city’s education budget, representing a 1.3 percent cut.

According to the Post, Bloomberg sees the cuts as an inducement for principals to spend more efficiently. Speaking as the business leader who amassed a fortune of nearly $12 billion (or $324 million, 37 times), Bloomberg said,

“I’m sorry. You can always cut 1.3 percent. In fact, it’s healthy to go and say let’s cut a little bit and force the principals and the teachers and the administrators to say, ‘Is this program worth it?’”

Bloomberg’s sentiment is, of course, offensive to principals and teachers and administrators who are struggling to provide high-quality educations under difficult circumstances and who certainly don’t think anything they’re doing is worthless (except maybe confiscating cell phones and administering standardized tests under DOE orders). And more than that, it’s offensive to children for whom every art class, field trip, and ounce of enrichment means something, even if those expenditures don’t always immediately translate into improved “performance.”

Elected leaders often have to make difficult decisions that adversely affect their constituents. We understand. But they don’t have to sound happy about it.

We all know that overzealous security guards can be a problem in schools, but I didn’t think the issue extended to kindergartens. Apparently it does. When a 5 year old at PS 81 in Queens had a tantrum which presumably had something to do with him being 5 years old a security guard handcuffed him and called an ambulance to take him to a local psych ward, the Daily News reports today. Of course, there may be more to this story than the Daily News is saying, but the school and the DOE aren’t disputing what happened, and now a kid feels unwelcome at his neighborhood public school. This story is just one more reminder that the city’s schools need personnel who are trained to work with children, not criminals.

What is our role, the students’ role, in our society?

As it stands now we are the constant object of the education discussion sentence. My English teacher told me (and mind you, this was last year… in my junior year of high school) that a simple sentence contains three parts: the subject or actor, the verb or action, and the object or that which is acted upon.

As in: “The Department of Education (that’s the subject) puts (the verb) children (the object) first (I guess that’s an adjective).”

In the American education debate, we are acted upon by many subjects: The Department of Education, which treats us like products, numbers that need to be manipulated so that it can look good; the city, which treats us as criminals who need to be babysat by the NYPD for a couple of hours a day; and our teachers, whom people assume can snap their fingers and turn us into brilliant astrophysicists ready to herald in a new age of American economic glory.

In debates about the issues, class size for example, we always hear about how current conditions make teaching impossible. What about learning? Do you think it’s any easier to learn in a class of 34 than it is to teach? Since when has learning become a passive action? Just because it contains no plosive sounds and seems to flow off the tongue a bit easier doesn’t mean it’s any smoother of a process. Learning is not an exact science. It takes hard work, intense concentration and in today’s schools, quite a bit of luck.

If our education systems are truly trying to put “Children First,” then it is time for us to become the subject of our education. People like Joel Klein need to stop asking, “Are our teachers teaching?” and instead ask, in the words of the Bard, “Is our children learning?”

To refocus this picture, we students need to take a more active role in our schools. That is the key mission of the New York City Student Union, a citywide, student-founded, student-run organization. Since its creation in 2006, the union’s goals have been to act as a powerful collective voice for New York City’s students, to give students a say in the decisions made about them, and to provide communication between students from all over the City.

Each Monday, these students from small schools, impact schools, specialized schools and others, meet to examine the problems in our city’s schools and come up with student-generated solutions to them. For example, we’ve advocated the need for smaller classes to the governor and other state officials. We testified before the New York City Council against the cell phone ban, and most recently we’ve lobbied the Department of Education on improving its new progress reports and student surveys.

Additionally we work on student empowerment projects such as our Student Government Project, in which we are researching the state of student governments around the city and look to develop an effective student government model so that students can have a greater say in their individual schools, and the NYC Students Blog, the first-ever student-run blog about the NYC education system, which features the voices of seven student bloggers, representing every borough, giving their take on education issues.

I believe that the only way to make students the subject of the education debate is for us to take a more active role in larger education politics and the goings on of our own schools. We must remember that we are the learners. That is an honorable position to be in. We are not products or tools or criminals. We are potential incarnate.

Cross-posted on the NYC Students Blog

Just a (sort of) quick note from Wednesday’s MSNBC Democratic presidential debate. About an hour and a half into the debate Rep. Dennis Kucinich said that he believed 16 year olds should be allowed to vote.

While this idea sounds radical, it should really be considered, especially on a municipal level. In the spring of 2006, the New York City Youth Congress proposed that New York City’s voting age should be lowered to 16. Following this, the Future Voters of America Party lobbied the City Council on lowering the voting age and Councilwoman Gale Brewer introduced a bill that would do just that. I failed to find any news on how that’s doing.

When one of my friends who was active in Future Voters told me about the issue, I was a little unsure about it. Now I believe that lowering the voting age to 16 could be a very important step for NYC and it would have the greatest impact in education, since around one third of high school students would be able to vote for the politicians who they felt best represented their concerns in improving their education system.

Students are clamoring for a voice in the decisions made on their education. That desire is one of the reasons for the founding the NYC Student Union and why last year he New York City Youth Congress voted for a resolution calling for the creation of a Student Senate whose opinions would have a weighted effect on DOE decisions.

Generally, simpler is better. It seems to me that the simplest way to give students a voice in their education is to give 16 year olds the right to vote. This will let the people in charge know how students feel, giving them a more clear and informed view of how our schools are run and more insight into the city’s educational successes and failures. It also might serve to get more students interested in how city decisions affect them and give them some reason to believe that their schools are really serving the students.

The DOE closed its special schools for pregnant and parenting teens in June amid revelations that many were providing little in the way of substantive instruction. The 300-odd young women enrolled in those programs were instructed to enroll in other high schools, usually the ones they left when they became pregnant, and take advantage of the supports there. But according to a recent article in Women’s E-News, this arrangement isn’t ideal for some of the moms affected.

The article isn’t totally clear about the specific problems facing pregnant students, and the young woman featured sounds slightly misinformed (she says metal detectors are dangerous to pregnant women; they aren’t), but it does seem obvious that traditional high schools aren’t great at meeting the specific emotional and academic needs of pregnant and parenting students. It also sounds like some schools are less tolerant of rules permitting maternity leave than others, forcing young women into tough decisions between attending the school of their choice and being as good a parent as they’d like to be. Given the DOE’s track record of ignoring these students’ needs, it’s hard to trust the department to carve out special solutions for them.

The Brooklyn Young Mother’s Collective (formerly the Brooklyn Childcare Collective) is tracking 20 students who attended P-schools when they closed. Let’s hope they find that young parents are able to stick it out in regular high schools or, if they don’t find that, propose solutions to help these students that the DOE is willing to implement.

An article in the Sun today takes a look at tension between students and the administration at Stuyvesant High School, which has been percolating for years and has reached a new high this fall. Kids are upset that they must now swipe their ID cards when they enter the school and leave for lunch and that the school is now assigning lockers and locks to students, instead of allowing them to select their own. Students have started StuyWatch.com to protest these policies and monitor students’ rights at the school; one user complained of “a general air of mistrust from the administration with regards to students,” the Stuyvesant Spectator reported. The site, which doesn’t appear to be public right now, has hundreds of registered users, the Sun reports, but Principal Stanley Teitel isn’t taking it too seriously; he says the new policies are necessary for safety reasons.

The situation at Stuyvesant is like those that Seth and the other members of the NYC Student Union are working on citywide. Across the city, kids must contend with policies that include random scanning and a cell phone ban. I’m guessing that even reasonable changes in this climate feel disrespectful to students.

It’s been months since the liBloomberg-Klein Complex introduced Opportunity NYC, a program that would pay students for academic achievement, specifically: standardized test scores. This story has been covered by all the major media outlets, the vast sea of NYC edublogs and even the Colbert Report. Still, no one has asked: “What do real fe students think about ‘Cash for Kids’?” At Monday’s NYC Student Union meeting, students voted unanimously in disapproval of the program. Here are some student opinions from the press release:

“It insults hard-working, low- income students by conveying the message that they could not possibly value education in itself and must need some sort of incentive in order to perform better in school.” — Laura Johnson, 17″A student that tries to earn the money but barely misses the cut off score to earn the money will only become frustrated and give up.” — Hasanur Rahman, 16

“[Opportunity NYC] propagates the test prep culture and detracts from other important aspects of education.” — Shauna Fitzgerald, 15

“The cash being used in this program could better be used to solve citywide problems affecting all students like class size and school resources.” — Ben Shanahan, 15

I tend to trust the opinion of my peers and was one of the students who eventually voted for the resolution disapproving of the program. Still, I personally believe there might be some benefits to the program:

• As my friend and fellow Student Union member Ashu Kapoor said: “It’s nice to know that the city is coming up with new and creative ways to help New York City public school students.”
• A lot of students just don’t care about school and this might encourage them to get involved in school. (However, as other students at the meeting noted, that involvement would be temporary and wouldn’t bring the longterm results that we need.)
• It just might work.

Unfortunately, “it just might work” is not a good enough rationale for a program on this grand a scale. The DOE needs to come up with incentives for students to get into their education but this program has too many holes in it. Maybe instead of Cash for Kids, the DOE could add money to a college fund to be managed by the city and given to these students once their high achievements have made the dream of a college education more realizable. That would turn this short-term program into one capable of longterm successes.

Check out two great posts on the issue by NYC Student Union members Ben Shanahan and Hasanur Rahman over at the NYC Students Blog.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first day black students successfully attended the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Amid harassment and threats of violence, the students were escorted by soldiers whom President Eisenhower had deployed to Little Rock to do battle with the segregationist governor, the state militia he controlled, and the many ordinary Arkansans who opposed the Little Rock school board’s vote to integrate. Although none of the Little Rock Nine graduated from Central (and in fact the governor closed all of the city’s high schools the next year rather than integrate), their attendance was a watershed moment, at least emotionally, for Little Rock and the rest of America.

But now the nation’s schools are as segregated as they were in the late 1960s, districts are trying to rejigger school zones in racially suspect ways, and black students are disproportionately punished and referred to special education. And of course in June the Supreme Court struck down voluntary integration programs that considered students’ race in assigning them to schools.

At 4:30 p.m. tomorrow at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus, a panel of education experts will grapple with this troubling reality in a symposium titled “The U.S. Supreme Court vs. Equality in Education.” Several of the panelists are New York City principals and parents, and I’ll be there to hear what they have to say. I just hope some of the news is good.

Via the New York Times’ City Room blog comes a report released today by the state comptroller showing that schools often fail to report major violence. The report, based on analysis of 10 large schools data from the 2004-2005 school year, found that an average of 21 percent of violent incidents went unreported at some schools. At Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, officials even sat on information about a rape that happened on campus rather than bring down the school’s numbers!

UFT head Randi Weingarten’s response was perfectly on point: “With data driving all education decision-making, this audit couldn’t have come at a more important time. We have to ensure that schools are safe the old-fashioned way, namely because they are and not because incidents are going unreported. Making schools seem safer than they really are does a disservice to parents, students and educators because those schools don’t get the attention and resources they need to be made safer.”

For its part, the DOE isn’t concerned about reporting issues, because the tracking system the city now uses is “incredibly sophisticated,” the Times reports. Of course, we all know that better data doesn’t mean safer schools, but I guess now that the DOE’s got data management under control, it can turn its attention keeping its students and teachers safe.

When I wrote last week about the cell phone ban, I didn’t know that random scanning and cell phone seizures were happening at the time at Forest Hills High School — not a school that has a reputation for having students who carry weapons. As the Queens Times-Ledger noted, the scanning happened on the anniversary of Sept. 11 and a day after the City Council overrode Mayor Bloomberg’s veto of a bill that would permit kids to carry cell phones to and from school. The day after the raid, NYC Public School parents blog had the damage: most kids were late to class, some skipped school altogether, and kids could choose whether their cell phones or iPods were confiscated. Commenters on that blog include Forest Hills parents and a teacher, who writes, “Parents in the suburbs and in private schools would not tolerate being unable to reach their child when necessary.” All of this, in the best city school system in the country.

New York may have better public transportation, restaurants, and sports teams, but Washington, D.C., has at least one thing on us — kids in the surrounding counties can carry their cell phones to school. The Washington Post today reports that “school boards everywhere are revisiting decade-old bans against portable communication devices in the classroom” because parents and kids view cell phones as a necessity and because fears about how cell phones would undermine discipline and learning simply haven’t come true. The last Washington-area school system to allow cell phones in school will finally do so this fall.

Of course, New York isn’t like most places, and the mayor and chancellor are holding firm on the cell phone ban, even in the face of City Council opposition. With school starting next week, I haven’t heard anything more about which schools will receive cell phone lockers as part of a “compromise” pilot program. Has anyone else?

Yesterday, the Daily News ran a tiny article saying that the DOE is revisiting the changes to school bus eligibility rules that caused such a fiasco last January when they were put in place. Kids will no longer have to live a quarter mile from a bus stop to get service, and kids in second grade or younger will now get yellow bus service instead of Metrocards. It looks like much of the work done by the highly paid consultancy Alvarez and Marsal is being undone, which is good news for parents who weren’t happy that their young children were suddenly denied school bus service and required to take dangerous or convoluted routes to school. (One child was hit and killed by a city bus when walking to school earlier this year; he previously had taken a bus.) Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum is right to ask why the DOE isn’t publishing the changes widely. Contact the Office of Pupil Transportation if you have questions about how your kids should get to school.

As Seth noted in his post yesterday on solving the security issue in high schools, the state has added 16 city schools to its list of “persistently dangerous” schools. Schools earn this classification if they report a high number of violent incidents compared to the size of their student population. (Schools that under report incidents are less likely to end on the list, and it seems that very small schools could be more likely to make the list. It’s also worth noting that New York appears to label schools as dangerous more aggressively than other states.)

Four of the new additions are special education schools in District 75. Some of the other schools newly added to the list are known to have problems, such as Jamaica High School, which is currently on the city’s list of Impact Schools as well. But we’re perplexed about the inclusion of others, such as PS 47 American Sign Language School, that don’t have a reputation as being particularly dangerous.

For being so obsessed with data, the state and the DOE don’t seem particularly able to figure out whether or not schools in the city are safe. Both the content and scope of the state’s list are at odds with the DOE’s own accounting of school violence — most of the city’s Impact Schools did not make the state’s list — and the state’s announcement came just one day after DOE officials announced a “dramatic decrease” in violent crime last year, while the Post today has a graphic showing a large increase in major crimes in schools in the 2005-2006 school year.

For anyone who thought our schools were on a constant (albeit slow) path to excellence, here is some disturbing news. Today, Fox reported that the number of “persistently dangerous” schools in New York under the No Child Left Behind Act has raised from 18 to 27 this year. Twenty-five of these schools are in New York City.

The question now is how to deal with this? It is a serious problem. It seems from that dramatic increase in the number of schools on the list, our current strategies are not working. Students from Urban Youth Collaborative, a coalition of 10 activist organizations, present an interesting argument against our current security measures. From their website:

When we walk into school the first thing we see is a metal detector cops and x-ray machines that the city believes will help the kids and the school…We believe what the city does in our schools actually makes kids want to be more violent. It doesn’t give us any privacy at all, and it just scares us. Having so many cops in one building intimidates and agitates student and increases tension rather than decreasing it.

The NYC Student Union, a citywide student run education advocacy group, has also been lobbying government officials including Governor Spitzer’s policy director about the issue.

Students from all ends of the city feel this tension. Even at specialized high schools, students complain about being “herded” away from the school after dismissal.

However, we need something more creative then just a lessening of current security; that would also create fear. Students, school safety agents, city officials and all of the other groups that have a stake in our schools need to work together to craft policies that foster better relationships between safety agents and students. This means revising policies that alienate students and examining alternative security methods for safety agents. Most of all, this means giving these two groups a chance to talk openly about the problem and have a say in the policies that so heavily influence their relationship.

As of now, we don’t have any answers to this security crisis. What we have tried has not worked. We do know, however, that creating an atmosphere of trust is the first step. What do you think?

Joseph Berger, in today’s “On Education” column, discusses the pros and cons of DOE Chief Equality Officer Roland Fryer’s plan to pay pay some kids for their performance in school. Berger found parents to mostly rehash familiar arguments about the plan, but he also talked to Manhattan Institute scholar Sol Stern, who suggested an alternative that makes a lot of sense to me: putting the earnings not into kids’ hands but into college funds they can access when they graduate from high school.

I can’t imagine a few hundred dollars a year, spent immediately on games and play items, making a sustained difference in a child’s will to learn, but having a couple thousand dollars in a bank account could make all the difference in the world to a motivated kid for whom college might feel out of reach financially. And this alternative plan would signal that the DOE is concerned with the long-term growth and success of its students, not just the annual testing and attendance bottom line.

Today the City Council voted overwhelmingly (46-2) in favor of a law giving students the right to carry cell phones with them during the commute to and from school. Monday’s New York Sun article sums up the issue nicely, and at 1:30 today the proposal went before the full council. Seth Pearce, of the New York City Student Union, weighs in on the vote over at NYC Student Word. He writes, in part:

Today, as a student, I would like to applaud the City Council’s decision to let students have their cell phones during the commute to and from school. I am glad that it has become clear to them that for us students, this is not a matter of convenience but a matter of safety.Plainly, students should not be scared to go to school. Just as our School Safety Agents work every day to keep us safe inside, City policy should protect us outside the walls of the school building. A student should not have to be afraid that in the event of an emergency, they will be isolated and imperiled because they were forced to leave their cell phones at home.

Definitely check out his full post, and keep an eye out for more of Seth’s contributions.

Update: The Staten Island Advance has posted an article on today’s result as well.

The DOE has announced its proposed revisions to the discipline code, which it now is subtitling “Bill of Students’ Rights and Responsibilities, K-12.” You can view the code online; proposed changes are highlighted in red. You can comment on the changes until August 8, when the DOE will hold a public hearing on them.

Most of the proposed changes reflect the changing titles of DOE personnel who are responsible for discipline. But there are a couple of substantive changes you might want to pay attention to:

• The code now contains an updated link to the full set of Chancellor’s Regulations online.
• Horseplay is now explicitly excluded from “Level 4″ infractions for younger students.
• “Sexually suggestive” speech and behaviors have been bumped up a level of severity for older kids; they can now result in a year-long superintendent’s suspension.
• And several lines strongly suggesting counseling for kids who commit certain offenses seem to have been removed.

Let us know if you see other changes. You can submit comments by email until Aug. 8.

Over at Staten Island Live, Yoav Gonen reports that beginning in September, Port Richmond High School and McKee High School will be among 16 schools citywide allowing students to store their cell phones off-campus in secure lockers. The 16 schools are piloting a storage solution the DOE is allowing as a compromise to the stringent cell phone ban that so many parents and kids hate. The lockers will accommodate only a quarter of students, Gonen reports. Has anyone heard which other schools will be part of the pilot, or how schools were selected for it?

The On Education column this week in the Times, by reporter David Herszenhorn, addresses a simple idea that, if actually understood by legislators and the general public, could dramatically change the way schools are governed: “Working with children looks easy. It is not.”

Herzsenhorn writes that covering the schools has shown him that the challenges facing people working in schools are broader than most on the outside imagine. He writes:

School professionals are called upon not only to educate children, but also to nurture curiosity and civic values, and even to teach the most basic manners. … Not only do professional educators have to know how to deal with children, they have to be clever about soothing an even wackier bunch: parents.The daily work in schools is so hard that most educators in the system do not distinguish between the chancellor’s office and the mayor, the labor unions and state government, the teachers’ contract and the federal No Child Left Behind law when they complain, frequently, that the “system” is against them.

Forces above and beyond school level often make the work in classrooms more difficult. And the work in classrooms is difficult enough.

While this notion might seem like a no-brainer, the fact is that teachers and administrators are continually asked to improve students’ performance — measured in standardized test scores — without being able to address kids’ vast “non-academic” needs. And when teachers struggle to raise scores, their quality is impugned. Sometimes criticizing teachers is justified, but often it’s a smokescreen to distract from the more complicated factors underlying student performance.

A quarter of kids in New York City live in poverty (as do 1 in 6 kids nationally). The city’s expansion of the summer meals program underscores the reality that many kids here are often hungry. This reality, like many others beyond teachers’ control, makes it hard for kids to learn. Not until legislators sincerely address the “forces above and beyond school level” can successfully teaching kids get easier.

In a New York Times column (subscription required) today, Bob Herbert writes about a case of police harassment in the classroom– one incident on a long list compiled by the New York Civil Liberties Union in its report “Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools.”

According to Herbert’s column, Principal Michael Soguero of Bronx Guild High School was suspended in 2005 after being arrested in front of a classroom full of students by Officer Juan Gonzalez. His crime? Defending a 16-year-old girl who had cursed within earshot of a police officer on her way to class. When the officer attempted to arrest the student, Principal Soguero intervened. Charges were later dropped, and Soguero has since moved to Colorado. Although Police Department and the district attorney initially supported Officer Gonzalez, Herbert writes that he has since learned Gonzalez is “indeed a problem officer,” and that his gun and badge have since been confiscated.