Wow. Folks here are pretty blown away by what just happened. After the council members finished grilling James Liebman (this took about 3 hours), Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson announced that the parents from Time Out From Testing were set up in the City Hall rotunda to present their...
Looks like the state was wise to reject abstinence-only sex education funds. Teen birth rates have just gone up for the first time in decades, at a time when more money than ever has been sunk into abstinence-only programs. Most researchers think the rising teen pregnancy rate relates to the...
For the first time ever, the state is going to reimburse the Department of Education for the costs of educating children who enroll after the end of October. So the DOE is spreading the word that kids who turn 4 before Dec. 31 can still enroll in Pre-K programs that have space. According to the...
I haven't been blogging about the Khalil Gibran saga because it's just so far removed from the school at this point. But now that a judge has ruled that the DOE did not violate former principal Debbie Almontaser's right to free speech when it fired her after she made controversial comments in a...
The Times reported this week that fighting in city schools dropped by 20 percent between 2003 and 2005. But dating-related violence is on the rise among NYC teens, with 10 percent of girls and 5 percent of boys reporting being raped or forced into sex by a partner. The report underscores the...
A tipster tells me that desperate parents, unable to believe that the DOE would provide useful resources, are shelling out $45 to buy an OLSAT test prep kit from a "Ph.D. testing specialist" who hawks her wares online. The sample OLSAT questions look pretty much identical to those in the G&T...
It's December 3 -- time for the frenzy over G&T admissions to ratchet up a notch! Today the DOE released handbooks outlining the updated regulations and containing the Request for Testing form, as well as the hotly anticipated sample BSRA exams. The basic handbook is online, but to get the...
Remember when the DOE announced that 51 failing middle schools would be sharing $5 million in special funds, per the recommendations of the City Council's Middle School Task Force? The principals of those schools met earlier this week to learn about the cash and how they may spend it. The Daily...
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...
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...
If your school has a high needs population and you can think of something to buy that would improve teaching and learning, you stand a good chance of getting your idea funded. The start of the school year is a time when education foundations send out notices asking people to apply for their...
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...
The MacArthur foundation announced its latest group of $500,000 "genius grant" winners today, and among them is Deborah Bial, the founder of the Posse Foundation, which cultivates groups of talented city kids to attend elite colleges on full scholarships. Bial was inspired to start the program by...
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...
Education Committee chair Robert Jackson opened today's proceedings with some familiar complaints: why don't people know what's going on at the DOE until after decisions are already made? how do you know who to call at the DOE when you need help? what's wrong with 311? Now Deputy Mayor Dennis...
If you've never read the famous children's book The Story of Ferdinand, today's a good day to do so. That's the featured book this year for Read for the Record, a national event designed to bring attention to Jumpstart, an organization that promotes early childhood education for low-income kids....
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...
We can hope so. If recent experience with the DOE is any guide, though, it's more likely to be merely the week of parent engagement.Today, Chancellor Klein, along with Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy CEO Martine Guerrier, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and Alonta Wrighton,...
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...
It's been a while since we took a look at what's going on with the Contracts for Excellence. You know, the city's plan to spend its education dollars that, if approved by the state, would mean more money for its schools? The plan that was presented in urgent public meetings back in July because...
The DOE's capital plan doesn't call for too many new schools in the next few years, to the dismay of parents and advocates for small class size, but the DOE announced groundbreaking on two new buildings this week. In Manhattan, East Side Middle School is getting a new building of its own in 2009,...
Military recruiters are being given a wide berth to seek enlistees from the city's high schools, according to a New York Civil Liberties Union report titled "We Want You(th)!" NYCLU, along with the office of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, surveyed more than 1,000 students, found that...
Gotham Gazette reports that Kew Garden Hills residents are preparing to protest the DOE's decision to locate a new transfer alternative school in the neighborhood. City Council member James Gennaro is more upset that the DOE didn't seek community approval before making the decision than he is...
Today is the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating landfall along the Gulf Coast. In the last two years, not too much has improved in New Orleans, but the schools have changed dramatically, with important lessons that we in New York can learn. First, I think we'd be better off if...
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...
East New York Preparatory Charter School, which has been located in the PS 158 building in Brooklyn since it opened last year, was told to hit the road this year, even though the DOE had promised it could stay at PS 158 for two years, the Daily News reports today. PS 158 had made sharing space...
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...
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...
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...
The featured article this week on Gotham Gazette is about diversity at the city's specialized high schools. A year ago, the Times reported that the city's most elite high schools had suffered an inexplicable drop in minority enrollment, even though the DOE had created special programs targeted...
An article in the Times today profiles a high school in New Jersey where kids will have to pick a major. They'll be able to choose among focuses on sports management, fine and performing arts, health sciences, international studies and global commerce, communications and new media, and liberal...
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 kidsfor their performance in school. Berger found parents to mostly rehash familiar arguments about the plan, but he also talked to Manhattan Institute...
Happy with PS 8, their neighborhood school, parents in Brooklyn Heights are hoping to get a middle school just for themselves, the Times reported in the City section yesterday. Last month the real estate site Curbed reported that Two Trees development company was using the promise of a 300-seat...
A new study on New York charter schools provides compelling evidence that charter school students see greater test score gains than they would have in regular public schools. The study, written by Harvard Economics Professor Caroline Hoxby and the National Bureau of Economic Research's Sonali...
Yesterday, the Times profiled the debate among parents over the popular children's series Junie B. Jones. Some parents like the 27-book series about a spunky little girl because their reading-resistant kids do, but others ban the books in their homes because the main character uses incorrect...
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...
Yesterday the city's comptroller released a lengthyreport on the way the DOE tracks services for special education students -- and the picture the report paints isn't pretty. From the conclusions: DOE is not monitoring, tracking, or documenting the provision of these services in an efficient...
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...
Fear no more. There are few excuses to keep teens’ noses out of the books this summer, thanks to the many free resources and programs provided at the increasingly popular teens-only space, appropriately dubbed Teen Central, at Donnell Public Library in midtown Manhattan (Map). To keep the...
For summer reading lists and activities, parents and kids can log on to public library websites that offer booklists for all ages, from babies to teens. The sites feature an interactive “detective’ game that builds kids’ research skills and timely notices of book talks and other local...
Parents: if your questions about the results of the OLSAT/GRS tests for gifted and talented programs are still not resolved, you can ask to review the tests. But the requests must be received by July 30th. Contact your regional test coordinator or acommit@schools.nyc.gov.
The city's schools received about $80 million in private donations last year, the Post reported this weekend. That's up from less than $3 million seven years ago. This shift tells us a couple of things: More private groups see the city's schools as worth investing in, and the DOE is working hard...
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...
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...
City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson will be holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall at 11:30 a.m. Sunday to address the DOE's proposal for how to spend the long-awaited Campaign for Fiscal Equity money. Jackson was an original plaintiff in the case. According to the...
In an extension of our recent post about NYC's use of $1.03 billion in additional state education funding ($228 million of which must conform to Governor Spitzer's Contract for Excellence requirements), the Times reports today on Chancellor Klein's plans for the money. Specifically, Klein talks...
Elizabeth Green at the New York Sun reports today about the City's use of the upcoming dramatic increase in state education funding, which are supposed to be used in accordance with Governor Spitzer's "Contract for Excellence" initiative. (For more on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity's lawsuit...
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...
Yesterday NY1 reported on Chancellor Klein's new plan to allow English Language Learner (ELL) students more time before requiring them to take standardized tests. Whereas ELL students currently have to take the tests during their first year in school (even students who haven't yet been in the...
Parents raised questions about special education, middle school admissions, parent coordinators, and changes planned for the new school year at the first of a series of “Ask Martine and Friends†meetings with the Department of Education’s chief parent officer, Martine Guerrier. Some 200...
Do you want to make sure that additional funds for New York City schools are being well spent? You can send a letter to the State Board of Regents telling them to require that the upcoming historic increase in education funding be used for the purposes it was intended, including small class size...
