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NEW YORK Last Days, Perhaps, for Group That Sued for Poor School Districts
By Sharon Otterman After a series of setbacks, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the advocacy organization whose victory in a historic lawsuit brought billions of additional dollars to poor school districts in New York State, has run out of money to sustain itself, the organization said. The organization's last remaining employee, Helaine K. Doran, will leave the group's Lower Manhattan office this month and, essentially, lock the door behind her.
N.Y. group that got billions for poor schools in talks to merge with Newark-based Education Law Center
By John O'Boyle David Sciarra and the Newark-based Education Law Center are in talks to merge with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a New York group. NEW YORK — A New York group that got billions of dollars for poor school districts through a lawsuit says it has to close due to its own lack of funding. The board president of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Luis Miranda, says it is in merger talks with the Newark-based Education Law Center.
Assembly Leader Seeks to Keep Millionaires' Tax
By Thomas Kaplan ALBANY — The millionaires' tax may be on its way back. Or so Democrats in the State Assembly hope. Reprising one of the biggest battles of this year's budget season, the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would extend the income-tax surcharge on some high-earning New Yorkers beyond its scheduled expiration at the end of the year.
As Mayor Holds Firm on Teacher Layoffs, Some See Reasons Beyond Money
By Fernanda Santos Last month, in the days after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a budget calling for the elimination of 6,100 teaching jobs, most through layoffs, veterans of City Hall politics assumed his aggressive stance was about more than just closing the budget gap. Mr. Bloomberg, some said, was using the threat of the first teacher layoffs in a generation to gain an edge over the powerful teachers' union during contract negotiations. Others suggested that he wanted to prove to Albany lawmakers that there would be serious consequences if he had to lay off teachers based on seniority, as required by state law.
Walcott: Thousands Of Teacher Layoffs Necessary To Reduce Budget [VIDEO]
NY1 At a tense City Council meeting Wednesday, councilmembers sounded off on proposed cuts to the Department of Education as Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott testified that teacher layoffs may be necessary. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
NYSUT loses clout on key issues:
by Tom Precious ALBANY -- Year after year for the past couple of decades, no special-interest group arguably has been more influential in the State Capitol than the union New York State United Teachers. Backed by its sheer numbers of members, large campaign donations and the ability to help -- or hurt -- politicians with campaign foot soldiers and state-of-the-art phone bank operations, NYSUT has gotten its way for a long time in Albany. Not so this year.
As Mayor Holds Firm on Teacher Layoffs, Some See Reasons Beyond Money
By Fernanda Santos Last month, in the days after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled a budget calling for the elimination of 6,100 teaching jobs, most through layoffs, veterans of City Hall politics assumed his aggressive stance was about more than just closing the budget gap.
Quinn Offers Cuts as Alternative to Widespread Layoffs
By Fernanda Santos The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, proposed roughly $75 million in cuts to the Department of Education's budget on Wednesday, in an attempt to help minimize the layoffs planned for thousands of teachers this summer, as outlined by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg last month.
Dispute Exposes Tensions Over Charters' Role in Cities
By Stephen Sawchuck A fight over educational equity in New York City has all the hallmarks of a classic New York story: an angry union, parent demonstrations, and a lawsuit. The difference in this case, though, is that it is pitting civil rights groups and camps of minority parents against each other. The United Federation of Teachers, joined by the New York state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups, last week filed for a temporary restraining order to block the opening or expansion of 18 public charter schools in space held by traditional public schools.
NAACP fighting back with pro-lawsuit rally of its own
By Philissa Cramer Pushing back against criticism of its involvement in a lawsuit that could negatively affect charter schools, the NAACP has announced plans to stage a rally of its own tomorrow. The historic civil rights group and its supporters plan to rally tomorrow morning outside the offices of the Success Charter Network. The charter school chain's CEO, Eva Moskowitz, was a leader in galvanizing parents to protest the NAACP's involvement in the lawsuit. The NAACP's rally, which will feature elected officials named as plaintiffs in the suit, is the latest episode in a dust-up that makes race a central issue in the ongoing battle over charter school co-locations.
By Diane Ravitch Dear Deborah, May 16, 2011, was a dark day in the history of New York state. On that date, the New York State Board of Regents, once known for careful deliberation and the integrity of its standards, approved a plan to evaluate teachers by their students' test scores. Students' scores will count for as much as 40 percent of teachers' evaluations. This plan has neither research nor evidence to support it. The Regents are making a gamble with the future of educational quality and with the lives of the state's teachers.
Tilles: Don't grade teachers on test scores
by Roger Tilles Last summer, legislation based on the federal Race to the Top program was passed in Albany to create an accurate system of evaluating teachers and principals. Yesterday, the question before the Board of Regents was whether the proposed system would actually achieve that goal. I voted "no."
Charter Founder Is Named Education Commissioner
By Sharon Otterman John B. King Jr., who credits teachers for helping him surmount an isolated childhood as an orphan in Brooklyn and who ran celebrated charter schools in New York and Massachusetts, was named Monday as the state's next education commissioner, with a unanimous vote of the Board of Regents.
MASSACHUSETTS Funds for extended school days should yield results — or be cut
June 2, 2011 SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER school days are a hallmark of urban schools where students excel despite their socioeconomic disadvantages. But what of the schools that offer more-of-the-same mediocrity during the extended day? State Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester delivered the tough, but fair answer: No more funding from the state.
NEW JERSEY N.J. Senate Democrats consider budget that would increase school funding by $600M, reintroduce 'millionaire's tax'
Star-Ledger Bureau Staff Senate Democrats are thinking of introducing their own budget that would increase school financing by as much as $1.1 billion, including about $600 million for non-Abbott school districts, according to four people familiar with the plan. The money would come from a combination of additional revenue, some cuts in spending, and possibly a millionaire's tax, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the plan.
NATIONAL Helping Teachers Help Themselves
By Michael Winerip ROCKVILLE, Md. — The Montgomery County Public Schools system here has a highly regarded program for evaluating teachers, providing them extra support if they are performing poorly and getting rid of those who do not improve. The program, Peer Assistance and Review — known as PAR — uses several hundred senior teachers to mentor both newcomers and struggling veterans. If the mentoring does not work, the PAR panel — made up of eight teachers and eight principals — can vote to fire the teacher.
By Diane Ravitch Educators know that 100 percent proficiency is impossible, given the enormous variation among students and the impact of family income on academic performance. Nevertheless, some politicians believe that the right combination of incentives and punishments will produce dramatic improvement. Anyone who objects to this utopian mandate, they maintain, is just making an excuse for low expectations and bad teachers.
Don't Believe Critics, Education Reform Works: Jonathan Alter
By Jonathan Alter Unfortunately, the forces of the status quo are still working overtime. Obstructionists with a talent for caricature are determined to discredit important progress under way in some of the poorest school districts in the country. The leader of this rear-guard action is Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University who was an assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush. She's the education world's very own Whittaker Chambers, the famous communist turned strident anti-communist of the 1940s.
Michael Bloomberg's opinion page goes after a Michael Bloomberg critic
By Alex Pareene The conflict of interest inherent in having a media company owned by a powerful politician would probably be easier to explain away if that media company's new opinion arm refrained from directly attacking prominent critics of the boss. But Bloomberg View, like Bloomberg himself, doesn't care what nitpicking critics say. That's why no editor there thought it unseemly of Bloomberg View to run a Jonathan Alter piece attacking education policy expert Diane Ravitch, a vociferous critic of Mayor Bloomberg's handing of the New York City schools system.
By Diane Ravitch Dear Deborah,
The Service of Democratic Education
By Linda Darling-Hammond I could not be more honored than to be awarded this recognition from Teachers College, one of the places of all those I know in the world that holds the tightest grip on my heart and best represents my values and beliefs. Thank you for this recognition—and, more important, thank you, Teachers College faculty, trustees, students and graduates, for who and what you are.
What Michelle Rhee has been up to
By Valerie Strauss While investigators in the District are trying to determine how much cheating there was on standardized tests while Michelle Rhee ran the city's public school system (and there are reasons to worry it was widespread), the former chancellor has been busy joining with Republican governors to strip teachers of their collective bargaining rights.
Low-income students and KIPP charter schools
By Valerie Strauss This was written by Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a nonprofit public policy research organization, writes about education, equal opportunity and civil rights. This appeared on the foundation's blog. By Richard D. Kahlenberg But for me, the problem with KIPP is precisely that it does both simultaneously – skims motivated students and yet is pointed to as a segregation success story. Some observers see high rates of achievement in KIPP schools, which are overwhelmingly poor, and conclude that poverty and economic segregation don't matter that much after all. At their most hyperbolic, charter enthusiasts like Davis Guggenheim, director of "Waiting for Superman," point to KIPP and conclude "we've cracked the code" in educating low-income students. Yglesias is only somewhat more measured when he writes that the success of charter networks like KIPP "demonstrates that it's possible to overcome challenging demographics."
Courts Upend Budgets as States Look for Savings
By Michael Cooper Cases pending in other states could affect education spending in particular, an area where courts have been ordering states to spend more money, or to distribute it more fairly, for years. Education advocates in several states say recent budget cuts have effectively undone the gains they had made in the courts.
By Peter Schrag For most of the half-century since economist Milton Friedman first advanced the idea of school vouchers, it's been the ultimate weapon in our educational debates, always ticking just under the surface, never quite going off. But after last November's Republican statehouse victories, the right, sometimes abetted by Democrats and liberals, has brought back vouchers and school privatization with a vengeance.
By Jal Mehta Marc Tucker has penned what I see as one of the most important reports on how to improve American education in years. (Full disclosure, I contributed a chapter to the book on which the report is based.) I know, I know, there is a report a week in the education space, but what makes this one distinctive is that it takes the accumulating evidence on how high performing countries achieve what they do, and offers a specific set of recommendations about what it would take to move the American education system in that direction.
Makeshift Effort Rising to Oppose Cuts
By Fernanda Santos There was a rally on May 12, when seasoned protesters convened by the thousands near City Hall to stake their claim against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's budget. There were gatherings at subway stations organized by the city's public advocate, Bill de Blasio, at which hundreds of parents recorded messages and signed petitions against cuts to their children's schools. Then there were these lower-profile efforts to join in the debate over whether laying off 4,100 teachers was really the best way to balance the city's books: handwritten messages to the mayor taped to a big dollar sign outside a school in the Mount Eden section of the Bronx; postcards to City Council members signed at a foldout table in a school in Hell's Kitchen, parents clustered on a sidewalk in Park Slope, Brooklyn, chanting, "Save our teachers," even though no one was around to hear it but parents themselves.
School Superintendent To Governor: Please Make My School A Prison
By Michael Cooper A school superintendent in Michigan has written a public letter to the editor asking Governor Rick Snyder if his school can become a prison instead. The full text is below. What do you think?
School Boards Must Prioritize Student Equity
By Edwin C. Darden The American dream of upward mobility is projected as tantalizingly within reach—the reward for hard work that children in poverty should strive to achieve. But as a society that reveres success, we should worry about dangling false hopes before students in high-poverty schools. Unless a high-quality education is available to prepare their minds for 21st-century challenges and negate the effects of being poor, the grand vision of a good life is, in reality, just a mirage.
9 States Get New Chance at Federal Education Aid
By Sam Dillon Nine states that were also-rans in last year's Race to the Top school improvement competition will get another chance, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday, though this time $200 million will be up for grabs, compared with $4 billion awarded last year. An additional $500 million will be devoted to a parallel competition among all states to raise the quality of early learning and child care programs and to increase families' access to them, federal officials said.
Survey Shows Potential for Rising Pa. School Cuts
By the Associated Press A growing number of Pennsylvania's school districts appear to be considering layoffs and eliminating programs such as summer school and full-day kindergarten and raising taxes by more than the rate of inflation to help address significant cutbacks in state aid that are nearly certain, according to a survey released Thursday.
GRANTEE SPOTLIGHT Spontaneity Again Causes Mayor Trouble
By Fernanda Santos Responding to a lawsuit seeking to prevent New York City from closing 22 poorly performing schools, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a comment on Friday about parents of children in those schools that immediately prompted outrage. "Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from — they never had a formal education, and they don't understand the value of education," Mr. Bloomberg said during his weekly appearance on WOR-AM (710). "Many of our kids come from families — the old Norman Rockwell family is gone." Kenneth D. Cohen, an executive of the N.A.A.C.P., a plaintiff in the suit, which was filed Wednesday, lamented what he called Mr. Bloomberg's broad-brush description of parents "who look like the majority of parents in city schools." Zakiyah Ansari, a parent organizer with the Alliance for Quality Education, an umbrella organization that is also part of the suit, said she was insulted.
GRANTEE SPOTLIGHT Education advocates launch 'Students First' tour
By Casey Seiler The Alliance for Quality Education, Citizen Action and NYSUT on Thursday kicked off what they're calling "Students First: The Reality Tour" with seven events around the state, including a news conference at the Capitol. "Tours of the state are popular at this time of year," said AQE's Billy Easton, tweaking Gov. Andrew Cuomo's current "People First" road trip.
GRANTEE SPOTLIGHT Malden early learning programs receive state grants
By Matt Byrne A new round of state funding will help bolster two local early education programs, according to the state. The Malden Early Education and Learning Program of the Catholic Charities Bureau, and the Derly Caballaro program will receive a total of $7,756.95, as part of a $2.8 million package of grants to be distributed throughout the state.
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The Snap Schott is distributed by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. For more information, please visit www.schottfoundation.org. |
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