Results tagged “education”

Following the suspension of a Bronx English teacher who assigned 11th graders a short story about tragic masturbation attempts, students have defended the instructor while adults have expressed skepticism over his decision. Louella Hatch, whose grandson attends the Bronx School of Law and Finance, is one of the adults who objects to teacher Greg Van Voorhis' assignment of "Guts" by "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk. "Well, I really don't go for that. Well, I'm old fashioned anyway, but I don't like things like that," she said. "If it is true, he can't still be around the school, you know?" she added.

A popular high school English teacher has been suspended after assigning his 11th-grade students a short story about masturbation by "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk. Greg Van Voorhis, 30, issued copies of "Guts" — which details three increasingly catastrophic masturbation attempts by teenagers with props including a carrot, a candle, and the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool — to about about 100 students gearing up for the English Regents exam. That didn't go over so well with school administrators at the Bronx School of Law and Finance in Marble Hill, where the seven-year veteran was quickly reassigned from his classroom duties while the Department of Education investigates.

Today, the 1.1 million students in NYC's public school system return to class, making it the unofficial "Parents Liberation Day." Indeed, parents told NY1, "I'm excited because my son, you know, the summer was basically recreation all day long and it's just time for him to get back into that groove of his education," and "I'm happy. So happy to get them out of the house." Of course, one looming issue—besides tests, tests and more tests that may not even help the kids prepare for college—is swine flu, though the city says its ready to combat that. Gotham Schools is liveblogging Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's five-borough school tour: At PS 111 in Long Island City—where Mayor Bloomberg, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, and principals union president Ernest Logan are also on hand—students "seem 'stunned and clearly irritated' by the gaggle of 20-odd reporters and photographers outside the door."

Following criticism of President Obama's plan to speak about education to schoolchildren, the White House released the text of the speech yesterday. Last week, one parent in Texas, apparently concerned that his school district hadn't approved the speech, told the NY Times, "I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement." Fortunately, the "socialist movement" seems limited to "If you quit on school - you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country" and "I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter."

The Bloomberg administration is catching some flak for tipping their hand and revealing big raises coming to teachers, both for putting for such a generous offer as payback politics and letting the teachers' union know what was coming their way before negotiations even began. The Post revealed that Labor Commissioner James Hanley admitted that 8 percent pay raises for teachers have already been set aside for the next two years in recent testimony before an arbitration panel. A former Koch official said that letting the cat out of the bag was a no-no, telling the paper, "Every labor leader knows that the money is hidden somewhere in the budget and they don't know how much money. Generally, only the most trusted people in the budget know where the money is squirreled away." Others criticized how high the raises are despite the city's fiscal crisis and low inflation—starting salaries now heading up to just under $50K and veteran teachers able to make up to $108K. Many believe the high offer coming to the United Federation Teachers might be payback for changing positions and supporting mayoral control of schools and city pension reforms.

Consider this a warm-up to the election! Yesterday, City Comptroller Bill Thompson accused the Department of Education of inflating graduation stats. His audit noted, "The permanent records of one out of every 10 graduated students sampled did not indicate that graduation requirements had been met," (90,000 students between 2003 and 2007 were in the sample) and "Schools routinely awarded students multiple credits for passing the same course two or more times."

Oh, it's on: After Mayor Bloomberg complained about the State Senators stalling on the bill that would give him control of the public school system, the Senators sounded off right back. On Friday, Bloomberg said, "The only thing I can think of is they want to ruin the schools," suggested the state troopers "drag them back" to Albany and saying the Senators' summer off was "Meshughena." This prompted State Senator Hiram Monserrate to say, "We believe it would be meshuganah not to include parents in the education of our children. As opposed to loosely using the word meshuganah, we would also say we don't need a yenta on the other side of this argument and this debate. Raising the issues that he has raised in the manner he has raised them is unfortunate."

       

Last night, President Barack Obama spoke at the NAACP's Centennial conference, held at the Midtown Hilton, giving what the NY Times called a "fiery sermon to black America.. warning black parents that they must accept their own responsibilities by 'putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour,' and telling black children that growing up poor is no reason to get bad grades." He added, "It means attending those parent-teacher conferences, reading to our kids, and helping them with their homework...No one has written your destiny for you...Your destiny is in your hands, and don’t you forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!"

Mayor Bloomberg is unhappy that the State Senate Democrats are stalling a vote on whether to continue mayoral control of the NYC public school system and he's ratcheting up the rhetoric. His spokesman tells the Post that the Senators are essentially breaking their promise to the public: "The pledge by the Senate leadership to allow a floor vote on the bill should be honored." The Senate Democrats claim that they would be fine with voting on the bill—as long as it has some amendments, like involving parents more. Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D-Manhattan/Bronx) tells the NY Times, "If the mayor’s people would just sit down at a table for an hour with a pencil and our amendments, this would all be over." The Daily News' editorial from Tuesday said there doesn't need to be amendments: "The Assembly...held public hearings in every borough and took voluminous testimony before fashioning a school governance bill. In contrast, the Senate held not a single official hearing on how the schools should be run..."

A new report [pdf] from the NYC Health Department and Department of Education finds that physically fit students tend to outscore their less-fit peers on academic tests. During the 2007-2008 school year, students who scored in the top 5% on their fitness tests outscored the bottom 5% by an average of 36 percentile points on standardized academic tests. But it's also possible overweight kids score poorly on those tests because bullies are constantly kicking the backs of their chairs. The new report further examines childhood obesity in NYC and finds that 21% of kindergarten through eighth grade students are obese, and nearly 40% of all students are overweight or obese. In a statement, NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said, "When four out of 10 school kids are overweight or obese, the city has a problem." Part of that problem is that 14% of middle- and high-school students hadn't even been offered a physical-education class this school year, according to a recent survey cited by the Post.

Since the State Senate has been deadlocked for weeks, legislation giving Mayor Bloomberg control of the school system expired—forcing an emergency meeting of the re-formed Board of Education today. According to CityRoom, the Board's seven members are "three deputy mayors, three sympathetic allies of the mayor, and one wild card from the Bronx." The Daily News adds the Board "is expected to give [Schools Chancellor Joel] Klein authority over the school system -- essentially keeping Mayor Bloomberg in charge."

Mott Hall Middle School in Harlem had been asking former president Bill Clinton to speak at their eighth grade graduation ceremonies for five years—and this year, he agreed! The Daily News was on the scene for the big day, pointing out that Clinton usually gets $100,000 for speaking engagements. Clinton said, "I can almost give a one-sentence commencement address—I came here because you kept asking me. But I think you should remember that—if you want something bad enough, just keep working for it. And don't forget to ask." But, as is the case with Clinton, he kept speaking, "[giving] a very grown-up dissertation on the increasingly inter-connected, inter-dependent world that today's young people will soon inherit." He also emphasized their education, "Critical thinking will never go out of style. We are going up or down together - people around the block and people across the globe. You've got a good start here. You know how to do it. And I urge you to press on." The students were dazzled, with one saying he would try to be "the first Latin president...Maybe I'll start off small -- like mayor or something -- and go from there."

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced that the city's high school graduation rate was 60.7% for 2008, "marking the first time the City’s graduation rate has surpassed 60 percent according to the State Education Department, which released the data today." Bloomberg is using the data to bolster his case for continuing mayoral control of schools: The graduation rate went up 3.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2008 and "the graduation rate among English Language Learners rose more than 10 percentage points between 2007 and 2008." The dropout rate is now at a new low of 13.5%, after falling 3.3 points between 2007 and 2008. Bloomberg said, "After years of near stagnation, our reforms have increased the graduation rate each year since we’ve been in office—and I’m so proud to see that graduation rates are up again this year. This year, English and math scores went way up, schools got much safer, and many more of our high school seniors have earned their diplomas. This is a great day for New York City schools."

Yesterday, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott made the case for continuing mayoral controls of the public school system at a City Council Hearing. While the pair cited students' progress, reaction from Council members as mixed: NY1 reports that Councilman Peter Vallone said, "I appreciate that progress," (he did write an opinion piece for the Post back in September supporting mayoral control) while Councilman Charles Barron said, "I'll probably be mayor one day in this city, but I won't even want mayoral control. That's too much power. Too much authority for one person to have that's not an educator." And, according to Gotham Schools, Councilman Robert Jackson asked Klein and Walcott if they made any mistakes: "Walcott said that changing the bus routes in winter was a mistake, but Klein held firm on his decision to dissolve the 32 school districts that the Bloomberg administration has essentially done away with." A Council group is suggesting that the Council be given more power—which would be municipal control.

The NY Times reports, "A parent council in Manhattan and the city’s teachers’ union sued the Department of Education on Monday, contending that the department had not adequately consulted with the council in deciding which schools to close and in altering school boundaries." While the community education councils—which include parents of students—are supposed to be have power over school zoning, District 2's council (representing the East Side and Lower Manhattan; there are 32 districts total) contends that the DOE has been unresponsive to their concerns. Council president Rebecca Daniels tells the Times, "We were trying very hard and we just weren’t getting the kind of communication we needed. The reporting to parents and hearing their feedback was just not happening." She blames mayoral control for squeezing parents out of the equation—and leaving them and their children helpless when schools close. The state is in the process of determining whether to continue mayoral control; a Times editorial backed continuing mayoral control of schools, but noted, "Some fine-tuning aimed at giving parents and communities more access is in order."

With the city facing enacting a grim budget, the economic downturn is hitting all agencies The NY Times reports that, last week, the Department of Education "ordered principals to fill vacancies with internal candidates only...in an effort to cut costs and avoid teacher layoffs." Which means teaching school graduates, as well as teachers from Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows program, are now looking for work at private schools, charter schools or outside the city. Last year, the DOE hired 5,725 new teachers—about a third from Teach for America and the Teaching fellows programs, about two-thirds were from teaching schools. This year, aside from specialized positions like speech therapy, "principals can fill spots only with internal candidates, including teachers from a reserve pool made up of those whose jobs have been eliminated and many who have earned unsatisfactory ratings." A woman who left a non-teaching field to pursue an education degree at St. John's aid, "The stability in teaching was something that was I looking for. That has been turned on its head."

President Obama must have felt like he was hosting an improv comedy parlor game of Party Quirks this afternoon when he welcomed to the White House Mayor Bloomberg, the Reverend Al Sharpton and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The trio was there as part of the nonprofit group, the Education Equality Project. The meeting also included NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who despite co-founding the project, was not deemed worthy of any of today's AP photo opportunities—stick to events headlined by Randi Weingarten if you ever want to be remembered, Joel!

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein faced a tough crowd in Albany yesterday, as state lawmakers grilled him about mayoral control of the public school system. State Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Harlem) said, "Mayoral control has been a disaster for parents. It has not gotten better... In communities of color, parents are fleeing their schools." To which Klein replied, "Truly, I see it so differently from you. When you create options for parents, what you're doing is giving them a lifeline for their children. The politics of it is very different from the reality." State Sen. Micah Kellner (D-East Side) said, "I think we’re all fed up that the Education Department spends a lot of time and money on spin doctoring what we know are problems." Some lawmakers suggest that the mayor appoint fewer members of Panel for Educational Policy (the PEP replaced the Board of Ed. and Bloomberg appoints eight of 13 members and fire them whenever he wants) and/or that the members are given terms so they can't be fired as easily.

The NY Times reports the City University of New York has developed a "120-page blueprint for the community college of the future—specifically, a 5,000-student Manhattan campus that would be New York City’s first new two-year institution of higher education in 37 years." Because graduation rates at community colleges are low, the blueprint would require students to enroll full time, with "Majors would be limited to about a dozen fields with robust job opportunities, including health care and environmental technology." CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein says that the community college “capacity will be severely tested in the coming year" (CUNY 2-year college enrollment is up 31%) and CUNY, facing cuts from city and state budgets (leading to proposed tuition hikes), is trying to raise money from other sources, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A "top New York education official" tells today's Post that local education authorities don't want Linda Darling-Hammond, head of President-elect Obama's education-policy working group, to have a big role at the US Department of Education. The concern is that Hammond won't support Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein's reforms and that she opposes the state-required Regents exams, which students must pass in order to graduate (some schools are exempt). In a 2001 legal brief, Hammond said exams like "Regents exams are a limited measure of actual learning and performance, are prone to substantial error, and have limited predictive validity regarding students' abilities to accomplish other real-world tasks or to succeed in college." A Bush administration education official criticized Hammond as one of many who "don't like standards, don't like testing, don't like accountability," while high school students are more likely to favor her as longtime opponents of "taking tests up until July."

A study from NYU says that children in public housing are "more likely to drop out of high school and less likely to graduate in four years than those who do not live in public housing," the NY Times reports. You can read the policy brief (PDF) from the Furman Center. One hypothesis suggests the lack of resources and role models students from public housing have might be to blame, but the study its data "do not allow us to isolate the reason for the disparity" and "we do not claim that living in NYCHA housing causes students to perform differently from students living in other housing." And the NYC Housing Authority tells the Times the agency has "serious concerns and reservations" about the study, adding its data is "limited, dated and incomplete."

New York City Catholic schools are seeing their enrollment numbers dropping dramatically, leading to fears that more schools will have to consolidate or join the 1,300 that have closed nationwide since 1990. Enrollment within the Archdiocese of New York has dropped almost 7% in the last year alone. Catholic schools have long been considered a vital cornerstone in educating New York's kids, especially in lower-income areas of the city. But with more charter schools opening and the average Catholic high school tuition at $5,500, one former charter school principal told the Post, "If you're a middle-income family, you can pony up five grand a year for your kids to go to a Catholic school that's decent. Or, if you can find a charter school that's actually pretty good, then why not take a freebie?"

Whenever a NYC teacher calls out sick to wrestle in the WWE or attend a relative's sentencing, the Department of Education has to send in an expensive substitute from the Absent Teacher Reserve pool.

Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein released the 2008 progress reports for elementary, middle and K-8 schools (1,043 in total). Bloomberg happily noted that 58% of schools moved up a letter grade (or received an A for a second year in a row), "I am thrilled that the majority of schools earned a higher grade by improving performance over the past year. Now we've got to keep that progress going."

According to the NY Times, P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights was once praised by city officials for its turnaround from a school "avoided by the well-off residents of neighboring brownstones" to one "so popular...it has doubled its enrollment since 2002." Even city officials recently praised its success. But now, the city will give it an F on its school report card, because the Department of Education says students aren't improving at a rate comparable to other schools. However, others blame the city's grading system. As Inside Schools put it, "More-than-majority weight on student academic progress — measured by standardized test scores — means that schools that start with more kids on or above grade level can show less ‘progress’ than more challenged schools."

The NY Sun ponders the "mystery" of Barack Obama's Columbia years. While most of his life is mentioned in his speeches or his DNC biopic, "one chapter of the tale remains a blank — his education at Columbia College, a place he rarely speaks about and where few people seem to remember him." His campaign hasn't released his college transcript, which adds to the intrigue (FWIW, President Bush got C's at Yale--and John Kerry's Yale grades were lower!) and suggests, to some, that he's holding back in case people accuse him of benefiting from affirmative action. What is known: He transferred there from Occidental College (but didn't get housing, so lived off campus on East 94th), his grandparents visited him while he was in NYC (photo) and he says he spent most of his time studying.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that 18 new charter schools will open next month. Schools include ones focused on a music and singing, focused on studying both English and Spanish, and studying architecture, engineering and construction. Bloomberg lauded charter schools--"the right idea for the time"-- and this year, the NY Times reports one of the charter schools will be unionized (they are largely not unionized). One new charter school told the Post he left PS 183 on the Upper East Side to open a charter school in East Harlem because of the freedom they bring, "We were able to use the creativity inherent within the charter-school structure to create the kind of program we wanted."

Randi Weingarten, who has led the United Federation of Teachers, the union that representing over 200,000 people who work in the schools (from teachers to nurses), was elected to lead the national teacher's union, the American Federation of Teachers, yesterday. Weingarten ran unopposed and has made it clear she wants to revoke the No Child Left Behind law, suggesting instead that schools should help the entire family, through a range of social services, to improve students' chances at success.

Public school children across the state between grades four and eight showed tremendous improvements in their standardized test scores in recently released results from the state education officials. In particular, NYC and the "Big Four" --Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers--made double digits increases that have now prompted some to wonder if the most recent test was too easy.

Rich Conroy is the Bicycle Education Program Director at Bike New York, a cycling safety and education group in New York City and the organizer of the 5 Boro Bike Tour (which occurred this past weekend). Rich and the people he works with are not bike advocates--they leave political action to others and focus on the practical safety of being a cyclist in the city. The group conducts clinics to teach kids to ride bikes, and how adults can deal with the challenges of urban biking--stopping short, avoiding potholes, and not getting doored.