Results tagged “joelklein”

New York City public schools are performing so well according to the DOE's assessment that the performance bonuses earned by teachers is bursting the budget. With 97% of elementary and middle schools earning A's or B's in their annual grades from the Department of Education, yesterday it was revealed that such high marks meant the city would have to shell out $33 million in bonuses, almost twice last year's total despite a slimmer budget and two million over the program's budget before high schools are even accounted for. One education consultant told the News, "It's clear the bonuses are a complete waste, with the reading and math exams becoming easier and easier."

It's official—Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have fixed the public schools! Why, how else could 84% of the city's 1,058 elementary and middle schools receive A's on the DOE's annual performance report card, with only 3% winding up with marks of C or below. In fact, all of the schools that received F’s last year and remained open received A’s or B’s this year. Sounding like a teacher who had "accidentally" left the answer key during the final exam and now had to justify the stark improvement from the 61% of schools that got A's and B's when the system began only two years ago, Klein said yesterday, “We want to make clear that that means that they met their progress targets. Not by any stretch of the imagination that those schools don’t have a lot of improvement ahead of them...You can be assured we will raise the bar next year.” The grades schools receive are determined on how much student test results improve in a given year and have been criticized for their heavy reliance on standardized test scores.

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."

             

Yesterday was the biggest day of thousands of NYU students' lives as they graduated from their respective colleges and schools, but guess what—even that isn't enough to let them sit in the seats near the field at Yankee Stadium! With Washington Square Park's renovation forcing the school to relocate its school-wide graduation ceremonies to the Bronx for a spell, the Yankees prohibited NYU from filling the premium seats with students.

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!

New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein (not pictured) brought a gloomy forecast to Albany yesterday, pleading with state lawmakers to reduce proposed budget cuts and to give the city more flexibility in how state aid is spent. According to Klein, a proposed $84 million cut from the current school year’s budget could "really wreak havoc" and force school administrators fire an estimated 15,000 employees, many of them teachers.

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."

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."

Talk about accountability: The NY Times reports that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who ushered in report cards for public schools, may also grade the staffers who organized the news conference announcing this year's school grades! It turns out that Klein already grades his press aides. Example: "Preparation: Please grade, using an A-F scale, how well you were prepared for the appearance by the press office staff." (but the Times semi-snarks the press grading form is "far more straightforward than the formula used to evaluate schools"). The chancellor's press secretary declined to comment, sending this e-mail to the Times: "Value of this story: F."

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.

In 2006, the graduating class of Columbia's undergraduate college had Senator John McCain as a Class Day speaker. Last year, it was actor Matthew Fox. And this year's speaker will be...Schools Chancellor Joel Klein! To which seniors said, "I don't know anything about him" and "I have no idea who he is."

Last month, a Queens kindergartener was handcuffed after a temper tantrum at PS 81, prompting his parents to threaten a lawsuit. Now a lawyer representing Dennis Rivera and his parents reveals they are filing a notice of claim against the city for $15 million.

After a parents of a rejected student filed a class action lawsuit, the Department of Education asked a federal judge to overturn a 1974 ruling that set in place quotas to keep the school 40% minority and 60% white. The DOE wants the court to overturn the ruling immediately so the 2008-2009 will be quota-free.

Two members of a three-judge federal appellate court panel took the city to task yesterday for removing the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Debbie Almontaser, who helped found the dual-language school with an emphasis on Arab culture, stepped down before the school opened last fall, after controversy over remarks she made in the NY Post.

One of the Stuyvesant High School students seriously injured in last Saturday's Vermont van crash has returned home to New York. Junior Lucia Hsiao, a member of the girls' junior varsity track team, had suffered serious neck injuries but was able to "gingerly walk" to her room on her own. The Staten Island resident is wearing a halo around her head and will require a lot of rehab, but her dad said, "It could have been worse. She's done with the first step of recovery."

Yesterday, the Daily News revealed that an East Harlem high school principal told teachers to effectively pass more students. Principal Bennett Lieberman's report card stated: "If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities. You are setting your students up for failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional...most of our students ... have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school experience to our experiences growing up."

City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein characterized last year's assessment test scores as "good," but critics say that they represent a lack of progress and a failure of Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to reform city schools. City kids' scores stayed flat on national assessment exams in math and reading, with a slight improvement in 4th graders' math scores and a drop in 8th graders' reading scores. "New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in...

The city is showing the door to a daycare facility that has called P.S. 122 its home for 26 years. The Children's Liberation Daycare Center (CLDC), which serves 88 kids between the ages of 2 and 6, is going to court later this month to object to its ejection from the building, with no plan for the daycare center's return. The CLDC shares P.S. 122 with three arts organizations and it's the city's Dept. of...

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein released the "first-ever" public school progress reports with letter grades. The reports are meant to give educators and parents a snapshot of how well schools are doing and empower them to keep improving. Mayor Bloomberg said, "With these Progress Reports, parents no longer have to navigate a maze of statistics to determine how their child's school is doing and how it compares to others. And our educators now...

Oh, Catholic League - it isn't even Halloween and you're getting ready for Christmas already! The Sun reports that the Catholic League sent a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein questioning why nativity scenes cannot be displayed in schools.

Debbie Almontaser, the erstwhile head and founder of Brooklyn's Khalil Gibran International Academy, will sue the city for violating her freedom of speech. She also claims Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein forced her to resign as principal under threat of closing the dual-language school.

Back in March of 2003, Mayor Bloomberg opened up the City Hall Academy at the Tweed Courthouse. The school offered two-weeks "residencies" for students, giving them an "inter-disciplinary approach" to learn about NYC and its history. Mayor Bloomberg, who made education reform one of the cornerstone of his mayoral platform (it's a big part of his "national" persona, too!), had said, "The opening of City Hall Academy demonstrates our commitment to excellence, achievement, and innovation in the public school system. City Hall Academy will provide New York City children and their teachers a unique opportunity to study and participate in the cultural and historical fabric of the City.”

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is many things. He's the head of the largest public school system in the country, he's a lawyer (he was a former Assistant Attorney General - biggest case: going after Microsoft) and he's a businessman (he was chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann). But who knew he was someone who should appear on The Colbert Report?

After the Daily News revealed that a school officials actually forbade school deans to call 911 (in order to lower crime stats) only for a 14-year-old student who suffered a stroke to wait 90 minutes for medical attention, the Department of Education is launching an investigation. The News now reports that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will launch a probe, saying, "We'll look into it and take appropriate action."

Students of all ages are headed back to classes this morning. The NYC public school system is opening its doors this morning all over the city. Insideschools reminds us there are 1.1 million students and 150,000 educators in the system - and that quite a few charter schools have been open since last week!

While the jury is still out on whether Mayor Bloomberg's improvements to the public school system have really worked, he, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and School Chancellor Joel Klein, announced new initiatives to help middle schools improve academic performance and provide better resources for students, parents, and teachers alike - plus $5 million to fund them. The money will go to the 50 lowest-performing middle schools, so they can staff up with guidance counselors, offer mentoring programs to less experienced supervisors, and offer Regents-level classes.

Mayor Bloomberg loves the arts and supports many arts and cultural institutions as a (billionaire) philanthropist. And yesterday, he made sure that NYC public school students get a chance to love the arts as well, by introducing ArtsCount, a way to make sure schools and their principals are offering arts programs "through accountability and quality improvement initiatives."

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein offered his opinion of the Brooklyn school situation that raises questions about racial quotas set in place 33 years ago. Eleven-year-old Nikita Rau was rejected from the competitive IS 239/Mark Twain School in Coney Island because her admissions test scores were too low: Her 79 was lower than the 84.4 average score minority students need; white students may be admitted with scores of 77 or lower.