Results tagged “schoolschancellorklein”

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."

Mayor Bloomberg reassured the city would have clearer roads—100,000 tons of salt! 1,400 plows!—after today's winter storm, pointing out, "New York City has nearly 6,000 miles of streets. So to plow all our streets, just think about this, it's like plowing form here to Los Angeles, and back. It is really quite an amazing job that the sanitations workers have to do and that they do do." (If your street hasn't been plowed, call 311.) Schools Chancellor Joel Klein explained the rare snow day, "A lot of those streets weren't passable. We have kids, young kids, walking to schools. We transport 150,000 or so students on yellow buses. With the wind and the snow blowing and the traffic issues that we were hearing about, we thought this was the right decision. As I said, it's never the preferred decision, but the right decision." And the Mayor had a message for the school kids: "For those kids who were hoping for two consecutive snow days in a row, things can always change, but my suggestion is to do your homework."

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."

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...

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.”

Mayor Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Klein, City Council Speaker Quinn, and other city and school officials celebrated the first day of school yesterday with an appearance at P.S. 53 in the Bronx. P.S. 53 was selected because it will be receiving almost a half million dollars more in funding, due to Bloomberg's "fair student funding reforms."

President Bush visited New York City yesterday to encourage Congress to reauthorize his No Child Left Behind program. Bush gave a speech at the Harlem Village Academy school and praised its founder, faculty and students and emphasized the importance of the NCLB Act. Bush made it a point to visit all eight classrooms and shake every student's hand, prompting one student to tell the Sun, "I think it was the best day of my life," and a teacher to ask Bush for more money to be added to NCLB.

One of the 40 new schools the city is opening in the fall will be the first public school dedicated teaching the Arabic language and culture. The NY Times reports that half of the classes at the Khalil Gibran International Academy will eventually be taught in Arabic. It will be located in Brooklyn, though it's unclear where yet. Principal Debbie Almontaser says the school will start out with just sixth graders, but will eventually have 500-600 students. She said, "We are wholeheartedly looking to attract as many diverse students as possible, because we really want to give them the opportunity to expand their horizons and be global citizens."

In week 2 of the NYC Department of Education's busted school bus route changes, parents are still complaining and the media is loving it. There's 5 year old Michelle Baum in the Post today, waiting outside in the freezing weather for her bus. And the hotline the DOE has been directing parents to seems to be just as bad: In yesterday's Daily News, there was 11 year old Eleanor Shanahan whose family was told a bus would return to take her to school earlier, versus dropping her off 45 minutes late - only for her dad to find out from the school bus hotline that she would be "unrouted."

Bloomberg, beginning his final election push, yesterday announced the creation of seven new specialized high schools to take the run-off from the 28,000 students who annually apply to attend Stuvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. The well-timed proposal came less than twenty-four hours before the first round of the city's eighth-graders took the exam to get into those highly selective schools (good luck!). To really rub in his point Bloomberg even pulled out the old statistic about how getting into the specialized schools is as hard as getting into an Ivy. Which is nice and all except that the new schools don't sound much like the old ones. Firstly, they will be a fair amount smaller and secondly they will almost all be affiliated with local colleges and universities (not that there is anything wrong with that, we're just saying). This second point was emphasized by the fact that the announcement was made at Columbia and one of the proposed schools would theoretically go on Columbia's proposed Manhattanville campus (which raises the question: didn't Columbia just start another school? Wasn't the plan for that to grow into a high school?).

Also in the school news, five schools were taken off the most dangerous NYC schools list, including Washington Irving High. A pregnant woman walking along Irving Place was hit on the head by a stool that was thrown out of the school two years ago. With a 43% reduction in major crime, and given the Mayor's school security initiatives, this too will become a statistic the mayor uses a lot this year.

Yellow school buses and more kids on the subway tells all of New York that school is back in - much to the relief of some parents who have had to watch their kids for an extra four days, with the later-than-usual school year start. The sweeping changes that Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein have made will be tested this year, but issues like student safety and trying to transferring children from bad city schools, not to mention overall budget issues for the country biggest school system. The City Council has called for an anti-bully measure at schools, but the Mayor thinks it's a stupid idea, saying it's the teachers' and principals' call, not a judge's, when "horseplay gets out of hand...You cannot force the teachers or the principals to follow some script. They are professionals, and you have to leave it up to them to do it." But Gothamist thought that the Mayor was trying to get teachers to follow a script with other measures, like ending social promotion. But have faith, kiddies, it turns out Mayor Bloomberg was a C-student in the fifth grade.