We Love NYC Teachers!

This video was made by a friend of mine...Watch it..!

A short video put together by NYC public school students and parents opposed to the planned layoff of over 4,100 teachers

Blizzard - Save Our Schools - New UFT Ad

The United Federation of Teachers launched a television ad campaign Saturday urging Mayor Michael Bloomberg to protect teachers and schools, not millionaires. The ad, called "Blizzard", will air on local broadcast and cable stations. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, "Instead of making his number one priority attacking teachers, the Mayor should join our effort to extend the millionaire's tax to add several billion dollars to the state budget, eliminating any possibility of layoffs."

Clueless Cathie Black at the PEP Attacks LIFO, ATRs and Pensions...

Cathie Black at the Panel for Edicational Policy Attacks LIFO, ATRs and Pensions...She doesn't even know how many teachers or students are in the Public School system...She's totally out of touch (like the Mayor) with the school system she supposedly runs...

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman (Movie Trailer) - Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC)...

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Parents and teachers on the front lines fighting for Real Education Reform.


A group of parents and educators with Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC) are responding to the "Waiting for Superman" film with a film of their own. They are the real reformers. As one patent activist says, "Are you waiting for Superman? YOU are the Real Heroes." This is the trailer. The film is expected to be released in late October.


For more info visit:


The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman


Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC)

Police: 12-Year-Old Queens Girl Missing For 2 Weeks - 1010WINS.com

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Police say Angelica Ramlakan of Queens was last seen the morning of June 2, when she was dropped off at Middle School 137 in (Ozone Park) Queens. She is described as 4 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 90 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes.

She was wearing green framed eye glasses, a grey hooded sweater, white shirt with a blue flower print and black jeans.

Queens Students Sickened, Probably by Contaminated Water by Sharon Otterman - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

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Children waited for their parents to pick them out outside P.S. 20 John Bowne Elementary School in Flushing, where dozens of students became ill on Tuesday. Uli Seit for The New York Times

About 80 children at Public School 20, an elementary school in Flushing, Queens, became ill Tuesday afternoon, apparently after drinking from water fountains that were contaminated by an air-conditioning chemical, the Department of Education said.

The children began complaining of stomach aches and nausea at about 1:30 p.m., and the school’s principal, Victoria Hart, called 911, said Marge Feinberg, a Department of Education spokeswoman.

Emergency services took 71 children to area hospitals, asking the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to assist with two city buses, said Frank Dwyer, a Fire Department spokesman.

Though some children were vomiting, Mr. Dwyer described the symptoms as minor and said that emergency officials expected all of the children to be released from the hospital later Tuesday.

The school, on Barclay Avenue, is also called the John Bowne school. It has 1,450 students and a new wing with central air-conditioning that was not working Tuesday morning. The school called a contractor, Bayside Refrigeration, to fix the problem, officials said.

Workers went on the roof around noon, “and it looks like some of the air- conditioner chemicals went into the water supply from the roof,” Ms. Feinberg said. Bayside Refrigeration could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

Dr. Glenn Asaeda, an official at the Fire Department’s Office of Medical Affairs, told reporters that emergency workers and hospital personnel were working under the assumption that the children had ingested propylene glycol, a chemical commonly used as a coolant that can be toxic in large concentrations.

The ill children told teachers and medical personnel they had drunk from water fountains at school. While the incident is being investigated, the school’s water has been turned off, and the school will provide bottled water to the children, Ms. Feinberg said.

Officials said the episode was under investigation by the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Health, and the Department of Education.

Parents, Students and Civil Rights Advocates Protest the Mass Closings of Public Schools by Leonie Haimson - The Huffington Post

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In communities all over the country, resistance is building to the mass closings of neighborhood schools.

Instead of strengthening our neighborhood schools, that have for generations accepted and served a variety of students, and providing resources and reforms like smaller classes that have been proven to work, officials are pursuing a scorched earth policy -- as during the Vietnam war, when the military claimed they were forced to destroy villages in order to save them.

Here in New York City, rallies and protests have attracted thousands, culminating in a tumultuous eight hour meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, at which parents, students and teachers pointed out how the Department of Education and Chancellor Joel Klein had unfairly targeted their schools, putting forward misleading statistics and incomplete or false data.

They also revealed how the DOE was itself responsible for overcrowding these schools with our neediest children -- many of them poor, immigrant, and needing special education services -- after having closed other large schools nearby. The small "boutique" schools and charter schools that took their place failed to enroll them. The schools now slated for closure also saw huge rises in the number of homeless students over the last few years.

Given all these challenges, many of these schools have done an admirable job. Particularly moving was the testimony of many students, some of them recent graduates, who eloquently pleaded with the administration, saying that after they had been rejected or discarded elsewhere, teachers and administrators at these schools had literally saved their lives.

Here is one story, told by a recent graduate of Paul Robeson High school in Brooklyn, now proposed to be closed:

Stephanie Adams, 22, described being born with fetal alcohol syndrome, getting turned away from school after school in a couple of states, and eventually enrolling at Robeson in the 10th grade. She started out in ninth-grade special education classes but was transferred to general education classes the following year and later graduated 11th in her class, despite being homeless for two years while in high school...."you're not just giving up on institutions, you're giving up on the kids, you're giving up on the teachers....Without Robeson to light the way I don't know where I'd be."

Over the course of eight hours, only a single individual out of nearly three hundred spoke up in favor of the proposed closings, and yet the panel, composed of a supermajority of mayoral appointees, rubberstamped these decisions with not a word of explanation offered to justify their decisions. Only the independent members appointed by the borough presidents of Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens voted in opposition.

In Chicago, battles have been similarly intense and heartbreaking, with community members and parents fiercely defending the survival of their neighborhood schools, now fated for extinction, while officials assured them that they knew better what was best for their children.

As one commentator put it, "While local and national education leaders talk about increasing school choice, parents ... feel the choice they've made is being taken away" -- the choice to send their children to a neighborhood school.

And it's not just parents, students and teachers who oppose these policies; so do researchers. Studies have shown that in Chicago, students sent to schools in other neighborhoods after their schools had closed did no better academically, and in some cases, their displacement appears to have led to the worsening of gang violence, ending in shootings and deaths.

Before the 2006 school year, an average of 10-15 Chicago public school students were fatally shot each year. With massive numbers of school closings, this number soared to 24 deaths in 2006-07, and 34 deaths in 2008-9.

Here in New York City, discharge rates have skyrocketed as schools are phased out -- with up to half of the students in the last two classes at closing schools either forced to transfer to GED programs or just disappearing from the system's records.

Researchers have found that an increase in student mobility is correlated with worse outcomes in academic achievement, nutrition and health, and that nationwide, students who change schools even once are twice as likely to drop out.

Unfortunately, Arne Duncan, head of the US Department of Education, is forcing more districts to adopt these destructive policies, by making this a condition of their eligibility for federal stimulus funds. The federal government has ordained that states have to choose from a small number of "intervention models" -- none of which have been proven to work: either close schools, turn them over to charter school management, or fire half of the staff in the process of "reconstituting" them.

Attempts at actual improvement can be only used in about half of targeted schools -- and unfortunately the specified methods, like teacher performance pay, have never been shown to work.

After studying the these sort of policies for five years, the Center on Education Policy concluded that the federal government "must refrain form forcing schools to implement unproven strategies...Only with more specific knowledge can leaders create policies that help schools improve."

Meanwhile, in New York City alone, literally tens of thousands of students are going to be left without a neighborhood school they have a right to attend -- breaking the ties between their communities and their public schools -- while charter schools are installed in their place.

The expansion of the charter school sector proposed by the Obama administration is particularly risky. According to two recent studies, one from UCLA's Civil Rights Project and another from researchers at the University of Colorado and Eastern Michigan University, show that the proliferation of charter schools nationwide has led to more segregation nationwide.

Yet another analysis reveals how charters in NYC serve far fewer poorer, immigrant and special needs students than reside in the communities in which they sit, leading to a "separate but unequal" school system.

Some day these misconceived policies will be recognized as the educational equivalent of practices pursued by civic authorities the 1950s and 1960s to remake entire neighborhoods in the name of "urban renewal" and "slum clearance."

Those top-down policies led to loss of vibrant neighborhoods characterized by small businesses, a mix of low-rise housing in a complex eco-system, bull-dozed into barren complexes of cement, and caused misery for millions of residents dispersed elsewhere.

Just like the current educational establishment, which has withdrawn their support from neighborhood schools to make their eventual privatization easier to achieve, financial institutions in earlier decades disinvested in these inner-city neighborhoods and "redlined" them so that no loans would be available to improve their conditions- all in the interests of flattening them to the ground.

Indeed, the current policies constitute educational redlining, prescribing top-down solutions, with those in charge ignoring the experience and priorities of community members, in the heedless and arrogant fashion of those who have never themselves sent their own children to urban public schools, and know little and care less about what makes schools work.

Yet communities are fighting back. Here in New York City, the NAACP, along with the teacher's union and local elected officials have filed suit in state court in an attempt to block the city from closing these schools.

Let's hope that the courts deliver justice, before it's too late.

Queens Middle School Principal Knocked Out by Student's Punch by Joe Mollica and Yoav Gonen - NY Post

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The principal of a rough-and-tumble Queens middle school that has made headlines for its violence in recent years was knocked down and out by a student's flying fist, witnesses told The Post.

Longtime JHS 226 principal Sonia Nieves had to be taken to a hospital for a head injury Thursday morning after she intervened in a cafeteria squabble between two teens -- one of whom landed a punch squarely in her face.

The 15-year-old girl was arrested and charged with assault, cops said.

Although there were differing accounts as to whether Nieves was actually the intended target, students said violent incidents at the South Ozone Park school -- which last August was placed on the state's "persistently dangerous" list -- were a dime a dozen.

"There are fights here everyday. This school is out of order," said eighth-grader Nyeema McFarland, 13. "They don't know how to control students here."

Both city and state education officials insisted that the school has already seen improvements this year through the added supports that were mandated by the school's designation as persistently dangerous.

Additional reporting by Kirsten Fleming

Bloomberg Snubs Students by Elizabeth Benjamin - NY Daily News - Daily Politics Blog...

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You have to admit that Mayor Bloomberg is consistent, he's as rude and arrogant to 12 year old New York City public school students as he is to their parents and the voters of New York City...

A group of students received a lesson in government responsiveness today Mayor Bloomberg whisked by them on the steps of City Hall while they protested a plan to relocate their school, the DN's Kate Lucadamo reports.

Despite their cries, Bloomberg didn’t stop. His bodyguards surrounded him so the Clinton School for Writers and Artists students couldn’t hand him a letter, parents said.

Undeterred, members of the group chased him and yelled, but he quickly got in his car and disappeared.

“When I saw him pass by I thought he might stop,” said 12-year-old Miranda Rowe who was holding a letter. “I didn’t think he would just not accept it.”

“I was surprised he didn’t do anything, that he just walked away,” she said. “I thought they’d actually listen because we took the time to come out here and protest.”

Miranda’s mother said she was “shocked.”

A spokesman for the mayor confirmed the incident, saying: “The Mayor did not stop. Some of the students ran towards the car on his way out.”

Assemblywoman Pheffer Encourages Children To Return Their Completed Summer Reading Challenge Forms

Assemblywoman Audrey I. Pheffer (D-Queens) is encouraging all children who completed the Summer Reading Challenge during their summer vacation to drop off their completed forms so that they may receive their certificates.

“This Challenge offered children the opportunity to continue reading and learning, even though school was out for the summer,” said Pheffer.

To encourage children to continue reading during the summer, Assemblywoman Pheffer offers her annual Summer Reading Challenge. Those interested receive a brochure with a calendar and a box for each day in July and August. When there are 40 or more days marked off with 15 minutes or more of reading on each day, your child earns a New York State Assembly Excellence in Reading Certificate. Along with the calendar, the brochure contains a list of suggested reading material for each stage of childhood to assist in your choice of books.

“Reading is an important tool for success, and the students who participate in this challenge demonstrate that they are committed to making education a priority,” said Pheffer.

You may stop by either of Assemblywoman Pheffer’s district offices at 90-16 Rockaway Beach Boulevard, Rockaway Beach, or 108-14 Crossbay Boulevard, Ozone Park to drop off your completed forms, or to receive a new copy if needed.

Why Vote? - Youth Vote Project...

Dominick Carter of NY1 Inside City Hall interviewed four of the teen aged students behind this motivational video...Youth Vote Project...

CUNY Law School Student Government Resolution Calling for the Cancellation of Classes on Election Day Nov 4th...

I for one have been critical of the dismal performance of the youth of this country when it comes to making use of their constitutional right to vote...historically, this segment of the population is the least represented on Election Day...I am glad to see that the Student Government of CUNY Law School is taking a pro-active approach calling for a cancellation of classes so student can participate in various campaign and assist at polling sites...The following is a copy of their resolution...

Student Government - The City University of New York School of Law

WHEREAS the significance of the upcoming National Election on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, can hardly be overstated; and

WHEREAS the very slim majority held in the New York State Senate has much potential and relevance to New York residents in general, and

WHEREAS recent efforts of CUNY Law School students have resulted in the substantial mobilization of immigrant and minority voters in Senate District 15, by all accounts making this seat, and thus the control of New York State Senate, a close contest; and

WHEREAS close elections may create an incentive for some groups to discourage and otherwise subvert the vote of minority and immigrant voters to achieve a particular political outcome; and

WHEREAS voter intimidation and disenfranchisement has permeated previous elections in New York City including but not limited to these instances documented by the Asian American Legal Defense and Educated Fund:

• In New York, identification is not required to vote, but during the 2004 Presidential Elections, 23% of all Asian American voters surveyed were asked to show ID. Of those, 69% were not required to do so under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires only a limited group of first-time voters to present ID.

• During the 2004 elections, 79% of South Asian American voters in New York and eight additional states were asked to show ID to vote, even though they were not required by law to do so.

• In a previous election in Queens an election coordinator, repeatedly referred to herself as a “U.S. citizen,” and directed other poll workers to “keep an eye” on South Asian voters, who she said, unlike her, were not “born here.”

• In a previous election a voter in Queens was asked to show her naturalization certificate to prove to the poll worker her eligibility to vote

• In a previous election South Asians in the Bronx attempting to cast their ballots were called “terrorists.”

WHEREAS poll monitoring should be a constant check on the democratic process, and a looming presence in democratic societies, in good times and in bad, and

WHEREAS CUNY Law School has a demonstrated a long standing commitment to serve the public, and has a well established presence with the community of Queens County, and

WHEREAS participation in U.S. elections has traditionally been far more burdensome to working Americans- and has no doubt interfered with the ability of many concerned citizens to contribute to the democratic process, in either voting, poll monitoring or other capacities- by virtue of Election Day being on a work day, and

WHEREAS Tuesdays are notoriously the busiest days for the majority of CUNY Law Students, and

WHEREAS CUNY Law Students are actively organizing and engaging in a host of election related activities beyond State Senate District 15, and

WHEREAS Election Day is an official New York State holiday;

ENACTED That the CUNY School of Law Student Government resolves to:

1. Call on the leadership of CUNY Law School to officially cancel all classes on Election Day, Tuesday, November 4, 2008,

2. Call on student organizations to endorse and take part in the effort to organize a massive poll monitor/observer turnout in Senate District 15 on Election Day,

3. Encourage students to use the day in furtherance of their civic duties, in particular, voting, organizing, and poll monitoring, preferably in Senate District 15,

4. Call on the leadership of CUNY Law School, and in particular, Dean Anderson, to publicize the decision to cancel classes, which would embolden the Senate District 15 poll monitoring effort by:

1. Increasing awareness of and participation in the effort by students and student organizations,

2. Creating a deterrent to any parties contemplating the use of illegal and illegitimate methods to discourage and prevent voting by eligible citizens, and

3. Making a bold statement and a good example of civic responsibility.

Parents Sue Teacher Who Allegedly Taped Daughter's Mouth Shut - FOXNews.com

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NEW YORK — The family of a 4-year-old has filed a lawsuit against the child's teacher for taping the girl's mouth shut at school.

The lawsuit in Queens Supreme Court says Angela Amedeo had her mouth sealed shut with Scotch tape for 10 minutes because the child spoke during "quiet time."

The incident occurred Aug. 22 at Flushing Fields Play School, the lawsuit claims, and since the incident the child has cried and has nightmares. Angela's family filed the lawsuit against the teacher, the city and the Department of Education.

The family said it was told at the time that the incident was being investigated, but never got a response.

The city Law Department said the office had not received he legal papers in the case, but would review the matter.

P.S. 232 Students Collect Books For Needy Schools by Lee Landor - Queens Chronicle

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(courtesy of Fran Honan)
Students at P.S. 232 in Howard Beach collected more than 5,000 books to donate to schools in South Africa.

It appears that the children of Howard Beach who attend P.S. 232 are avid readers: they brought in more than 5,000 used books from their homes to donate to schools in South Africa.

Many of the approximately 790 students donated three to six books, their principal, Lisa Josephson, said. Then, their parents stopped by the school to drop off shopping bags filled with even more books.

As the book collection grew and began filling up boxes, it was clear to Josephson that the entire P.S. 232 community was excited to take part in this project, which was started by kindergarten teacher Lori Weschler. The idea came to her last December, during a visit to South Africa, where she discovered the state of privation in which most students learn: their schools have no books and few of the supplies that most children at P.S. 232 take for granted.

“They’re spoiled,” Josephson quipped, but still eager to participate. Whether in their classes or through television, the students learn about the poverty that plagues other parts of the world. Having a great sense of community activism, they felt it was their duty to give back, according to their principal.

Students applauded when the idea was first suggested to them, Josephson said. Immediately, they started coordinating and planning the project: book collection began the very next day, as students already brought in books to school.

Parents, too, were eager to hand over books, mostly because they were relieved to unload their bookshelves, Josephson said, adding that contributions to the effort were generous and the participants never lost sight of their goal.

“The children on both sides of the world are learning a valuable lesson that we are all on this planet together and we need to connect in any way we can,” said Fran Honan, a P.S. 232 teacher, who helped launch the project. She was especially proud of the student council, which took over the effort, worked hard and “really stepped up to it.”

Last week, the students completed the book collection, which filled up 28 boxes, and helped load them into a large freight container provided by Weschler’s son who works at Kennedy International Airport.

The container will be shipped to South Africa in the next two months and delivered to the “School Outreach Programme” — a group dedicated to improving the conditions of schools in poor areas. Members of the organization will travel around the country, distributing the books to various schools in need.

Since they have at least a month before their container is shipped off, the students decided to do a little more donating — this time of backpacks and other school supplies. A P.S. 232 student group, called “Kids Who Care,” will use some of the proceeds of its annual Penny Harvest to help with the project, Honan said.

It won’t end there, Josephson added. Students will continue to learn about different cultures and societies; about benevolence and charity; and, most importantly, about themselves and their roles in the world.

Brooklyn Water Works by Historian Robert Miller - Youtube

Before the 1898 consolidation of New York City, Brooklyn was the third most populous city in America. Historian Robert Miller tours the crumbling infrastructure of its water supply system.

Fred Hadley was the producer/videographer/editor of this video...

Save the Ridgewood Reservoir - A Video by Rob Jett and Steve Nanz

Ridgewood Reservoir is a 50 acres nature oasis located on the Brooklyn/Queens border. The city wants to turn it into ball fields. The video speaks for itself.

Tom Chapin - Not On The Test

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Why this song?

As a kid who grew up in NYC, I am a great fan of America’s public education. I attended P.S. 46 in Greenwich Village, then P. S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, then on to Brooklyn Technical High School and S.U.N.Y. Plattsburgh.

And now, as a father and a grandfather, I so appreciate the tough job that faces every teacher. I believe they need all the help they can get: anything that excites a student, opens their eyes, and hearts and minds is a positive that makes a child invest in school.

Music, art, drama and sports - these are what kept me involved when I was in school. And these very things, that make a teacher’s (and student’s) job easier and more rewarding, are what’s been cut from curriculums across the country.

Now we are teaching by rote again - where the test, and only the test, becomes the reason to teach and study.

It’s no secret that American industry has outsourced most factory jobs to other countries to take advantage of cheaper labor costs. So why are we putting so much effort into a form of education in which there is no creativity? This is the time that our youth should be taught to think ”out of the box,” not be put into a tighter one!

This is the larger context that John Forster and I wanted to address in a satirical song for NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

-Tom Chapin

Lyrics

Not On The Test
by John Forster & Tom Chapin
© 2006 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

Go on to sleep now, third grader of mine.
The test is tomorrow but you'll do just fine.
It's reading and math, forget all the rest.
You don't need to know what is not on the test.

Each box that you mark on each test that you take,
Remember your teachers, their jobs are at stake.
Your score is their score, but don't get all stressed.
They'd never teach anything not on the test.

The School Board is faced with no child left behind
With rules but no funding, they’re caught in a bind.
So music and art and the things you love best
Are not in your school ‘cause they’re not on the test.

Sleep, sleep, and as you progress
You’ll learn there’s a lot that is not on the test.

Debate is a skill that is useful to know,
Unless you’re in Congress or talk radio,
Where shouting and spouting and spewing are blessed
'Cause rational discourse was not on the test.

Thinking's important. It's good to know how.
And someday you'll learn to but someday's not now.
Go on to sleep, now. You need your rest.
Don't think about thinking. It's not on the test.

Not On The Test
Sung by Tom Chapin
Written by John Forster & Tom Chapin
© 2008 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)
Not on the Test video: Directed by Yuichi Hibi
Edited by Timothy Gregoire
Art Direction: Marie Christine Katz
Production Coordinator: Mary Croke

Changing the NYC Education System - FORA.tv

New School
New York, NY
Mar 6th, 2008

New York State Assembly Member Alan Maisel argues for an education system that combines mayoral control with public participation.

So Why is This Principal Smiling? by Yoav Gonen - New York Post

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CLASS ACT: Principal Jeffrey Scherr (above), of Francis Lewis HS in Queens, successfully handles...overcrowding with dance class in the hallway...early-morning lunches and...lively music to keep throngs of kids moving between periods

March 10, 2008 -- When you're in charge of the city's biggest high school - with nearly 4,500 students jammed into a building meant for 2,600 - it takes some flexibility to make it work.

Judging by the performance of Francis Lewis HS in Fresh Meadows, Queens - including a remarkable 80 percent graduation rate, a more than 90 percent attendance rate, and 13 student applications for every open seat - fifth-year principal Jeffrey Scherr has been doing his stretching.

His space-saving tricks - by necessity, he argues - include holding the first lunch period at 9 a.m., allowing cheerleaders and dancers to practice in a hallway nook by the cafeteria, and holding so-called "Polar Bear Gym" outside unless the temperature falls below 35.

"There's nothing wrong with teenagers in athletic suits running track or playing handball" when it's cold, said Scherr, who has worked with the Department of Education for more than 35 years. "I just don't want to be in a position where I have to play 'Polar Bear English.' "

With the student population at more than 170 percent of the building's intended capacity, there aren't many space-saving measures left to be tried.

Walls have been added to divide classrooms in half; the teachers' lounge and woodshop have been converted into classrooms; and eight student-filled trailers are parked out back.

But the administration and staff still look for ways to make things more manageable.

During the infamous human traffic jams that crawl through hallways in between periods, Scherr pipes music over the school's public-address system to keep things moving.

Teachers and staff also encourage students to take advantage of the benefits of being at such an enormous school - including classes in 10 foreign languages and more than 30 sports teams and dozens of student-led clubs.

"There's something for everyone - which I think makes everyone more positive," said Trinel Torian, 18, a senior and editor of the school's newspaper. "I have no problem with the larger class sizes."

Many students said they also relish the school's diversity - which is nearly 50 percent Asian with a mix of white, black and Hispanic kids.

"I have friends of almost every ethnicity," said sophomore Marc McDonald, 15, who listed Egyptian, Irish, Chinese and Korean students among them.

"With so many people, you make so many friends," added sophomore Ayman Ghanim, 16. "There's really nothing bad about it."

While the trend under Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has been to close large, failing high schools and carve them into smaller, more manageable schools, there is no indication that Francis Lewis HS has any reason to fear a similar fate.

And that's fine with Scherr, whose school earned a "B" grade in October on its first-ever report card.

"There's no need to break up a school like this. It would be a tragedy," said the principal. "Some teenagers pick a big college, some pick a small college. I think it's nice that they can have a choice [in high school]."

yoav.gonen@nypost.com

School Control: To Tweak or Not to Tweak? - Gotham Gazette - The Wonkster » Blog Archives

The Gotham Gazette is the only media source who is giving this issue the attention it deserves...I feel this is a very fair-minded account of what transpired at the event...and it's the only publication that gives parents concerns their warranted voice...we are the main stakeholders...the students ARE OUR children after all...

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The state legislature has more than a year to decide whether to keep mayoral control or let it “sunset,” but the issue is already generating a lot of interest. First there was the City Council hearing on it on Monday, and this morning the New School attracted a near capacity crowd with a from on “Who Rules the Schools?”

The event opened with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s litany of all he and his patron, Mayor Michael Bloomberg have done to improve education in the city. While mayoral control does not solve all the daunting problems facing public education, notably the cavernous achievement gap, it is, Klein said, “a prerequisite for solving that problem. … You need leadership, visibility and accountability right at the top.”

No one at the discussion called for letting mayoral control go the way of dunce caps, Dick and Jane and ditto machines. But, aside from Klein, all saw room for improvement — and some want lots of it.

There is the management structure, which Samuel Freedman, the Times columnist who moderated the discussion, said a teacher referred to as “the gang of two.” Using an analogy from a different communist country, State Assemblymember Alan Maisel said he was for mayoral control but “not for the Stalinist form of mayoral control.” “We do not have to take the public out of public education to reform it,” agreed Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators. Lauding the administration’s successes, Merryl Tisch, vice chancellor of the State Board of Regents, said the administration repeatedly derailed itself because of the “‘a’ word”: arrogance.

While no panelist went so far as to say explicitly that the administration had not scored successes, many indicated the advances were not as dramatic as Klein and his minions might claim. “The Department of Education has the second biggest public relations department, second only to the mayor,” said Carmen Colon, a longtime parent activist. “I don’t know of any Board of Education that spends as much as they do on data manipulation and extraction.” And Tisch and Christopher Cerf, a deputy chancellor at the education department, clashed over the accuracy of some of that data: the high school graduation rate.

“The city has a great story to tell about where they came from and where they are,” said Tisch. The problem, she continued, “is they don’t seem to be able to get a straight story.”

So how would the panelists fix mayoral control and address these issues?

Tisch would keep the focus on learning (critics fault the current administration for spending more time on bureaucratic shuffling than on what goes on in the classroom), and Logan would give would give the City Council a larger role.

For his part, Maisel would give the now largely powerless Community Education Councils (Maisel said he served on one but quit because “I thought we were wasting our time”) a role in hiring principals and superintendents. He said he would establish set terms for member of the Educational Policy Panel, which replaced the Board of Education — in name if not in power — and whose panelists now serve at the pleasure of the mayor and borough presidents (leading to the firing of three who crossed Bloomberg over the issue of promotion requirements). Maisel said he might even let the panel select the chancellor, something many observers would see as a throwback to the old days when the board did that. The way it is now, Maisel said, “This chancellor is not an advocate for the [school] system but an advocate for the mayor.”

Underscoring that he was speaking for himself not the administration (which has indicated the best change to the system is no change), Cerf said he would like the department to have an organization — a kind of Government Accountability Office — “that would be empowered to review or opine on the numbers.”

Conceding “there is a deep perception out there that parents’ voices are not sufficient in the mix,” Cerf cited all the meetings department officials hold with parents, conveniently ignoring, of course, that most of those sessions are held to apprise parents and community groups of decisions that have already been made. But, he said, “we need to do better.”

To what end? That is where many advocates and the city will continue to disagree.

The mayor and chancellor, Cerf said, must continue to be the ones making major decision on matters of educational policy. “The minute you start destroying that,” he said, “is the moment you give up on our ability to get something done.”

For activists like Colon, that might be the rub. “I don’t want to provide any input if all you’re going to do is pat me on the head,” she said.

(For more on the debate over mayoral control, see A Battle Brews Over Who Controls the Schools).