Education News
SchoolBook
12/20/12
By Beth Fertig
That anxiety is at the heart of a heated debate over a new charter school planned for this neighborhood. Some parents with kids in the local schools claim supporters of the charter are preying on wary middle and upper class residents.
Gotham Schools
09/07/2012
By Philissa Cramer
Two city charter schools and three city public schools were among just 20 schools in the state and fewer than 300 nationwide that today found out they earned “Blue Ribbon” status from the U.S. Department of Education.
New York Times
08/06/2012
It will be harder for public-school teachers in New Jersey to get tenure and easier to fire bad ones under legislation signed on Monday by Gov. Chris Christie that overhauls the state’s century-old tenure law.
The new law suggests how much the landscape has changed on revising education, and on tenure, long among the most contentious issues for teachers’ unions and legislators.
New York Daily News
07/18/2012
New York City charter-school students whizzed past their traditional counterparts this year — making greater gains in math and science, new data shows.
Nearly three-quarters of charter students — about 72 percent — in Grades 3 to 8 passed the math test this year, up 3.5 points from last year.
And charter proficiency in English increased by a staggering 7 points — to 51.5 percent.
New York Post
07/18/2012
Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announcing city students’ scores on state English and math exams.
You can only imagine how much more New York’s children could have achieved had they the good fortune to attend public schools that were freed from the fetters of mediocrity and failure.
The kids made progress on this year¹s reading and math exams. They solidified a slow upward trend by increasing the number who are counted as proficient in both subjects by about 3 percentage points - to 47% at or above grade level in English and 60% in that category in math.
Hechinger Report
07/10/2012
Critics have portrayed teachers unions as impediments to reform efforts around the country because they have fought against changes such as pay-for-performance and the abolition of tenure. But stories of unions working with school district officials to craft new teacher quality initiatives are slowly becoming more common. And, according to a new study that surveyed more than 1,000 teachers, that’s exactly what a growing number of teachers think unions should be doing.
New York Post
05/18/2012
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced yesterday he's taking a harder line against a sliver of poorly performing teachers by automatically pulling those with two consecutive years of low ratings from the classroom -- and seeking to fire them.
New York Post
05/03/2012
Recess isn't just for kids.
Nearly one in four city public-school teachers whose schedules were audited by the Department of Education last year weren't teaching the minimum number of classes their contracts require, the Post has learned.
New York Daily News
04/18/2012
Hundreds of Brooklyn kids eligible for kindergarten in September have been placed on waiting lists for their local schools.
720 children have been put on waiting lists for public schools around the borough - 38 more than last year.
Two Sunset Park schools top the citywide waiting list - each with more than 100 children waiting to get in.
The New York Times
04/18/2012
Seated in the living room of a stylish Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone, three teachers from a popular Brooklyn charter school last month made their pitch for a new school to a room full of young or soon-to-be parents.
In the front of the room, a baby quietly drank from a bottle. In the back, a woman breastfed an infant. These parents and the many others in attendance were four years or more away from signing up for kindergarten, but the crowded living room suggested that concerns had already surfaced.
NY1
04/17/2012
Brushing aside criticism of his longstanding policy to close poorly performing schools and replace them with new ones, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that the city would open 54 new schools in the fall, many of them in spaces vacated by schools being closed.
WYNC
04/17/2012
Educators have long studied the achievement gap, in which black and Hispanic pupils and low-income students of all races perform at much lower levels than their white, Asian and better-off peers. A new study released on Tuesday by a group that supported efforts to attain for more money for city schools looked at the educational opportunities available to poor and minority students and found the choices lacking.
The New York Times
04/17/2012
The number of incoming Queens kindergarteners who were wait-listed to get into their zoned public schools rose this year, according to city data.
About 950 of the borough's prospective kindergarteners were on waiting lists. The longest in the borough was at Public School 307 in Corona where 109 were on the list -- making it the city's third-largest wait.
The New York Times
01/06/2012
WASHINGTON — Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new studythat tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years.
The New York Times
09/13/2011
In a rare display of bipartisanship, the House approved a bill on Tuesday supporting the expansion of charter schools, the first part of a legislative package planned by Republicans to carry out a piecemeal rewrite of the main federal law on public education, No Child Left Behind.
MIT Research
08/18/2011
A new study by researchers at MIT concludes that urban charter schools generate "large achievement gains."
New York Daily News
07/25/2011
Stanley Crouch The naive among us would believe anything said by the United Federation of Teachers or the NAACP. Yet theirs was the wrong side in the suit they brought against the City of New York - and the race talk thrown in by the NAACP made the whole thing even muddier.
New York Daily News
07/23/2011
So much for the heated rhetoric that the Education Department was violating the civil rights of minority students by asking traditional public schools to share space with charter schools.
New York Daily News
07/22/11
The city scored a big win against the teachers union and the NAACP late last night, when a judge ruled in favor of closing 22 struggling schools. The city also can proceed with plans to put 15 charter schools in public school buildings, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Paul Feinman ruled.
New York Post
07/22/2011
Editorial New York Supreme Court Justice Paul Feinman offered school kids a rayof hope yesterday when he gave the city the OK to close 22 failing schools and place 15 charters in Department of Education buildings.
New York Daily News
07/22/2011
Notwithstanding the best intentions of the Bloomberg administration and the hard work of dedicated teachers throughout the system, the problems facing New York City's schoolchildren - especially black and brown students - are severe.
The New York Times
07/21/2011
In a defeat for the city’s teachers’ union, a judge ruled on Thursday that the Education Department could proceed with plans to close 22 schools because of poor performance and place 15 charter schools in the buildings of traditional schools in September.
New York Daily News
07/11/2011
The racial clichés used by the NAACP in the interest of a suit brought against the City of New York by the United Federation of Teachers, the city's teachers union, to prevent charter schools from opening or expanding is way off the mark.
New York Post
06/28/2011
So much for a civil debate. NAACP big Hazel Dukes went on another anti-charter school rant last night, describing an advocate as a "dumbass" after he called for an end to harsh rhetoric in the debate on the issue.
New York Daily News
06/28/2011
The head of the New York NAACP went toe-to-toe with charter school advocates at a contentious meeting Monday night. Hazel Dukes, who filed a suit last month with the teachers union to block 15 charter schools from sharing space in public school buildings, got testy with a charter school founder who graduated from Harvard University.
New York Daily News
06/27/2011
The NAACP contends that it joined with the teachers union to block Education Department plans to have charters share space with traditional public schools as a matter of fulfilling its civil rights mission. Such a statement markedly refines the term "civil rights."
New York Post
06/27/2011
A prominent NAACP leader is sending her child to a posh New England boarding school at the same time the civil-rights group is suing to block low-income parents from educating their kids in charter schools, The Post has learned.
Gotham Gazette
06/22/2011
Kelley Williams-Bolar and Tanya McDowell, the two mothers prosecuted this yearfor sending their children to out-of-district public schools, have plenty of company in New York City. Public school parents here have long relied on lax school policies and the generosity of friends to help them bend the city’s rules and land their children in desirable schools.
NY1
06/21/2011
The United Federation of Teachers and NAACP went to State Supreme Court on Tuesday, saying the Department of Education did not follow legally required procedures when trying to close 22 schools. They also protested the DOE plan for 16 charter schools to get co-locations, or placement within existing public school buildings.
New York Post
06/16/2011
As he won control of the city's public schools nine years ago this week, Mayor Bloomberg boldly promised: "We will not have to tolerate an incapable bureaucracy which does not respond to the needs of the students." Sadly, New York City isn't even close to achieving that bold vision: We learned this week that only one in three city high-school graduates is prepared for college-level work.
New York Daily News
06/09/2011
When I learned last month that the NAACP was filing a lawsuit along with the United Federation of Teachers to keep open failing schools and prevent us from opening and expanding charter schools, I said I was deeply disappointed. As someone who has fought for equality and children for my entire adult life, I was bewildered by the NAACP's argument that it was joining this lawsuit to seek fair and equitable education for all children.
New York Post
06/06/2011
EDITORIAL Friday's anti-charter-school mini-rally by the NAACP's New York chapter demonstrated dramatically how far the group has drifted from its historical mission.Barely 50 "protesters" turned out -- most from the usual rent-a-mob crew. The rally was supposed to prove that the once-venerable civil-rights group was not "selling out" minority kids when it joined a United Federation of Teachers lawsuit to block charters and keep failing traditional schools open.
New York Post
06/06/2011
Brooklyn state Sen. Eric Adams gets an "F" -- for flip-flopping on charter schools, betrayed parents charge.
The Wall Street Journal
06/04/2011
Here's something you don't see everyday. Thousands of American blacks held a rally in Harlem last week to protest . . . the NAACP.
The Washington Post
06/03/2011
The images are jarring. Photos of children with signs saying “NAACP, drop the lawsuit” and “NAACP, unite us, don’t divide us.” Video clips of parents, teachers and community leaders urging the NAACP to put the education of children first and to stop supporting the status quo. It was so jarring because these children, parents and community leaders were black. Thousands of black Harlem residents rallied in the street May 26 protesting the NAACP.
The American Spectator
06/03/2011
During its century of existence, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has rightfully and successfully tangled with Jim Crow segregationists, school districts opposed to racial integration, even famed (or notorious) Hollywood director D.W. Griffith and his film, The Birth of a Nation. But these days, the nation's oldest civil rights group finds itself at odds -- and on the wrong side of history -- with two groups with whom it should be naturally allied: America's school reform movement -- and a younger generation of African Americans.
New York Daily News
06/02/2011
Education has traditionally been America's great equalizer, the engine of our country's unique capacity for mobility. And when schools fell into disrepair in this city, New Yorkers across the spectrum pitched in to restore them. But now, a lawsuit filed by the teachers union and the NAACP is threatening to stop progress in its tracks.
New York Post
06/01/2011
Let's hope Gov. Cuomo was paying attention when pro-charter-school activists rallied in Harlem last week -- because underlying their message was a fact he needs to take to heart. The lesson: Beware of poison pills that the Legislature will try to sneak into important legislation -- such as the property-tax-cap bill so dear to the governor.
New York Daily News
05/31/2011
Kathleen Kernizan is one of thousands of New York parents who've turned to privately run, publicly funded charters as a way out of failing traditional public schools. Her son attends a successful charter. Her daughter hopes to attend another - but it is threatened by a suit in which the UFT and the NAACP seek to block Mayor Bloomberg from closing 22 failing schools and to quash the creation or expansion of 19 charters.
CBS New York
05/27/2011
NEW YORK — Demonstrators gathered outside the state office building on 125th Street in Harlem to demand the NAACP withdraw from a lawsuit filed by the United Federation of Teachers. The UFT, NAACP, and other groups filed suit on May 18 in Manhattan Supreme Court to stop the closing of 22 New York City public schools and block 17 charter schools from opening or expanding.
The Center for American Progress
04/14/2011
Today, the Center for American Progress released a new report that finds that class-size reduction efforts are not a cost-effective use of school resources. "The False Promise of Class Size Reduction" by Matthew Chingos shows that class-size regulations constrain school administrators and often are ineffective at raising student achievement.
