Williamsburg Charter High Gets a Reprieve; Cheating at PS 31?

05/23/2012 | Comment

The saga of Williamsburg Charter High School’s closing continues. Yesterday, a judge refused the city’s request to move forward with a lottery to relocate the current students at the school. Unfortunately, this decision doesn’t necessarily help the students at WCH, as they may still need to scramble to find a new school between now and September. From the looks of it, neither the city nor the leadership of the school (which is fighting to stay open) have done right by the students in this process.

Elsewhere in the Eastern District, two highly-ranked elementary schools are being investigated for cheating on standardized tests. P.S. 31 in Greenpoint and East Williamsburg’s P.S. 257 – the two top-ranked elementary schools in the entire city based on the Department of Education’s report card system – are under investigation for helping their students excel on the standardized tests that make up a big part of the report card ranking.

The cheating was suspected after many of the students from the two schools performed worse than expected on subsequent testing at I.S. 318. The gaming of the testing system also reveals a particularly nasty side effect for the teachers at the middle school:

At I.S. 318, nearly 60 percent of teachers were rated below average or low [on DOE’s new teacher report cards]. The Daily News singled out the school for its poor performance, and many news media outlets, including The New York Times, published teachers’ ratings online. The sixth-grade teachers’ scores, which depended on the progress students made from fifth to sixth grade, were particularly poor.

New Public School at Roberto Clemente

02/24/2012 | 2 Comments

A Child Grows in Brooklyn has details on the new public school that is opening in place of the former PS 19 Roberto Clemente school on South 3rd between Keap and Rodney. The new school will be the Brooklyn Arbor School (I think DOE was calling it PS 114) at the Roberto Clemente Campus (hopefully this means the Clemente is staying, not being phased out).

According to ACGiB, the Arbor school will be a magnet school, open to students citywide, but with a preference for students from District 14 (PS 84 is a magnet school too). Enrollment has been extended through 16 March.

How Long Have You Lived Here?

Greg Hanlon has a lengthy and thoughtful piece on the controversy over co-locating a Success charter school in JHS 50, and last week’s hearing on the same subject. As I said a few days ago, there are strong and passionate arguments on both sides of the debate, and they deserve to be well-reported. Hanlon (as usual) does that – delving into the issues and motivations on both sides of the issue.

Three Williamsburg Charters to Close

Three charter high schools run by the Believe Network, which has had numerous problems over the years. As one state official put it:

Over the last few months, both the State Education Department and the Department of Education have laid out a very troubling pattern of what is, at best, financial irregularities by the school’s management and perhaps much worse

This “troubling pattern” will likely leave as many as 1,500 local high school students without a school come June.

Lesbians, Gays, Firemen & Teachers

06/24/2011 | Comment

This evening, teachers were spared layoffs, firehouses were saved from closure, and gays and lesbians were given the right to marry.

Not bad for a day’s work, New York.