In June 2018, in a post entitled, What To Expect When You’re Expecting a New SHSAT Plan (Part #1): The Mayor’s Hidden Agenda, I wrote: Unlike the SHSAT schools, the Mayor doesn’t need a vote in Albany to change admissions to Screened Schools. He could implement his 7 percent plan with the stroke of a… Continue reading NYC Has a New School Chancellor: What This Change Means For Your Students
Last week, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that 2021 would be the last year his Department of Education would administer the public school Gifted & Talented test for placement into Citywide and District programs. His spokeswoman, Miranda Barbot, clarified: “We will spend the next year engaging communities around what kind of programming… Continue reading How NYC Parents Can Save Public School Education: It’s Up To You!
On October 29, Brooklyn City Council member Brad Lander reached out to his New York city colleagues: I am writing to request your support for Reso 1397 which would prohibit the use of screens for admission into community school district middle schools for the 2021-2022 school year. To counter, I shared my May 2019 post,… Continue reading An NYC Schools Admissions Plan So Crazy It Just Might Work – For Everyone
Mayor Bill De Blasio, multiple members of the City Council, and Chancellor Richard Carranza insist there is only one action which will solve all of New York City’s school woes —including over 50 percent of students performing below grade level, dismal college readiness rates, and more. That action is: Integration. You see, all of these… Continue reading How NYC Department of Education Is Thwarting School Choice – And Integration
This is a guest post by: Aisha Baiocchi: Uses she/her pronouns and is half Brazilian and half Indian. She is a rising senior at the High School of American Studies in the Bronx. She is the founder and executive editor of The Outsiders Guide website. She is also an artist and an advocate for public… Continue reading Why We Created a Website for Students of Color, and Why We Shouldn’t Have Had To
Last week we published a guest post by Tim DeRoche, author of A Fine Line: How Most American Kids Are Kept Out of the Best Public Schools, which asked the question: Do NYC School Zones Violate Federal Law? (Spoiler: He thinks they do.) DeRoche writes: Take a look, for example, at PS 8 Robert Fulton… Continue reading An Inconvenient Truth: The NYC Schools Math Problem Nobody Talks About
Last week I hammered home one of my favorite points: One educational size doesn’t fit all. This applies to traditional versus progressive learning, ethnocentric classrooms, acceleration, dual language programs, and more. While engaging in my favorite activity of advocating for giving every family what they want, and giving every student what they need, I asked… Continue reading Never Waste a Good Crisis: How NYC Families (And Teachers And Advocates) Can Take Advantage, Too (Part #2)
The following letter was sent to Ms.Nyah Berg, Director of Integrated Schools Project for New York Appleseed, by Rocky Bonanno, a District 28 parent in response to “Integration jitters in Queens: We can’t lose sight of the ultimate goal here,” published by the NY Daily News on March 16, 2020. The letter has been edited… Continue reading Parent Responds to Queens D28 Integration ‘Daily News’ Editorial
New York City General Education public school Kindergarten applications for 2020 were due on Tuesday, January 21. At the last minute, the Department of Education extended the deadline to Sunday, January 26. It was absolutely, positively not due to technical glitches with the very expensive MySchools Parent Portal. (For tips on how to circumvent the… Continue reading A Revolutionary Rezoning Plan To Increase School Diversity, Bring in More Funding & Make Parents’ Lives Easier! Would You Support?
