As the 2018-2019 school year came to an end last June, incoming families at East Village Community School (EVCS), a progressive Pre-K to 5th grade elementary school in New York City’s unzoned District 1 where state test scores place it at #5 in the District, received the following email from Principal Bradley Goodman (excerpted below):… Continue reading The Surprising Integration Sceptics Of NYC (It’s Not Who You Think!)
At New Visions for Public Schools, it’s all about continuous school improvement. The organization supports a network of 70 district and 10 charter schools in New York City serving, all told, 40,000 students. (When you include individual district support, those numbers increase to 440 schools serving 230,000 students.) Jefferson Pestronk, Vice President of Strategy and… Continue reading At New Visions for Public Schools, It’s All About Continuous School Improvement. How’s That Going?
In response to my November 6 post, a reader wrote: If we want to see all schools get better, why keep steering people to “The Best” ones, thereby depriving them, and their locally zoned schools, the opportunity to truly flourish? Case in point, PS 191. With the amount of investment that will go into that… Continue reading Can Parents Really “Change” a School? Should They?
At I.S. 339 in the Bronx in a science class for English Language Learners, says New York City’s 2017 “Quality Review Report,” during a vocabulary review the teacher gave an answer key to students that included two mistakes. On the most recent state tests, 3.8 percent of 6th-graders reached proficiency in math. At Martin Van… Continue reading Would You Send Your Children to These Schools?
The Wall Street Journal and Chalkbeat report today on a new report by Aaron Pallas, an education researcher at Teachers College at Columbia, who finds that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s much-vaunted Renewal Schools Program isn’t actually helping students. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Two and a half years ago, early in his first term, the… Continue reading “No Bad Schools,” Mr. Mayor? Do the Math.
Today NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña has an editorial in the Daily News in which she defends “public education” — and, more specifically, the City’s traditional school system — from alleged accusations that “they are violent, dysfunctional and that their students leave school without any knowledge.” In fact, claims Fariña, “here in New York City, by… Continue reading Dear Carmen Fariña: What Are Charter Schools? Chopped Liver?
