Morning and afternoon rallies will bracket lawmakers' workdays this Wednesday, May 6, with the focus squarely on kindergarten admissions. This year public school kindergarten admissions feature wait lists, overcrowding, and increasingly high demand for seats in neighborhoods where parents are...
According to Department of Education spokesperson Andrew Jacob (and the revised 'final' timelineon the DOE website), the DOE plans to mail results from gifted and talented testing to families starting today, May 4th. That's good, because some schools, like the Anderson Schooland NEST+M, will...
Our most recent poll, on school safety officers, showed a sharp split in Insideschools' online community -- 37 percent of parents said they understood and appreciated why school safety officers are in the schools, while nearly as many, 33 percent, said they'd prefer schools without safety...
The Department of Education announced on their website that score notifications for applicants to elementary school gifted and talented programs would not be released today, as scheduled, but on Monday instead. Last year, the process was delayed repeatedly and students' placements were eventually...
All eighth and ninth graders who applied to high schools should have a placement by today, although they may not all be pleased with their assignment. The 7,455 students who were not matched in the first round of the high school process were asked to re-rank their preferences from a list of...
<!--StartFragment-->The hundreds of kindergarteners on waiting lists for schools all over the city are not the only sign of crowding in the schools, as many schools fear being forced to open extra classes in rooms that are now used for art and music. Rather than looking for the source of...
I have an overactive imagination. I also have an acute sense of impending doom that I inherited directly from my grandmother: "If you're 5 minutes late, you're under a bus." This is a bad combination. Whenever Brooks gets a fever, I need to convince myself that he doesn't have meningitis or...
After a stormy tenure as principal of MS 8, The New Preparatory Middle School, in Queens, and despite strong supportfrom the Department of Education, Principal John Murphy stepped down yesterday, following more than a month of daily protests by parents and teachers and a hailstorm of negative...
Only 100 parents attended the District 3 kindergarten lottery last week after the Department of Education announced that many popular schools did not have available seats. “Parents were disappointed that they didn’t have a full range of options as they have had in the past four years since the...
This week, 8th-graders across New York City are taking standardized science tests, part of the battery of state tests public school students undergo every year. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is the national yardstickagainst which state tests are measured; newly...
As reporting and speculation about the emergent swine flu virus continues to dominate the local media, city health authorities urge caution and common sense precautions to prevent illness and potential transmission. Look here for detailed information and recommendations from the New York City...
Stories today in the Daily News and on the Huffington Post highlight parent frustrations with kindergarten enrollment; chatter we're hearing describes hundreds of children waitlisted for the most desirable Manhattan primary schools. Up to 90 children are waitlisted at PS 3and PS 41,popular...
Later today, Chancellor Joel Klein will speak at the Harlem Success Academycharter lottery. Harlem Success, founded by former City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, can't ever be faulted for thinking small: The draw will be held tonight at the Harlem Armory Track at 5:30 pm, a facility that can host...
Last week one of my teachers raised a topic that brought up some difficult questions: He reminded us that if he knew a student was cutting him or herself, he was legally required to report them to a higher authority. He expressed his own contradicting feelings on this issue, which prompted an...
Since today is Earth Day, it seems a good time to mention that all New York City public schools are now members of the Green Schools Alliance, a national organization helping schools to cut their carbon footprints. Last Saturday, more than 650 students gathered at a conference at the...
Gotham Schools is reporting that embattled PS 20 principal Sean Keaton has asked for a meeting,via the Times' local blog, to hear parent concerns about his administration, citing coverage on Insideschools.organd in the Brooklyn Paper. Demand for the school, and for other nearby public schools,...
Jacob Mnookin stood on the edge of the boardwalk in Coney Island, greeting the families who had come to witness the inaugural lottery for Coney Island Prep, south Brooklyn’s first charter school. Mnookin, the founding principal, still wasn't sure where he would be holding classes in the fall,...
The familiar honk of a fabled New York City mayor coursed across tens of thousands of telephone lines yesterday, as robocalls voiced by former Mayor Ed Koch reached out to parents to encourage them to vote in the straw-poll Ccommunity Education Council elections. Whether Hizzoner was pressed into...
Talking about 'giving back' is easy -- yet too often, between the talking and the doing lies a deep gulf of good intentions. But volunteering doesn't have to mean giving up a career or sacrificing your home life; New York City's long-established school volunteer program, Learning Leaders, asks...
Our question about the Community Education Council vote drew an anemic response -- in itself, perhaps a reflection on the Department of Education'sfledgling effort atonline parent engagement. About half of the respondents said they planned to vote, but the next largest group said they...
The Department of Education has earned a reputation for making under-the-radar announcements in school 'slack times' -- often, just as a vacation begins. In its recent announcement of a $ 2.5 million donation by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundationto two charter school networks, made on the first...
It's Friday, and time for theInsideschoolscommunity poll. This past week, we asked about bullying in school, and the majority voice was clear -- zero tolerance for any kind of bullying, actual or virtual, with strong consequences and required parent meetings for students involved in bullying....
When Community Education Councils (CEC) candidates walked into school cafeterias and auditoriums across the city this month to declare why parents should vote for them, they got a shocking reality -- few parents showed up. During the past two weeks, public school parents were invited to meet the...
At a jam-packed and raucous meeting on Monday night, the Community Education Council of District 28 in central Queens passed a unanimous resolution recommending the immediate removal of Dr. John Murphy as principal of MS 8 in South Jamaica. The resolution came at the end of the monthly meeting,...
Yesterday, the City Council members called on state legislators to establish a process by which charter schools are sited in public school buildings. Charter schools, which receive public money but are not managed by the Department of Education, are not entitled to space rent-free in DOE...
Half of the teachers working in American classrooms today could retire over the next decade, according to a reportfrom the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a non-profit, non-partisan advocacy group based in Washington, DC. Because many teachers today are near 50, and because...
April's a busy season for New York City's 78 charter schools, which currently serve 18,000 students. This coming school year, 24 new charters will open, and charter-school advocates tout high demand. Since most of the city's charters receive more applications than they have seats, the law...
Parents who responded to our high-school choice poll have strong opinions on the matter: More than half say there aren't enough good schools for students and families to choose from, with demand strongest for progressive, rigorous high schools. About 20 percent of responders say the system only...
The Department of Educationhas decided to back down on its planned closing of three neighborhood schools and creation of charter zones without Community Education Council approval, the subject of a recent lawsuit filed by the United Federation of Teachersand the New York Civil Liberties Union....
The Post, the Times cityroom blog, and GothamSchools all highlight Comptroller (and mayoral hopeful) William Thompson's testimony on outsized Department of Education budget overruns, which he outlined at a crowded, consistently adversarial City Council hearing yesterday afternoon. At issue, in...
While thousands of parents and students showed up at the supplementary round high school fair on Tuesday, many of the schools on the Department of Education list of available seats were not represented. We asked a few schools how many seats they actually have available. This is what they...
WARNING: This blog may include spoilers for the Twilight series. A few weeks ago I was talking to my neighbor, a 10 year-old boy at PS 321in Brooklyn, and found out that he had just started reading Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. Many of his friends and classmates were doing the same. This...
In the Daily News, Merideth Kolodner profiles a familywhose talented, accomplished son was not matched with any high schools on the first admissions round, echoing comments we're hearing from readersand parents citywide. On TV, Cindy Hsu at CBS Channel 2 covered the story, and Brian Lehrer...
(See the bottom of the post for an afternoon update from the DOE) Upper East Side families zoned for the long-shuttered elementary school PS 151 do not have a zoned school for their children and have instead been permitted to apply for seats at other Upper East Side elementary schools. This...
It's admissions season at the Department of Education -- another week, another deadline. This week,parents of 2009 pre-Kindergarten students must submit applicationsfor the coming year; links here to the online applicationand school directory. You can also pick up a paper copy of the application...
More than half of the readers who responded to our poll said that parents who didn't speak English were involved in their child's school. But the biggest segment, 28 percent, said that non-native speakers weren't part of the school community, and nearly one in five readers said they weren't much...
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer weighs in on the mayoral control debate, with areport that urges strengthening Community Education Councils (CECs) and increasing their independence, by transferring their training and supervision from the Department of Education's Office of Family...
The 7,455 eighth grade students who did not get matched with a high school in the first round are scrambling to research their options and find a good fit. The Department of Education has given middle school counselors a list of schools with available space. Some schools have space for incoming...
My children came home from their middle school yesterday looking solemn and ashen-faced, and I knew immediately that something was up. They reported seeing hallways filled with sobbing 8th-graders who learned they did not get into their first, second or even third choice of high school. At least...
Maybe Brooks is just going through a particularly promising phase, or maybe I'm seeing him through my Mom's rose-colored glasses, or maybe, just maybe, my little boy with autism is no longer so definitively a little boy with autism. Hmm. When my Mom, who's visiting from Canada, wakes up in the...
This afternoon, the city's 86,169 8th graders finally got news about their high-school placements for September. According to the Department of Education, just over half got good news from their first-choice school, three-fourths got one of their top three picks, and 86 percent got one of their...
Parents have been asking how the kindergarten placement process works; we asked the DOE for details -- and why they advised families to "wait until September" for possible placements at local schools. Zoned schools fill their seats drawing from the applications they receive before the March 6...
Still looking for an elementary or middle school for your child? You might want to consider one of the new schools opening in September. In addition to the new high schools and charter schools opening this fall, 26 schools with elementary and middle school grades will also open their doors. Many...
Charging that the Department of Education has broken state law by announcing school closures without community consultation, the New York Civil Liberties Union announced today a lawsuit against the Department of Education in New York State Supreme Court, filed by New York City public school...
Dear Judy, What is the use of taking an Advanced Regents diploma? Do colleges even know what a Regents exam is? Wouldn't it be just as well to take the five basic Regents exams and not bother with more? Or not take them at all? -- High school parent Dear High School Parent: For a long time,...
Elissa Gootman writes today about families whose kids didn't get kindergarten seatsin their local schools, a block and a half from home. We're also hearing from parents whose children haven't been offered seats in nearby schools -- and, in District 28 in Queens, of students offered kindergarten...
The deadline for kindergarten registration has been extended by the DOE to April 20, to accomodate the school vacation in mid-April. Thanks to our commenters for the calendar check, and watch the blog for more kindergarten news in the coming days.
E.D. Hirsch, Core Knowledgefounder and longtime education advocate, asks good questions today in the Times about testing, even as he endorses 'teaching to the test,' provided the test is a good one. Meanwhile, families are still waiting for results of an urban test without any bubble-in,...
In the latest weekly poll, we asked whether you thought there was too much focus on test preparation at your school. The majority of you said yes, with 33 percent reporting "way too much" test prep and 20 percent responding that while there may be too much test preparation, the system, not the...
According to the DOE, kindergarten letters were scheduled to go out to families from individual schools in mid-March. In fact, registration's already underway: It began on Monday, March 16 and continues through April 13, which is the last day of the April vacation week. From what we've heard,...
Citywide gifted and talented programs will open for the first time in Brooklyn and Queens this September, according to an announcement this afternoon by the Department of Education. Until today, "citywide" meant Manhattan -- now, it seems the DOE has expanded the definition to three...
