Department of Education Targets Parents at Underperforming Schools for Personal Visits

By Melissa Russo
Updated at 9:32 AM EDT on Wednesday, Aug 5, 2015
 
Outreach workers from the New York City Department of Education are getting trained to go
to the homes of families at the city's 94 lowest-performing schools, where so many parents have
checked out of their children's education, according to officials, that PTAs have been disbanded
and parent-teacher conferences deserted. 
 
Mayor de Blasio's administration has started a program where outreach volunteers with the
Department of Education are personally approaching parents at their homes to encourage more
involvement in school. Studies show even poor students with involved parents score higher and
graduate more often, according to education officials.

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Connecticut Wins Flexibility in Accountability for ELLs

By Corey Mitchell on August 6, 2015
By Alyson Klein

And now there are 31. The U.S. Department of Education just approved seven additional renewals of state flexibility from the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act. The states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.

Alabama, Connecticut, Mississippi, and Wisconsin each got three-year renewals through the 2017-18 school year, meaning they won't have to make another ask during President Barack Obama's tenure (if waivers even last that long.)

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Senate Seeks Ways to Take Income Out of Graduation Rate Equation

by Catherine Morris
http://diverseeducation.com/article/76846/

A Senate committee looked at how colleges and universities might improve student success at a hearing on Wednesday. The simplest metric of student success are graduation rates. Senators and hearing witnesses said that too many students drop out of college or take too long to graduate.

There are a host of reasons for why students fail to graduate. Those that graduate tend to be enrolled full time or make steady progress toward a degree, underscoring yet again the importance of the year-round Pell Grant, which allows students to continue their studies in the summer. Students who cannot attend full time, due to work or family obligations, therefore have less of a chance of graduating.

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Separate. Unequal. Still. How public school segregation plagues New York City, and why it matters

BY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, August 16, 2015, 5:00 AM
Protesting testing at PS 321 in Park Slope
Stephanie Keith/for New York Daily News
Protesting testing at PS 321 in Park Slope

In the fight over how to close the racial achievement gap in education, you rarely hear about the only policy that's ever worked on a national scale: desegregation.

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Opinion: Opting out is the only option

By Leonie Haimson and Jeanette Deutermann
| Aug 18, 2015 |
 
The state exam results are in, but the big news wasn't the tiny uptick in scores, or the fact that about two-thirds of students continued to fail these exams. Instead, the headlines focused on the huge number of children opting to skip the tests altogether: about 225,000 eligible students in grades three through eight, or 20 percent, refused to take the state tests. In New York City, the percent of opt-outs was far fewer – about 1.6 percent – but even there, the number tripled compared with the year before.

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200 city schools hold rallies to oppose Andrew Cuomo’s education reforms

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, March 12, 2015

Gov. Cuomo's push to rely more on standardized testing was among the issues that protesters challenged during Thursday's demonstrations. 

Gov. Cuomo's push to rely more on standardized testing was among the issues that protesters challenged during Thursday's demonstrations.

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Can the Common Core raise graduation rate for English learners?

NEW YORK – Prompted by the new Common Core standards and an increase in English Language Learners in public schools, New York State education officials are moving aggressively to provide better support for bilingual teachers and improve student achievement.

Currently, there are more than 216,000 English Language Learners enrolled in New York State public schools, speaking over 160 languages.

Though the majority of ELLs are concentrated in the state’s largest districts including New York City, Buffalo and Rochester, several rural districts are seeing increases in immigrant families. In addition, Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester Counties are experiencing a large influx of unaccompanied minors from Central and South America.

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13 Who Defeated Adversity Earn New York Times College Scholarships

By
http://nyti.ms/19deeqr 

  

The New York Times College Scholarship winners for 2015 on Wednesday. Front row, from left: Selena Bermeo, Likita Griffith, Carlos Ycaza-Zurita, Kawkab Abid, Mah Noor, Paige Pagan and Fatima Khan. Back row, from left: David Kela, Daniel Blanc, Michael Borrello, Oumou Zakaria, Shaafi Sabir and Jachai Omotayo. Earl Wilson/The New York Times

It was one of those perfect blue-sky days when Mah Noor stepped from the subway station on her way home to her apartment in Queens and spotted the familiar-looking man, sitting on a bench in the shadow of a tree, who appeared mentally ill.

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New York Compels 20 School Districts to Lower Barriers to Immigrants

 
Twenty New York school districts found to be blocking access for undocumented immigrant children will be forced to modify their enrollment policies to break down illegal barriers to education, the state attorney general’s office said on Wednesday.

Read more...

More Articles...

  1. New York City Education Department to Add or Expand 40 Dual-Language Programs
  2. State eases graduation requirements for new immigrants
  3. New York City Schools to Add Dual-Language Programs at 40 Schools
  4. Chancellor Fariña to Launch 40 Dual Language Programs in September
  5. Civil Rights Groups to Obama: No Standardized Tests for Minorities
  6. Listen to Mrs. Tisch
  7. ETS Recommends Changes For English-Language Proficiency Assessments
  8. Arizona District Fights to Keep Ethnic Studies Classes
  9. New York State Knocks Down Enrollment Barriers for Unaccompanied Minors
  10. Federal Officials Grant Florida Waiver on English-Learner Testing
  11. California Puts More Attention on Long-Term English-Language Learners
  12. Civil Rights Group Opposes Plans for Maryland English-Learner High Schools
  13. Haitian Diaspora in ‘Stones in the Sun’
  14. City’s community schools plan stirs doubt among supporters
  15. CUNY to spend $35M over three years on remediation classes
  16. Teachers Expect Less From Black And Latino Students
  17. PLEDGING STRONGER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MAYOR DE BLASIO ANNOUNCES ‘SCHOOL RENEWAL PROGRAM’
  18. College Board Program Results Reveal Missed Opportunities and Areas of Promise for Students
  19. Only 40% of NY State students are college-ready: report
  20. Fariña and new head of English-learners office promise aggressive support for schools
  21. Educating Kids ... By Educating Parents, Too
  22. Teachers of English-Learners Feel Least Prepared for Common Core, Survey Finds
  23. David Kirp: Why Teaching Is Not a Business
  24. The attack on bad teacher tenure laws is actually an attack on black professionals
  25. Is Carmen Farina the cowardly lioness? Why the NYC chancellor of schools needs to get tough
  26. The Manhattan School That's Helping Immigrant Students Succeed
  27. Common Core is used in Pre- K, but it is not curriculum
  28. Common Core, in 9-Year-Old Eyes
  29. Vergara's Shaky Significance
  30. Know Your Rights: English Language Learner Resource Requirements
  31. Standards Scolds Are Getting Us Nowhere
  32. What Is the Right Policy Toward Unaccompanied Children at U.S. Borders?
  33. MPI Commentary Assesses Surge in Unaccompanied Child Migration, Offers Some Policy Options
  34. Building on Immigrants’ Strengths to Improve Their Children’s Early Education
  35. New York State Sets Focus on English-Learners
  36. Why Do Most Black and Latino Students Go to Two-Year Colleges?
  37. The Under-Representation of Latino Public School Teachers in New York City [Falcón]
  38. Rise & Shine: Educators question contract deal's instructional time tradeoff
  39. Why students need more Black and Latino teachers: an exclusive excerpt from José Vilson’s “This is Not a Test”
  40. America’s Leaky Pipeline for Teachers of Color
  41. Teacher Diversity Revisited
  42. 'The Language Gap' -- Liberal Guilt Creates Another Not-So-Magic Bullet
  43. Cultural Diversity and Language Socialization in the Early Years
  44. New York Schools Most Segregated in the Nation
  45. Status Quo at Elite New York Schools: Few Blacks and Hispanics
  46. Scholarships for Black Students
  47. Pre-K on the Starting Blocks
  48. Regents balance praise and criticism in Core forums debrief
  49. Dissent magazine article: Who Will Reform the Reformers?
  50. Best and worst education news of 2013
  51. Veteran of City School System Is Said to Be Next Chancellor
  52. De Blasio chancellor pick Fariña promises ‘progressive agenda’
  53. Prioridad educativa para inmigrantes de NY
  54. El Diario Op-Ed on Priority of ELLs for New Chancellor By Claire Sylvan & Steven Choi
  55. New York fails Common Core tests
  56. Shock Doctrine: five reasons not to trust the results of the new state tests
  57. Make bilingual education a priority
  58. NYC sheepskinned: First-in-decade drop in high-school grads
  59. It’s Not Just the Interest Rate: How Congress Can Help Students
  60. Districts Asking Parents to Pony Up for Bus Services
  61. Corbett to Philly: Fix your own schools
  62. China’s new education reform: Reducing importance of test scores
  63. Education System Stifles Creativity, Say Teachers, Parents
  64. Child Poverty Has Risen Even As Unemployment Falls
  65. The Time To Press The Case For Pre-K Is Now
  66. The Great Divide in High School College Readiness Rates
  67. College-readiness rates of City High schools
  68. New York Times editors sadly return to cheerleading Bloomberg's status quo

 

Nou Pase Ase/Enough is Enough from Global Action Project on Vimeo

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"Education is the property of no one. it belongs to the people as a whole. and if education is not given to the people, they will have to take it" -Che-