World Education News

The New York Times is reporting that, contrary to expectations, a year-old New York City pilot program that distributed contraceptives like morning-after pills to high school students for free has encountered very little vocal opposition from parents. The program, which originally operated at 14 schools before one of the campuses dropped out, sought to emulate the approach used by privately-operated school-based health clinics which have been serving students in NYC for the past several years.

Although the health clinics have proved successful, they only provide access to about a quarter of the city’s students. The city-run program was supposed to fill this gap, with the schools chosen to participate specifically selected because their students don’t have nearby medical providers and run a higher risk than average for teen pregnancy and acquiring sexually transmitted infections.

Parents were given a chance to opt their children out of the program by returning a signed form to the school. They could also select the kind of reproductive health services their children could and could not receive. According to the data provided by the Department of Education, only about one or two percent of parents actually returned the forms.

 

There are 12 district and 9 charter schools opening in the Bronx this fall, with each offering a different structure and specialty emphasis. They offer a clean slate for incoming students with several schools in the borough closing or phasing out. The degree of difference between them is stark as they cater to very specific interests and career aspirations. For example, three career and technical schools have closed in the Bronx, and the gap is being filled by the new School for Tourism and Hospitality opening on the Jane Addams campus. According to principal David Martin, students will be able earn front desk supervisor certifications from the American Hotel and Lodging Institute.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that recent data released by the New York City Department of Education shows that the level of parental involvement with the school system has fallen to a new low this year. The information is giving ammunition to critics of both the Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Dennis Walcott for fostering a culture at the Department of Education that is “unresponsive to families.”

All indications seem to be that the efforts by Walcott to increase parental engagement haven’t paid off, as the participation in phone calls, attendance at parent-teacher conferences and school-hosted workshops during the 2011-2012 academic year was substantially lower than the year before. In some cases, parents and guardians of students were 50% less likely to interact with teachers over the course of the year than they were during 2008-2009. In the instance of parent-coordinator workshops, the attendance fell from over 450,000 to less than 270,000 between 2009-10 and 2010-11.

When New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg first came into office, he promised that, as a service to the city’s students, he would work to end teacher “tenure as we know it.” If the numbers released by the Education Department this year are any indication, Bloomberg is well on his way to fulfilling his promise. Compared to 2007, when nearly 89% of all teachers who completed the three-year probationary period received tenure, this year saw nearly half of eligible teachers denied tenure.

As a result of the No Child Left Behind waiver received by New York State earlier this year, public schools that fail to meet performance targets set by the law will no longer have to provide tutoring services to their students. Still, principals who choose to continue offering it may do so — at least until the end of this school year.

The two-year pilot program experimenting with changes to the way special needs students are educated in New York City is set to conclude — and soon, nearly all the schools in the New York City public school system will begin adopting inclusion changes into their own academic program. The aim of the changes is to allow special needs students to integrate more fully into the regular student body. District officials are attempting to move away from the more traditional method of special ed instruction with segregated classes, and the city’s chief academic officer,Shael Polakow-Suransky, sums up the old programs that focus on “self-containment” as an academic death sentence.

Bonuses of $20,000 offered by the Obama Administration as an incentive for “master teachers” in mathematics, science and technology have been put out of reach for teachers in one of the nation’s largest school districts. Teachers employed by the New York City school district may not apply to receive the federally-funded money because the terms of the contract their union signed with the city prohibits any kind of financial bonuses for outstanding achievements in the classroom.

Students were mistakenly told that they failed a state exam and couldn’t graduate from their elementary or middle schools, instead attending summer school.

 

 Elementary and middle schoolers from all over New York City were blocked from attending their school graduations because a snafu at the NYC Department of Education had them marked as failing their end-of-year state exams. According to the New York Post, the Department realized its mistake after the exam results were released last week, but it was too late for most of the nearly 7,000 student affected since their graduation ceremonies had already taken place.