Paul Robeson High School — soon to become P-Tech

Come this September Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights will be no more. Slated for closure by the Department of Education (DOE), it will be replaced by a new public high school underwritten by tech giant IBM and other funders. To be known as Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or “P-Tech,” this first-of-its-kind alliance between Mayor Bloomberg’s DOE and a major multi-national corporation will be a new model for vocational education and public/private partnerships in the city’s school system. IBM will shape the curriculum for the school, provide funding for the infrastructure, and offer internship and mentoring programs for students.

P-Tech will also offer students the opportunity to take part in a four or six-year program at the school during which they can earn an associate degree in addition to a high school diploma. CUNY’s New York City College of Technology (City Tech) will partner with the school and offer the degrees at no cost to students.

Capital New York notes that the school plans to accommodate 600 students from grades 9 to 14 and will not screen prospective applicants, but will give preference to those who attend informational sessions. Although IBM likely has altruistic goals in attempting to improve science and technology education, CNY notes that Big Blue is also doing some basic calculations about its future workforce–

“The Fortune 50 company announced its plans last week shortly after the alarming release of a report from researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education noting that American educators are doing a dismal job of producing mid-skill workers to fill the kind of slots IBM has in abundance. In other words, no one is training future IBM employees.”

Whether its intentions are high-minded, self-serving, or a reasonable dose of both, it’s clear that IBM and school administrators will have their work cut out for them. In fact, twenty-five years ago Paul Robeson High School was itself a new experiment in technical education, created to replace yet another failing high school. Alexander Hamilton Vocational High School was deemed unsalvageable by the Board of Education and closed in 1984 because of poor attendance, high drop-out rates, and terrible test scores. In 1985 Paul Robeson High School was opened in the same building with new teachers, a new curriculum, and a new application process. But as the writers at The Brooklyn Ink recently reported, despite becoming a success story by the late 1990s and early 2000s, Paul Robeson High was negatively impacted by many of the educational reforms of the Bloomberg administration and took a turn for the worst. Their piece details the sad chain of events that led to Robeson High’s demise at a DOE hearing in early 2010.

Cycle Track Signage/AllWaysNY

Assembly Member Michael DenDekker (D-Queens) withdrew two bills that would have required paid registration fees and license plates for all bicycle riders in New York State. Bills A5429 and A5430 were introduced on February 18th and would have required commercial cyclists to pay a $50 registration fee and obtain liability insurance and require all other cyclists to pay a $25 registration fee and obtain a DMV-issued license plate.

In withdrawing the bills, DenDekker noted “the original intent of this bill was to enhance pedestrian and bicycle safety through increased accountability. However, we will now explore future options to achieve stricter enforcement of the bicycle regulations.”

As the city’s Department of Transportation continues with its robust implementation of bike and pedestrian-friendly alterations to the streetscape, local and media-fueled backlash has grown in recent months–particularly against the placement of new bicycle lanes.

Today State Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Kern ruled that the Department of Education can publicly release rating reports on 12,000 of the city’s teachers. The United Federation of Teachers had fought to have the names of individual teachers redacted from the reports, which were requested under the Freedom of Information Law by five city news organizations.

The Teacher Data Reports track an educator’s performance based on how much students’ standardized test scores improve over the course of a school year. The UFT argued that the Freedom of Information Law did not require the disclosure of teachers’ names and that the ratings were based on arbitrary and/or inaccurate data. Justice Kern disagreed, noting that “This information is of interest to parents, students, taxpayers and the public generally,” and “Although the teachers have an interest in these possibly flawed statistics remaining private, it was not arbitrary and capricious for the DOE to find that the privacy interest at issue is outweighed by the public’s interest in disclosure.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew responded to the ruling today, asserting, “The reports, which are largely based on discredited state tests, have huge margins of error and are filled with inaccuracies, will only serve to mislead parents looking for real information.”

The UFT will appeal the ruling and try to stop the release of any teacher ratings pending the outcome of the appeal.

Read Justice Kern’s ten-page ruling here.

brianelmquist//Twitter

Despite pledges to send out “scout teams” with video cameras in all five boroughs and sanitation trucks equipped with GPS tracking devices in Brooklyn to face this Friday’s snow storm, it seems nothing that Mayor Bloomberg does is going to help his approval rating with New Yorkers this month.

A recently released NY1-Marist Poll of New York City found that only 37% of voters approved of the mayor’s job performance and 60% disapproved. These are the lowest approval ratings Bloomberg has received in a Marist Poll since he took office in 2002. The lowest point before this came in 2004 after he raised property taxes.

It’s safe to say that the recent snow fiasco played a large part in determing people’s opinions. Only one-fifth of the voters approved of the mayor’s handling of the storm and 7 in 10 disapproved.

The poll also found that a majority of voters in Manhattan — 55% — approve of Mayor Bloomberg’s job performance while fewer voters in the other boroughs gave him a thumbs-up.  39% in the Bronx, 36% in Queens and Staten Island, and 24% in Brooklyn give the mayor good or excellent ratings. In Marist’s previous survey, 58% of those in Manhattan, 48% of voters in the Bronx, 48% in Queens and Staten Island, and 46% in Brooklyn thought Bloomberg was doing well in office.

View the full poll results and report here (PDF).

Tonight the Gotham Center at the CUNY Graduate Center will host a panel discussion, “Ed Koch and the Remaking of New York,” to discuss the mayoralty and legacy of Ed Koch. It will feature author Jonathan Soffer of NYU Polytechnic, who recently released a new biography of Koch, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York.  He will be joined by Josh Freeman (CUNY Grad Center), Kim Phillips-Fein (NYU), Ronal Menschel (former Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor), and Stanley Brezenoff (CEO and President, Continuum Health Partners, former Deputy Mayor). Book signing will follow.

CUNY Graduate Center
Elebash Recital Hall – 365 5th Avenue at 34th Street.
December 7, 2010
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Tickets $8, Members $6.
(212) 868-4444

Read a New York Press interview with Jonathan Soffer about his new book here.

United Federation of Teachers/Flickr

State Assembly Member Jonathan Bing (D-UES, E. Midtown) may face a primary challenge this fall from Gregg Lundahl, a high school government teacher from Manhattan’s East Side. The potential challenge is the result of Bing’s recent introduction of a bill that would give principals the power to choose–on the basis of “merit” instead of seniority–which teachers would be terminated in the event of layoffs. The provisions of the bill were supported by Chancellor Joel Klein and the city’s Department of Education.

The United Federation of Teachers has actively fought the legislature’s attempts to alter the seniority rules. In April the presidents of the UFT and the New York State AFL-CIO wrote to labor leaders across the state asking them to withhold all financial and political support from Bing and Bronx State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., who co-sponsored the bill.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew asserted “We want our members to understand that we protect everyone. This is nothing but an attempt to split younger members from older ones, and parents from teachers.”

The UFT has yet to formally endorse Lundahl, but has made nothing but supportive comments about him. In addition to his teaching duties, Lundahl has been an active union member for years.

The Democratic nominee will face Republican Paul Niehaus, a Manhattan attorney in this fall’s election.

Well, it’s taken a bit longer than planned, but AllWaysNY is back!

Randi Weingarten, head of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, was elected president of the American Federation of Teachers yesterday. She was elevated by the delegates at the national teachers’ union convention in Chicago in an uncontested race. Weingarten stated that she will continue in her role as head of the city union even as she assumes her new national post in Washington.

As head of the 200,000-member UFT for the past ten years, Weingarten negotiated a 43% pay increase for city educators and in 2007 led an organizing campaign for the AFT among New York City-based home child care workers that brought 28,000 new workers into the union fold.

With the national election just around the corner and the city’s finances sliding into the toilet, only time will tell if Weingarten can keep up her fight now that it’s on two fronts.