Neil deMause: The Website

When the New York City Department of Education announced last fall that it would start admitting schoolkids to gifted and talented classes solely on the basis of standardized tests, it said the new system would be fairer to all. Initial reports show it isn’t exactly working out that way:

Brooklyn mom Natalie Barratt had a bad feeling when her four-year-old son Luke Serrano emerged from his February testing session for admittance to the city schools’ gifted and talented programs. “The teacher who had administered the test wasn’t clear if he’d finished the test,” she recalls. After weeks of phone calls with the Department of Education, she had Luke retested. His score this time: an 89, one point too low for acceptance into a G&T kindergarten class. For want of a single correct answer, Luke was officially non-gifted.

In past years, this would have been just one setback in the tangled swirl of bureaucracy and arm-twisting that is commonplace in navigating the city’s Department of Education. This year, however, is different… [read more]

Another look at the new New York City elementary school application process, which is slowly becoming clear - or not:

It’s springtime, and the streets are filled with the sound of parents of 4- and 5-year-olds freaking out. This is normal behavior for March, when city parents traditionally bum-rush the schools of their choices and try by hook or by crook (or, according to persistent urban legend, gift of cookies) to get their kids to the front of the line. This year, though, the stress level is up a notch, thanks to a new application process… [read more]

NOTE: After this column had gone to press, schools spokesperson Andrew Jacob contacted me with several clarifications/corrections:

• Kids who don’t get into any schools on their list will be admitted to their zoned school; enough spaces will be held open to guarantee this. If they do get into another school on their list, however, they relinquish the right to automatically get into their zoned school - no backsies, in other words.
• The parent coordinator who said that gifted and talented test results won’t be in until May 16 “is wrong. We will be sending the results by mid-April” - only a couple of weeks later than originally projected.
• The DoE is promising to provide buses to take kids to gifted classes if they’re elsewhere in their district.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered every school principal in the city to cut $100,000 from their budgets, but says it will have “no impact whatsoever.” Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction:

When Gov. Spitzer and Mayor Bloomberg issued their yearly budget proposals recently, they contained a nasty surprise for city schoolchildren: close to $400 million in cuts to public-school budgets, with more reductions planned in the future.

Those cuts will take a sizable bite out of the cash expected from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit that found the state wasn’t providing enough money to guarantee city kids a decent high-school education… [read more]

No, I didn’t write the headline, but it pretty well sums up the situation. The New York City Department of Education has new rules to simplify picking schools for pre-K and kindergarteners, and the implications are clear as mud:

The city’s long-awaited changes to the school variance procedure — for non-parents, that’s code for “who gets to pick which school their kids go to, and who has to go to whatever’s the closest” — are out, and parents are already starting to buzz about what it means for the increasingly fraught world of public school admissions. While the new system was first announced last week, two subsequent community info sessions in Manhattan and Brooklyn (the other three boroughs take their turn the next two weeks), as well as conversations with the Department of Education, have begun to fill in the details:

• Principals will no longer have discretion to decide which kids to let in from outside their designated school zone. Instead, all parents will fill out a single form to apply to different programs, listing their five top choices… [read more]

Still nothing on the direct-link front, so to read my weekly Metro NY op-ed, you’ll need to continue to resort to the page image version. This week’s topic: the recent changes to the city’s Gifted and Talented program, and my experiences (or as the Metro changed it to read, “your” experiences - apparently they don’t teach differences between the specific and the universal in J-school) trying to even find a copy of a practice test for my son:

Here’s how it went when one parent of a soon-to-be kindergartener - that’d be me - tried last week to apply for the city’s new, streamlined Gifted and Talented program. The application form is on the Department of Education’s website. Find it, download it and note that while the application is there, the practice test is not.

Instead, you must head down to your local Neighborhood Enrollment Office… [read more]

(One other correction to an editing error: While I myself went to the Neighborhood Enrollment Office, forms should be available from local district offices as well.)

For the latest Village Voice Education Supplement, I explore the growing phenomenon of parents in some NYC neighborhoods carting their kids en masse to other boroughs for grade school:

Each weekday morning, the commute begins: Carfuls and trainloads of Brooklynites make their way across the river to Manhattan, fighting traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge and jam-packed L trains. The trip can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour; on arriving, they strip off their coats, say goodbye to their mommies and daddies, and settle in for another day of elementary school.

While the Williamsburg shuffle has gotten increased attention of late, thanks to a Crain’s article and an epic discussion thread that followed on the Brownstoner blog, parents sending kids as young as kindergarten age to schools elsewhere in the city is a time-honored tradition in the world of New York parenting. The city doesn’t officially keep track of how many kids attend public schools outside their assigned districts—with or without legal permission—but every parent, it seems, knows someone who’s done it… [read more]

For the Voice’s summer education supplement, Stacy Cowley and I examine the program that brings people with no educational training to teach in New York City schools. The result: Teacher desks are filled, but are students getting the short end of the stick?

The subway ads promise inspiration, fulfillment, and the kind of career satisfaction rarely found in an office cube. “Your spreadsheets won’t grow up to be doctors and lawyers,” one gently chides. “You remember your first-grade teacher’s name. Who will remember yours?” asks another… [read more]