By Jenny Sedlis | New York Post

“Eighteen months ago, as Carmen Fariña prepared to take the reins of New York City’s public schools, I laid out in these pages the six main challenges facing the incoming administration. As the second full school year under the de Blasio administration begins, it’s instructive to take a look at how well they’ve handled these challenges.

The first challenge was improving the teachers’ contract. With the United Federation of Teachers eager to negotiate, City Hall had enormous leverage to push for real reforms.”

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By NY Post Editorial Board

“Fool me once, they say, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So what do they say when a pol plays the game nearly every single year he’s in office?

That’s what Gov. Cuomo’s been trying to do regarding teacher evaluations. His latest deception: He wants to revamp New York’s Common Core program; a panel will do a “comprehensive review” and suggest changes leading to a new law.”

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By Joy Resmovits | LA Times

Shavar Jeffries, an attorney who lost his bid to be mayor of Newark, N.J., is the new president of Democrats for Education Reform.

Jeffries, who confirmed the news on Thursday, is black. His appointment comes as the self-titled education reform movement tries to look more like the children it aims to uplift.

“There are no black people who lead these … organizations,” said Derrell Bradford, the director of reform organization NYCAN (New York Campaign for Achievement Now), who is himself black. “I don’t see the world through that lens but it’s not lost on me.”

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Lyndsey Layton | The Washington Post

A new analysis of New York City school data shows that teachers who scored low in the city’s evaluation system are concentrated in struggling schools that tend to serve poor and minority students, while teachers with strong ratings are most likely to be found in schools where students test well and tend to be white and Asian.

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Eric Owens | The 74

The board of education in New Brunswick, N.J. cannot fire a tenured elementary school teacher who showed up late for work 111 times over the last two years, a state arbitrator has ruled.

The habitually tardy, taxpayer-funded teacher is Arnold Anderson, reports NJ Advance Media. He teaches in a third-grade classroom at Roosevelt Elementary School, in a dilapidated part of New Brunswick full of old, modest homes. He’s been making an annual salary of $90,000 (plus a generous benefits package).

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Susan Edelman | New York Post

The city’s worst performing schools are the most segregated.

At 283 schools in the bottom quarter of Common Core test scores in Grades 3 through 8 this year, an average 96 percent of kids are black and Hispanic, 2 percent white and 2 percent Asian, city data show.

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Rich Calder | New York Post

The teachers union and state officials argued Tuesday that a lawsuit challenging New York’s tenure policy should be tossed because Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature approved a new law tightening teacher accountability.

The changes make the tenure suit moot, lawyers defending the state claimed during oral arguments in Staten Island Supreme Court.

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Jason Russell | Washington Examiner

A New York judge heard oral arguments Tuesday in Wright v. New York, a potentially landmark case that pits parents against teachers unions in an attempt to have the state’s teacher tenure laws declared unconstitutional.

Tuesday’s oral arguments included a debate over a motion to dismiss the case, with defendant lawyers representing the city of New York, New York State and New York State United Teachers.

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Beth Fertig | WNYC Schoolbook

New York state officials and teachers unions returned to court Tuesday to ask a judge to dismiss a case that challenges tenure in New York City schools.

They are arguing that changes made by the legislature this past spring to tenure and to the state’s teacher evaluation system have met the demands of parents who brought the suit. But the two groups of parents say the changes haven’t gone far enough.

The parents argue that tenure and other job protections violate students’ rights to a sound, basic education under the state’s constitution.

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