StarTribune

“The most important thing any school board does is to hire and oversee the work of the superintendent. How it does this work provides a clear test of the board. This week, the St. Paul school board earned at best a D in the manner in which it chose to transition to a new superintendent.

After serving on the St. Paul school board for more than six years, I made the decision to resign my position rather than participate any longer in a board that refuses to understand its job, has pitted employees against one another and has ignored recommendations by the professionals we have hired to lead our district.”

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Julie McMahon | Syracuse.com

“SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Three quarters of the students in the Syracuse City School District stand little chance of having a teacher who shares their skin color.

While 76 percent of Syracuse students are people of color, 90 percent of the teachers are white. The percentage of students of color outnumbers the percentage of teachers of color by seven or eight times.

That’s a huge problem when considering national studies have consistently found students perform best when they have role models with whom they can identify.”

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Solvejg Wastvedt | MPR News

“Valeria Silva has less than a month to lead St. Paul’s public schools. The St. Paul school board removed the district superintendent at a tense meeting Tuesday night.

Silva’s superintendent contract ends July 15. She’ll stay on with the district in an advisory role until September 2017, pulling down her full current salary. The board voted 5-2 in favor of the severance package, which will cost the district $787,500.

Board Chairperson Jon Schumacher said he believes the change will save the district money in the long run.”

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Monica Disare | Chalkbeat NY

“Teachers wondering how they will be evaluated next year will likely need to wait a little bit longer.

Rather than having to design new teacher evaluation systems by Sept. 1, school districts will now have until the end of December. The change, added at the last minute to the state’s end-of-session budget deal, does not mark a huge shift in how teachers are evaluated, but it gives districts more time to work out the details of their new plans.”

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Susan Edelman | New York Post

“They’ve been rubber marooned for five to seven years each.

The city Department of Education has kept three accused teachers on the payroll, but confined to menial office tasks since seeking to fire them in 2009 to 2011. One takes home nearly $100,000 a year, and they all get contractually mandated raises.

It’s a violation of a major 2010 agreement between the DOE and the United Federation of Teachers to break up the infamous holding pens dubbed ‘rubber rooms.'”

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Au Hogan | The 74

“Last week, I was one of hundreds of New York City parents rallying outside City Hall to demand answers about teacher quality — and the city’s ‘Absent Teacher Reserve.’ As public school parents, citizens and taxpayers, we deserve to have our voices heard when it comes to the future of our children.

But instead of listening to me, or the voices of the other parents who came out that day, Mayor Bill de Blasio blew right past. He didn’t stop and listen; didn’t even break his stride. His dismissive reaction speaks volumes about how much he really cares about what real people think about the state of our public schools.”

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New York Post Editorial Board

“Mayor de Blasio rails against ‘inequality’ — yet he’s doing everything in his power to keep city schools unequal.

That’s what brought hundreds of parents to rally at City Hall Tuesday, demanding to know if the mayor is sending weak teachers to schools in poor, minority areas.

After all, the city refuses to say.

Backed by StudentsFirstNY, parents filed a Freedom of Information request last November, asking where teachers go when they leave the Absent Teacher Reserve system.

What’s the ATR pool? Well, when a school gets downsized or closed, its teachers must try to get another school to hire them. Good ones get snapped up — but, thanks to its labor contract, the city still has to pay the teachers no principal will take.”

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Heather Kays | Watchdog.org

“NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio smiled and looked over his shoulder as he hurried past more than 500 parents who gathered on the steps of New York City Hall to demand answers about placement of ineffective teachers in the city.

The parents booed and repeatedly yelled ‘Details!’ as de Blasio rushed out of city hall and past the rally without stopping Tuesday.

When asked how she felt about the mayor’s behavior, Darlene Boston, a parent attending the rally organized by StudentsFirstNY told Watchdog.org, ‘We felt angry. We felt disrespected. We’re the parents who voted for de Blasio and he ignores us and denies our children an education.'”

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The 74

“New York City’s failing district schools have cost 133,000 children their academic futures.

According to a new study reported in the New York Daily News, one-third of city students who have taken state math and English tests during Mayor de Blasio’s time in office have received the lowest possible score — a Level 1 out of 4. Almost all of these children are low-income children of color.

When students score a Level 1, it means they are not learning to read or do math. As a result, once third-graders score a ‘1’ on their state exams, they’re almost always stuck at that level for the rest of their academic career. In 2015, 70% of the fifth-graders who had previously received a 1 on their third-grade exams scored at this level yet again. This pattern was repeated for eighth-graders taking the 2015 math exams, with 70% of the students who received a 1 on their fifth-grade math tests remaining at that level.”

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The Wall Street Journal

“From an amicus brief submitted June 7 to the California Supreme Court in support of the plaintiff’s petition for review in Vergara v. California, a case challenging teacher tenure in public schools; signatories include Laurence H. Tribe, Michael W. McConnell and L. Lawrence Lessig III:

The statutes at issue impair the fundamental right to education. They categorically prioritize the job security of teachers—regardless of their competence—over the educational needs, interests, and rights of California school children. They do so despite the existence of other ways, more consistent with the educational rights of the State’s schoolchildren, to protect legitimate interests in teacher job security. The upshot of handicapping the ability to efficiently identify and remove grossly ineffective teachers, and providing institutional bias in favor of incompetent teachers, is to contract the marketplace of ideas within public schools by institutionalizing educational mediocrity. The California Constitution, however, establishes public schools for the benefit of children, not teachers, and the Education Clause talks about the right to public education as ‘essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people,’ not as a right essential to the economic security of the teachers selected by the State to make that right a reality.”

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