Actually, it looks like the new small high schools this year will all be taking kids with special needs this year, regardless of whether they'll be set up to provide what's on their kids' IEPs. It seems that the DOE has amended its policy in response to criticism like yours (and Advocates for Children's) but it's not clear how these schools will be able to serve their special ed students in the first year. So that's something new to look out for.
Thank you Philissa, and I stand corrected.
We'll have to watch what happens, of course.
I can't help making the connection to Bloomberg and his recycling campaign.
A NY Times article on the return to recycling 5 years ago asks: "Is recycling still a feel-good enterprise, or has Mr. Bloomberg lifted the curtain to reveal that behind all the imagery of higher purpose there was no Great Oz at all, but only a mousy accountant with an adding machine?"
Here's the parallel: Reorganizing schools is also a "feel-good" enterprise, with the "imagery of higher purpose." Politicians like to look as if they're doing something, that they're on top of things. They can PR the city to death in such pursuits.
The Times article continues that there might also be a broader question: "whether recycling really worked, not by the narrow measures of the market alone, but by the standards of what it set out to do: change the way Americans think. Environmentalists say that the psychological returns are mixed. Consumer packaging, after 30 years of supposed consciousness raising, is more profligate than ever."
If they're out to change the way we think about our schools, we won't have to wait 30 years to know that shuffling kids around, as you say, putting them into smaller and for now selective structures, is not going to give the city a better system of public education.
Return education to the educators and stop the big sell.
Reorganizations don't mean squat unless you use tax dollars to build more facilities and give all kids, from the high achievers to those who struggle desperately with school, what they need to function as adults.
I just read an article in Newsday about a possible segregation issue in a Port Washington school's 5th grade classes. I write this not to discuss the issue in the article, but the printed class sizes of the 3 5th grade classes, 17,18 & 20. Kind of smacks you in the face when most of the city schools have 30+. My school is only a few years old and on the verge of overcrowding. Our 5th grades classes have 30 each and next year an extra 4th grade class will be divided up into the 5th's. You can barely move around these classrooms now, I can't imagine it. As for discipline, my school is a prime example of what increased class size means to discipline. Each year our class sizes have grown, and slowly but surely they get harder to control as "those few" hijack their classes. Try as you may there is no way 1 person can control a room of 18-20 as well as 30+.
That's all folks, enjoy the snow.
Unitymustgo!
Hello, I am sorry to bring in an unrelated topic but I wanted to ask for some advice on taking the NYSTCE students with disabilities exam.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
A Google search is the best place to start. It brings up sites like these:
http://www.nystce.nesinc.com/
NY_...ewSG_opener.asp
http://www.amazon.com/NYSTCE-Stu...n/dp/
158197860X
Good luck.
Read the amazing letter from the staff at Jamaica HS at the ICE blog.
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