August 13, 2007

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UFT Hails New Middle School Initiative

Filed under: Middle Schools by Steve Perez @ 5:42 pm

UFT President Randi Weingarten joined City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Bloomberg today to unveil a new initiative to improve academic performance and provide more resources to middle schools. The initiative is the result of the City Council Middle School Task Force report (fair warning: it’s an 84 page pdf). UFT President Randi Weingarten had this to say:

“This initiative is an important step in focusing attention and resources on our middle schools, which pose significant educational challenges not only here in New York City but across the nation. We are particularly pleased to see a commitment to provide our middle schools with more guidance counselors and enhanced support services, professional development for teachers and challenging instructional programs for students. The Middle School Task Force’s recommendations are so on point that our goal is to have all of them adopted. We also hope this initiative will lead to a real lowering of class size, which will go a long way toward helping to improve these schools.”


The new initiative will

  • Identify at least 50 high-need middle schools that will have access to a $5 million fund to hire more guidance counselors, award teacher scholarships, offer extended day programs or other task force recommendations.
  • Work to implement task force recommendations (pdf) citywide.
  • Waive fees for professional development for high-need schools.
  • Expand Regents-level courses citywide
  • Establish an ongoing discussion on middle-grade reform with various stakeholders.
  • Appoint former Region 8 Local Instructional Supervisor Lori Bennett to the new position of Director of Middle School Initiatives.

More coverage at the Politicker, the Daily Politics and the Wonkster.

4 Comments »

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  • Randi has to be political. I don’t. The money is a drop in the bucket. And the task force recommendations are so broad, that partial implementation of a small subset could have unintended consequences.

    Further, given the small amount of money (average of $100k per school), who will be making the real decision about which recommendation(s) to try to fund.

    And finally (for now), regents classes in all middle schools? This is a point that needs much further discussion. Are our middle school curricula so weak, so flawed, that we should ditch them early and just start kids on high school level work? Because that’s what the report really says when it recommends regents classes in every middle school.

    Far better to fix curricula, and to leave high school courses to high school.

    Jonathan

    Comment by jd2718 — August 15, 2007 @ 12:44 pm

  • I want to post more on the middle schools initiative soon. But what do people think of Jonathan’s opposition to expanding Regents level classes?

    Comment by Steve Perez — August 15, 2007 @ 4:12 pm

  • There is an equity issue: poorer, Blacker, and more Hispanic schools have fewer of these courses; Whiter, more Asian, and more middle class schools have more.

    I’m in favor of increasing equity, but in terms of creating engaging age-appropriate middle school opportunities for more kids, rather than making high school level work more available for young kids.

    This drives my mathematics teaching as well: better slower and with depth, than rapid for “coverage.”

    Jonathan

    Comment by jd2718 — August 15, 2007 @ 4:39 pm

  • [...] a new director to oversee the reforms, officials said yesterday.” New York Post More at Edwize, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the Staten Island [...]

    Pingback by Teacher News of the Day | Edwize — August 16, 2007 @ 2:28 pm

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