by | Jul 7, 2014 4:00 pm | Comments (12)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Tara Cass jumped the line to become a public school principal — and took with her some tips she learned at a charter school during an unconventional leadership training program.
Continue reading ‘Experiment Turns Teachers Into Principals’
by | Jul 4, 2014 9:58 am | Comments (3)
Melissa Bailey Photo
McKinney (center) and press aide Jodi Latina talked to reporters on Chapel Street.
The state should have done its homework before allowing the charter organization known as FUSE to take over low-performing public schools, a Republican gubernatorial candidate said during a New Haven campaign stop.
Continue reading ‘McKinney: State Failed To Vet Charter Group’
by | Jul 3, 2014 11:04 am | Comments (5)
A teacher who is dying of an autoimmune disease pours her energy into an after-school ballet program that transforms young girls’ lives. A student wakes up at 4:30 a.m. every day to get on a public bus in search of a good education. A gay teacher comes out of the closet during a social justice lesson. A refugee from Burundi finds her strength and rhythm in music class.
These stories — often lost in the national debate over how to fix American public schools — can be found in a new e‑book published by the New Haven Independent Press.
by | Jun 24, 2014 8:33 am | Comments (9)
Melissa Bailey File Photo
Morrison.
Michael Sharpe, the man Rev. Eldren Morrison chose to help open a charter school in New Haven, has left his position in a cloud of deceit. Morrison said he’s sticking with that man’s model of schooling.
by | Jun 20, 2014 10:20 am | Comments (23)
Melissa Bailey File Photo
Rev. Eldren Morrison, who’s about to open a new charter school in New Haven, came out Friday in support of the embattled charter management organization he has hired to help him.
by | Jun 18, 2014 8:22 am | Comments (4)
Melissa Bailey Photo
New Haven enlisted Rodriguez to help 7 other teachers improve.
Before joining the “Dream Team,” rookie teacher Mark Cofrancesco would sometimes catch students “zoning out” after he launched into 40-minute lectures. Now he’s got a new game plan.
by | May 13, 2014 11:48 am | Comments (11)
Melissa Bailey Photos
Kids in the Clemente library.
Principal Pam Franco will stay at the helm.
Three years after it hired a New Jersey-based company to “turn around” Clemente Leadership Academy, the school system is bringing the school back in-house.
by | May 8, 2014 8:40 am | Comments (7)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Teacher Julie Bergeron plans to reapply for her job and possibly earn a bonus.
Teachers have until May 16 to decide whether they want to stay at one of the city’s most challenging schools as it enters its next chapter — with a new twist on how to rebuild.
by | Apr 30, 2014 11:19 am | Comments (10)
Amplify Photo
Klein.
New Haven principals are learning how to use a new Web tool to analyze how teachers spend their time, thanks to Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein.
Continue reading ‘Murdoch Firm Snags $94K For Principal Training’
by | Apr 16, 2014 3:15 pm | Comments (13)
Melissa Bailey Photo
This is how New Haven is educating a high school freshman who got expelled: It sent her to class for two hours, then sent her home with a one-page worksheet and word-search puzzle in which students circle vocabulary words in a grid of letters.
by | Apr 7, 2014 12:12 pm | Comments (25)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Achievement First CEO Dacia Toll.
When students start taking Common Core exams, the results will “expose that we have a middle-class crisis in this country,” predicted a local charter school network CEO.
Continue reading ‘Tests May Expose “Middle-Class Crisis” In School’
by | Apr 4, 2014 11:20 am | Comments (6)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Blatche speaks up at confab’s opening night at the Omni.
A Hillhouse High student challenged a national conference of adults to change the way students learn.
We’re on it, one of the adults replied.
by | Apr 2, 2014 7:11 pm | Comments (16)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Rev. Morrison greets supporters at the capital.
Crowds from Stamford and Bridgeport stormed Hartford Wednesday to oppose new charter schools in their communities. New Haven’s proposal for a new charter school, meanwhile, sailed through with not a peep of opposition.
by | Apr 2, 2014 12:57 pm | Comments (4)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Brittany Pinkston preps for Common Core at Fair Haven Middle.
Ann Policelli Cronin, a one-time Connecticut Outstanding English Teacher of the Year who has received national awards for middle and high school programs she designed and implemented, originally wrote this opinion article for the Connecticut Mirror. Click here and here for previous articles on Common Core.
Imagine …
The NCAA Basketball Championship is based solely on free-throw shooting. Team practices are spent doing repetitive exercises of shooting from the foul line. All college players take the same free-throw shooting test. Their scores determine the excellence of the team, expertise of the coach and quality of the school. The team with the highest score becomes the national champion.
As a result of this new competition, the game of basketball is lost. The game, in which quick thinking, collaborative efforts and a whole array of athletic abilities are integral to the success of a team, is not played. The players begin to forget what it was to play 40 minutes of basketball. The coaches stop thinking about ways to develop talents of individual players and stop strategizing about how to make the team as a whole more successful. The fans forget about that long-ago game of basketball and enthusiastically cheer for their favorite foul shooters and compare them to foul shooters on other teams and in other countries.
by | Mar 28, 2014 12:06 pm | Comments (13)
In her debut appearance on a different kind of school board, Mayor Toni Harp was welcomed as a champion for charter schools — and opened her pocketbook for a requisite donation to the cause.
by | Mar 26, 2014 8:22 am | Comments (5)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Florence Caldwell, a member of Lincoln-Bassett’s turnaround committee, welcomed the changes.
More truancy officers. A full-time social worker. A “restorative justice” room for kids who get in trouble.
The school system rushed to put those pieces into place at Lincoln-Bassett School in the wake of a state audit revealing “serious concerns” about the education there.
Continue reading ‘After Blistering Audit, School Gets “Support Plan”’
by | Mar 14, 2014 2:33 pm | Comments (7)
IKE SWETLITZ PHOTO
“I want to raise my family in this city, and I am scared to do that because of our school system,” said Jamilah Prince-Stewart.
by | Mar 14, 2014 8:25 am | Comments (21)
Cora Lewis Photo
Jones-Generette knocking on doors to introduce herself to the neighborhood upon arriving at Lincoln-Bassett.
Students “wander” and “run” in the hallways. Classes have a “low level of rigor.” And staff is divided as to whether a new principal is rescuing or wrecking a neighborhood school.
Continue reading ‘State Audit Reveals Troubles At Lincoln-Bassett’
by | Mar 11, 2014 2:03 pm | Comments (14)
Melissa Bailey Photo
For every 10 New Haven middle-schoolers, nine say they want to go to college, but only five actually go, and only two get a degree.
by | Mar 7, 2014 6:04 pm | Comments (10)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Brian MacWilliam and Davila open a science experiment toolkit they borrowed from SCSU.
Jeremiah Davila already finds himself staying after school every day. If he’s lucky, he may soon get paid to do so.
Continue reading ‘102 Teachers Seek To Become “Super Tutors”’
by | Mar 6, 2014 9:00 am | Comments (15)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Kaira Fernandez.
Second in a series.
John Donahue’s Honors English 4 was on a roll, tackling “Waiting for Icarus” by Muriel Rukeyser and other college-level poems. Then the class had to stop and switch to a strictly scripted version of Gateway Community College’s remedial English class.
When the new syllabus took effect, the class’s collective heart sank. The thought-provoking poems were replaced by “tedious” basics.
Continue reading ‘Back-To-Basics Switcheroo Slams Honors Class’
by | Feb 26, 2014 1:03 pm | Comments (19)
Twenty teachers lost their jobs in the latest round of job evaluations, as the schools began pushing out not just the lowest-performing teachers, but those who failed to improve to “effective” over three years.
by | Feb 21, 2014 12:00 pm | Comments (8)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Modern-day school reformers are focusing too much on standardized tests and too little on kids’ hearts and minds, a legendary Yale child psychologist said as he prepares to advise the president.
by | Feb 19, 2014 8:50 am | Comments (15)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Bonz’s class at Fair Haven School.
Mandy Bonz juggles 27 English-language learners in her 1st-grade classroom. As part of a new emphasis on early literacy, Superintendent Garth Harries suggested making classes like hers smaller — and expanding the size of under-enrolled classes in middle and high school.
by | Feb 14, 2014 1:22 pm | Comments (7)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Giana Palafox, Joanel Felix Torres, Noel Conde, Nereida Lucero Ortega, Freddys Castro, Katherine Gomez, Josiah Alejandro, and Yesenia Lopez.
Flanked by Frankie the Falcon and some grown-up cheerleaders, hundreds of students in grades pre‑K to 8 took the stage in a school-wide dance performance aimed at motivating kids to go to college.