Copyright 2010 The New York Sun Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:33:42 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Elizabeth Green :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Elizabeth+Green admin@nysun.net (Seth Lipsky) webmaster@nysun.com en-us ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/a-principal-is-cleared-in-test-tampering-probe/87067/ Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:33:33 EST Clearing the name of a principal who had come under scrutiny for possible test-tampering, the city has closed an investigation into the Ross Global Academy charter school. A group of teachers accused Stephanie Clagnaz, the school's former principal, of inappropriately taking the school's standardized tests home before they were scored in 2008. But an investigation by the city's Special Commissioner of Investigations closed in April, a spokesman for the commissioner said, suggesting that... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/low-price-laptops-tested-at-city-schools/86861/ Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The $100 laptop that was marketed as a saving grace for starving children in Africa is on its way to the New York City public schools. Two elementary schools are already testing the laptops, and the city Department of Education is accelerating a plan that would make low-cost laptops available to all principals for purchase by the end of this year. The department now has a relationship with only one computer contractor, Dell, which offers laptops that cost about $1,000. Maintenance and service... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/city-schools-crimped-by-budget-restrictions/86771/ Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST A much-touted plan that city officials said would fully insulate public schools from budget cuts this school year appears to have fallen short, especially for some of the neediest schools. Mayor Bloomberg proposed a budget last spring that would have sent the city Department of Education $428 million less than was scheduled for this school year, but the blow was softened by cuts from the department's central office and an influx of $129 million from the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/union-city-dig-in-heels-over-fate-of-reserve/86684/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST There appears to be no easy agreement in sight in a battle between the city teachers union and the Department of Education over what to do with teachers who are on the city payroll but not in full-time teaching spots. The debate kicked off this spring when a nonprofit group reported that the teachers cost the city $81 million between 2006 and 2007. A second round launched this week when the same group, The New Teacher Project, projected that the teachers will cost the city $74 million this year... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/fewer-blacks-more-whites-are-hired-as-city/86580/ Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The percentage of new teachers in New York City public schools who are black has fallen substantially since 2002, dropping to 13% in the last school year from 27% in 2001-02, city figures show. The change has dramatically altered the racial makeup of the new teacher workforce, which last year included about 400 more white teachers than it did in 2002 and more than 1,000 fewer black teachers. The overall teaching force has been less affected: Black teachers made up 20% of the workforce in fiscal... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/rezoning-talk-upsets-upper-west-side-parents/86406/ Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Twenty-nine percent of public school families on the Upper West Side would be zoned to new elementary schools under a plan being floated by the Department of Education that is sure to unsettle parents and possibly even the real estate market. Another proposal would rezone fewer families by moving two coveted West Side institutions, the Anderson School and the Center School, into new buildings. The rezoning is being considered as an attempt to relieve overcrowding by shifting some of the... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/report-absent-teacher-reserve-draining-city/86316/ Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST At a cost of $74 million to taxpayers, nearly 1,000 teachers will be on the city payroll this school year despite not holding full-time jobs in public schools, a report being released Monday projects. That total is on top of an estimated $81 million the city spent in 2006 and 2007 combined on teachers who were not hired for full-time positions. The report is the second attempt by the nonprofit that wrote it, the New Teacher Project, to draw attention to a deadlock between the United Federation... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/almost-20m-in-bonuses-available-for-educators/86200/ Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST In a move that could cement New York City's reputation as an incubator for methods of making public education behave more like the private sector, the city will hand out almost $20 million in performance bonuses to educators this fall. Teachers and principals are traditionally paid according to years of experience and numbers of degrees, but innovators in the education field have argued that pay should instead be based on how well they perform in the classroom. The new bonuses, for both... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/when-it-comes-to-new-inspiration-chancellor-klein/86133/ Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST A professor of management at UCLA, William Ouchi, was exiting the Guggenheim during a visit to New York six years ago when his cell phone rang. It was his office in Los Angeles, reporting that a man named Joel Klein had just called requesting a meeting. Mr. Klein had been named schools chancellor about two weeks earlier, and he had read Mr. Ouchi's most recent book, "Making Schools Work." Would Mr. Ouchi be available to meet with him in his new office at Tweed Courthouse? The meeting they had... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/rising-schools-grades-fail-to-stamp-out-questions/86014/ Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST There are more As and Bs and fewer Fs in the second round of letter grades handed out to public schools, but the improvements are not silencing questions about how much meaning the grades hold. The rising tide was buoyed by big improvements on state reading and math tests last year. Test scores account for 85% of each school's report card grade, with schools getting credit for both their students' overall scores and for how much their scores rose from one year to the next. The rest of the grade... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/charter-school-advocates-push-a-new-agenda/85910/ Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Winning more public funding for charter school construction and the power to hire uncertified teachers are among the key points of a new policy agenda announced yesterday by charter school advocates. They said the troubled economy could challenge their efforts, but that one obstacle could be dissipating in comparison with recent years: the opposition of elected officials. The plans were laid out by the executive director of the Center for Charter School Excellence, James Merriman, yesterday at... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/department-of-education-questioned-on-class-size/85911/ Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST State school officials are asking the city's Department of Education to explain how it failed to reach its own goal of reducing class sizes by using a new influx of state money. State officials said 54% of city schools saw either class sizes or their student-teacher ratios increase in the last school years, despite a $106 million plan the department unveiled last year to reduce class sizes in high-need schools. The plan was produced in response to demands from the state, which had targeted a... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/one-school-feels-effects-of-ny-baby-boom/85830/ Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The city's new baby boom is progressing in real time on the fourth floor of Claremont Preparatory School in the financial district, which has been wiped of its old contents to make room for the record-high number of seven kindergarten classes that it is holding this year. "It could have been eight if we wanted to," the school's headmaster, Irwin Shlachter, said in a recent interview, "but we stopped." Mr. Shlachter said he believes Claremont's is the largest kindergarten program of any private... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/public-schools-turning-away-special-ed-students/85631/ Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Nicole Johnson's 5-year-old son Zane, who is autistic, has a morning routine he likes to follow: He and his mother get up, get dressed, and then, when the school bus rolls past their Bronx apartment building, his school day begins. More than a week into the new school year, the routine Zane has followed from age 1 has been interrupted: The buses drive by, but Zane stays at home. Ms. Johnson said the reason is that the school the Department of Education placed him in, P.S. 168 in the Bronx, told... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-mccain-marched-with-the-ideologues/85476/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The presidential candidates are trading blows over education, with each senator declaring the other unequipped for the task of improving America's schools. Senator Obama threw the first gauntlet yesterday with a major speech; the proposal of a $1 billion policy package that includes unconventional choices such as charter schools and performance-based pay for teachers, and a television ad declaring that Senator McCain "doesn't understand" how to make American schools better. The McCain campaign... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/parents-getting-into-the-mix-on-improving-public/85344/ Mon, 8 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Senators Obama and McCain have a panel of education advisers each, and there is no shortage of school administrators, union bosses, business leaders, and policy wonks who would very much like to be in those ranks. A new group is urging the presidential candidates to pay attention to another constituency as they craft their education platforms: parents. Led by two parent organizers — one in New York City and one in Chicago — this group says it's parents, not the unions, not the CEOs, and not... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/more-school-construction-is-urged-for-manhattan/85255/ Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The building boom that has fed Manhattan parents' ramped-up demand for increased school options has gained steam in 2008, widening the gap the city would have to plug to make school supply meet the estimated need, according to a report scheduled for release Friday by the president of Manhattan. Scott Stringer will release the report with the support of the city teachers union, the speaker of the City Council, and the city comptroller. They are making the announcement at P.S. 191, a West Side... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/group-of-eight-works-to-boost-klein-for-mayor/85188/ Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST A group of eight political consultants, activists, and philanthropists is urging Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to jump into the 2009 mayor's race, and they have not yet received a definitive "no" from Mr. Klein saying he is not interested, an organizer of the group told The New York Sun. The group has been meeting for at least three months to discuss a possible campaign, and a political consultant who is leading the discussions said the conclusion is that Mr. Klein's prospects are "robust." The... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/more-financial-oversight-of-education-dept-may-be/85160/ Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The first major report on the way the city's public schools are run — by a commission put together by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum in response to a request by Democrats in the state Assembly — is expected to be released today. People who have been briefed on the report's contents said it supports the principle of mayoral control while recommending some changes, including more financial oversight of the city Department of Education and more parental input. The report is based on many hours of... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mayor-met-palin-cant-recall-conversation/85096/ Wed, 3 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that he met once with Senator McCain's pick for vice president, Governor Palin, at City Hall last year. But he could not recall what he and Mrs. Palin talked about. "I don't remember what we talked about," Mr. Bloomberg said. "But she is somebody with experience." The mayor said he has also met with Senator Biden, the Democratic party's vice presidential nominee. He said that Mrs. Palin is an "interesting" choice who "brings something to the party." "We here in... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/schools-open-with-talk-of-mayoral-control/85100/ Wed, 3 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST "Remember, it's Bloomberg," a mother said early yesterday morning as she dropped off her son at his Bronx elementary school. "The mayor of New York City is Bloomberg." Wanda Torres's son, Noah, is a newly minted fourth-grader at P.S. 62. He had learned that Mayor Bloomberg would be visiting his school yesterday, but he was having trouble remembering the important name. On a day marked by praise for Mr. Bloomberg's efforts at improving the schools, Noah may have been the only one to suffer such... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mayoral-control-at-stake-as-school-begins/85016/ Tue, 2 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST After six years of putting pressure on teachers and principals to show better results, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein are entering their seventh, and possibly final, school year today with the pressure somewhere else — on them. One reason is that this is the school year in which the law that granted the mayor control of the schools is set to expire. By June 30, lawmakers in Albany will have to decide whether to renew the law as is, scrap it, or revise it in some way. Messrs... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/national/mystery-emerges-on-where-obama-stands-in/84433/ Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST A bitter rift inside the Democratic Party over testing, teachers, and No Child Left Behind will be exposed this weekend as the party's convention kicks off in Denver, putting to a test Senator Obama's promise to bridge differences and bring diverse coalitions together. Although everyone says the goal is to improve schools, one group of activists favors keeping No Child Left Behind mostly intact and pressing even more aggressive measures, such as firing teachers whose students do not score well... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/school-bus-operators-set-fight-over-special-ed/84332/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Just weeks before the first day of school, yellow school bus operators in the city are preparing to battle the city Department of Education, which they say is signaling a desire to drop 640 special education bus routes this fall. A spokesman for the department, David Cantor, called the charge a "lie," saying that every special education child who is supposed to get bus service this year will get it. The fight began Tuesday at an annual meeting known as "the pick," where operators choose the... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/incentive-payouts-begin-for-city-students/84252/ Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST A philanthropic group today will hand out a total of almost $1 million to top-performing New York City high school students who scored well on tough end-of-year tests. Called the Rewarding Achievement program, or REACH, the effort is one of several new projects in New York and around the country that are using cash prizes as a lure to get inner-city students to succeed in school. Each project prizes different behaviors thought to be strongly connected to a student's chances of academic success... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/backers-of-mayoral-control-see-a-tough-education/84146/ Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST With the deadline approaching for the state Legislature to renew or scrap mayoral control of the public schools, defenders of the policy are saying that they have an uphill battle ahead. For the past six years, Chancellor Joel Klein has said he is committed to insulating his school system from the influence of elected officials in Albany and the City Council, saying decisions should be based on fairness, not political favors. The effort to keep elected officials at a distance was aided by the... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/harlem-charter-school-first-in-2008-wave/83857/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The first day of school came early yesterday for 150 students entering the new St. HOPE Leadership Academy, a Harlem school that is the first in a wave of new charter schools opening in New York this year. The state Legislature had capped the number of charter schools in the state at 100, but lawmakers lifted the cap last year, and there is now room for 100 more. Eighteen are opening in New York City this year. Charter schools are public schools that are run independently of the Department of... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/judge-throws-out-suit-over-rubber-rooms/83769/ Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Teachers fighting the city Department of Education's use of so-called rubber rooms have been dealt a setback by a state judge, who recently threw out a lawsuit charging mistreatment. Rubber rooms hold teachers who are accused of misconduct ranging from criminal charges to incompetent teaching but who cannot simply be fired; because the teachers have tenure, the department must give them a fair hearing before firing them. Professional arbitrators decide the cases, hearing arguments on behalf of... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/state-city-report-uptick-in-graduation-rates/83687/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The percentage of New York City students who graduate high school in four years has been rising steadily since Mayor Bloomberg took control of the public schools in 2002, according to figures state and city school officials reported yesterday. The state reported that the city's high school graduation rate rose to 52% for the class of 2007 from 50% for the class of 2006 and 46% for the class of 2005. The statewide graduation rate is also at a peak of 69% for the class of 2007, up from 66% for... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/education-department-selects-new-cfo/83585/ Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST The city Department of Education is turning the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns into a hiring opportunity, tapping a managing director at the bank to become the department's newest chief financial officer. City school officials have offered the CFO position to George Raab, a managing director of investment banking at Bear Stearns. Mr. Raab has accepted the offer, but the appointment will not become official until a background check is completed, a spokesman for the Department of... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/principals-struggling-to-pare-parking-perks/83364/ Thu, 7 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Public school principals across the city are returning from summer vacation to learn that they have been enlisted among the ranks of city officials being asked to curb their car use in order to help the environment — and many are not pleased. In the past, every staff member at a school was eligible for a free parking permit that gave its user free rein to park in a school's lot or on a nearby street. Now, schools are being given just a set number of permits, and every principal is left with the... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/city-moves-to-address-school-overcrowding/83282/ Wed, 6 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Amid growing concerns that the city's most coveted public schools do not have the space to fit all the families who would like to attend them, the Bloomberg administration is making several moves to answer critics who say it is not doing enough to address the problem. The deputy mayor for education and community development, Dennis Walcott, sent a letter yesterday to the Empire State Development Corp. asking it to consider converting a state office building in the West Village into a city... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/achievement-gap-in-city-schools-is-scrutinized/83215/ Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Scores of both black and Hispanic students on some state and national tests have gone up since Mayor Bloomberg took over the Department of Education in 2002, and by some measures the "proficiency gap" between black and Hispanic students and white and Asian ones has begun to close. But by one other measure — not the test scores of black and Hispanic students alone or the percentage of them that met the bar called "proficiency," but a more subtle and relative measure known as the "achievement... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/career-schools-get-boost-from-bloomberg/82947/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Mayor Bloomberg is endorsing a plan to raise the profile of career training programs in the city schools. The plan is outlined in a report by a mayoral task force on career education released yesterday. The task force was co-chaired by the Mayor Dinkins and the chairman of New York Life, Sy Sternberg. Career schools are updated versions of vocational schools that educate students in specific skills — offering hands-on experience as well as internships — but also try to prepare them for college... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/education-research-group-moves-toward-action/82706/ Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST A group whose mission is to deliver non-politicized statistics on the public schools is moving closer toward its goal after navigating a maze of organizational challenges. The board of directors of the Research Alliance for New York City will this week interview two finalist candidates for the position of executive director. The group is also hashing out agreements with a university that would house the project, and it has reached a tentative deal with the Department of Education to share data... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ravitch-finn-in-a-clash-of-the-titans/82631/ Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST In a sign of how substantially her thinking on school policy has evolved, the education historian Diane Ravitch this week is engaging in an online debate with one of her oldest friends and collaborators, the education policy analyst Chester Finn Jr. At issue: an emerging divide among education policymakers about the best way to improve America's schools. Everyone seems to agree that the schools are in dire straits, but there is a divide about how to solve that problem. On one side are leaders... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/day-at-the-beach-sun-surf-college-admissions/82364/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST A New York college is putting a new twist on early admissions, creating an instant, on-the-spot evaluation that allows students to learn whether they have been admitted 24 hours after showing their high school transcripts. The process, called Immediate Decision Week, will kick off next week at Mercy College's five locations, from the main campus in Westchester to satellites in Manhattan's Herald Square, the Bronx, and White Plains. Admissions officers will also be canvassing local beaches and... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/an-apparent-heir-to-weingarten-emerges-at-ny/82190/ Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Having been elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten is saying she has no current plans to leave her other job as president of the AFT's New York City local, the United Federation of Teachers. But she is indicating who her preferred New York City successor is: a former high school English teacher known as a fighter and an independent thinker, Michael Mulgrew. Ms. Weingarten named Mr. Mulgrew the union's new chief operating officer in a memo sent to union... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/national/mccains-education-plan-includes-a-policy-departure/82100/ Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST If elected president, Senator McCain would support private school vouchers, give full funding to the federal No Child Left Behind law, and push for an expansion of "virtual schools," the Republican candidate said yesterday in unveiling his education plan during a speech to the NAACP. The promise to "fully fund" No Child Left Behind was a departure; previously Mr. McCain has said he would freeze nondefense discretionary spending, including spending on education. The speech was a chance for Mr... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/schools-chancellor-reaches-into-presidential/81870/ Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST As the city teachers union head, Randi Weingarten, enters the national scene by marking her first full day as president of the American Federation of Teachers, the city's schools chancellor is also reaching out beyond New York. As part of Joel Klein's new Education Equality Project, the effort he kicked off last month with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the chancellor has been spending the summer break promoting to the presidential candidates his philosophy of how to improve public education. He and Rev... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/obama-tells-teachers-union-he-opposes-vouchers/81801/ Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Senator Obama is saying decisively that he does not support private school vouchers, while sticking with his support for incentive pay for teachers based on their students' performance. Mr. Obama made the remarks yesterday in a telecast speech to the American Federation of Teachers' national convention in Chicago after the union voted overwhelmingly to endorse his presidential bid. RELATED: Obama and the AFT The convention will also be the site today of the long-anticipated accession of the New... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/group-wants-parent-student-unions-to-have-say/81691/ Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST To counter the power of the city teachers union and business leaders in shaping school policy, New York City should use taxpayer dollars to create two new unions complete with their own budgets and lobbyists, one for public school parents and one for public school students, a group is proposing. The Independent Commission on Public Education is releasing its proposal as the deadline in Albany nears on whether to renew mayoral control of the city's schools. The teachers union, the City Council... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/education-department-employs-squadron-in-search/81584/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Employees at the city Department of Education's press office have a new assignment: They are to scour a group of 24 education Web logs, e-mail Listservs, and Web sites in a hunt for factual errors and misinformation. Department officials are calling the unit the Truth Squad. The squad's latest triumph should appear today on a Listserv operated by the parent organizer Leonie Haimson — in the form of an e-mail message arguing that Ms. Haimson's characterization of summer school programs as... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/an-anonymous-education-blogger-becomes-thorn/81313/ Mon, 7 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Told that her child could not enroll at the local public school, a concerned mother this spring sent a frantic e-mail message to a person she hoped could help. Days later, her child had a spot and the problem was solved. Her hero was not the Department of Education, the school principal, or an elected official: It was Eduwonkette, an anonymous academic researcher who for the past year has been writing a Web log about education news and research. She identifies herself only with an image of a... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/study-sought-of-test-score-gains-in-ny/81222/ Thu, 3 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST A top adviser to the state Education Department is pushing Albany education officials to scour their test results for possible score inflation. So far, state officials are not biting. The adviser, Howard Everson, a psychometrician at Fordham University who is chairman of the state's Technical Advisory Group and also advises the federal government on its testing regime, said he is confident that New York's tests are not getting easier, as some have speculated in the wake of large test score... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/3-of-4-city-students-say-they-took-no-art-class/81111/ Wed, 2 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Nearly three in four New York City middle and high school students did not participate in any art activities this year, whether before school, after school, or during a free period, according to survey results released by the Department of Education yesterday. Fifty-four percent of students said they did not participate in an art class. About 80% of the students, or more than 400,000, completed the surveys, which help determine schools' report card grades. Test scores make up the bulk of each... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mayor-immigration-restrictions-insane/81014/ Tue, 1 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST America is "committing mass suicide" by putting restrictions on immigration, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. He made the remarks after announcing an initiative that is aiming to lure Americans into the fields of math and science, which Mr. Bloomberg termed "the industries of the future." Moving aside from education, Mr. Bloomberg painted immigration as a short-term way to lure engineers to America, where they could innovate and create new jobs. "There are people around the world who want to... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/18m-gift-aims-to-boost-math-science-in-harlem/81028/ Tue, 1 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The city Department of Education is receiving its largest corporate grant ever, an $18 million gift from General Electric that will go toward improving Harlem middle schools, Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday. The grant is focused on math and science — subject areas in which General Electric's chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, said American students are falling behind in worrisome proportions. Working with outside partners such as Teachers College at Columbia University, General Electric will... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/high-test-scores-and-criticism-follow-a-south/80944/ Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST A South Bronx elementary school that adopted the motto "The Best School in the Universe" on the strength of soaring tests scores is being investigated for allegations that teachers helped students cheat on state tests. Several students who attended P.S. 48 said last week that teachers would examine their answers during official test administration periods and point out mistakes and how to correct them. "They would give you the answers on the state tests," a graduate of P.S. 48, who is now in... ELIZABETH GREEN http://www.nysun.com/new-york/citys-leadership-academy-secures-public-contract/80932/ Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST A principal training program that was opened as a privately funded nonprofit will continue its work for the next few years — this time financed by taxpayer funds. The city Department of Education announced this spring that it would make a publicly financed program out of services that the nonprofit, called the Leadership Academy, had performed. But rather than hand a contract directly to the Leadership Academy, department officials opened its idea up to competitive bidding. Four vendors applied...