2007 Columbia Class Day Speaker Matthew Fox at left, 2008 Class Day Speaker Joel Klein at right In 2006, the graduating class of Columbia's undergraduate college had Senator John McCain as a Class Day speaker. Last year, it was actor Matthew Fox. And this year's speaker will be...Schools Chancellor Joel Klein! To which seniors said, "I don't know anything about him" and "I have no idea who he is." The Columbia Spectator had an......

Last month, a Queens kindergartener was handcuffed after a temper tantrum at PS 81, prompting his parents to threaten a lawsuit. Now a lawyer representing Dennis Rivera and his parents reveals they are filing a notice of claim against the city for $15 million. According to the notice, Rivera, who the Daily News reports as suffering from "speech problems, attention deficit disorder and asthma," suffered injuries to his wrists as well as psychological and emotional......

After a parents of a rejected student filed a class action lawsuit, the Department of Education asked a federal judge to overturn a 1974 ruling that set in place quotas to keep the school 40% minority and 60% white. The DOE wants the court to overturn the ruling immediately so the 2008-2009 will be quota-free. Last June, 11-year-old Nikita Rau was denied a place at Coney Island magnet school, Mark Twain School - IS 239.......

Two members of a three-judge federal appellate court panel took the city to task yesterday for removing the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Debbie Almontaser, who helped found the dual-language school with an emphasis on Arab culture, stepped down before the school opened last fall, after controversy over remarks she made in the NY Post. Last summer, Almontaser had commented on t-shirts with "intifada" printed on them, made by a youth group she......

One of the Stuyvesant High School students seriously injured in last Saturday's Vermont van crash has returned home to New York. Junior Lucia Hsiao, a member of the girls' junior varsity track team, had suffered serious neck injuries but was able to "gingerly walk" to her room on her own. The Staten Island resident is wearing a halo around her head and will require a lot of rehab, but her dad said, "It could have......

Yesterday, the Daily News revealed that an East Harlem high school principal told teachers to effectively pass more students. Principal Bennett Lieberman's report card stated: "If you are not passing more than 65% of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities. You are setting your students up for failure, which in turn, limits your success as a professional...most of our students ... have difficult home lives,......

City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein characterized last year's assessment test scores as "good," but critics say that they represent a lack of progress and a failure of Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to reform city schools. City kids' scores stayed flat on national assessment exams in math and reading, with a slight improvement in 4th graders' math scores and a drop in 8th graders' reading scores. "New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in......

The city is showing the door to a daycare facility that has called P.S. 122 its home for 26 years. The Children's Liberation Daycare Center (CLDC), which serves 88 kids between the ages of 2 and 6, is going to court later this month to object to its ejection from the building, with no plan for the daycare center's return. The CLDC shares P.S. 122 with three arts organizations and it's the city's Dept. of......

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein released the "first-ever" public school progress reports with letter grades. The reports are meant to give educators and parents a snapshot of how well schools are doing and empower them to keep improving. Mayor Bloomberg said, "With these Progress Reports, parents no longer have to navigate a maze of statistics to determine how their child's school is doing and how it compares to others. And our educators now......

Oh, Catholic League - it isn't even Halloween and you're getting ready for Christmas already! The Sun reports that the Catholic League sent a letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein questioning why nativity scenes cannot be displayed in schools. Christmas trees are allowed, as are menorahs and symbols for Ramadan. But the Department of Education does not allow actual images of "religious figures or deities." The DOE e-mail to the Sun read, "Our holiday policy......

Debbie Almontaser, the erstwhile head and founder of Brooklyn's Khalil Gibran International Academy, will sue the city for violating her freedom of speech. She also claims Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein forced her to resign as principal under threat of closing the dual-language school. The KGIA, named after the Lebanese Christian poet, teaches students Arabic and English and aims to foster cross-cultural understanding, but critics accused Almontaser of establishing a madrassa to indoctrinate......

Back in March of 2003, Mayor Bloomberg opened up the City Hall Academy at the Tweed Courthouse. The school offered two-weeks "residencies" for students, giving them an "inter-disciplinary approach" to learn about NYC and its history. Mayor Bloomberg, who made education reform one of the cornerstone of his mayoral platform (it's a big part of his "national" persona, too!), had said, "The opening of City Hall Academy demonstrates our commitment to excellence, achievement, and innovation......

With the U.N. General Assembly in session, the city has been hopping with dignitaries. On Wednesday, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein were praised by President Bush at P.S. 76 in the Bronx. The President noted, "The city tackled the challenges of underperforming schools in such a way that it's become a model for urban schools. This achievement is a hopeful sign for other school districts across America. New York City can do......

The Colbert Report got a double dose of the Bloomberg administration yesterday. Not only was Schools Chancellor Joel Klein the interview guest, there was a short bit about Stephen Colbert "interrupting" a mayoral speech in Times Square to ask Mayor Bloomberg to sign his cast. The Bloomberg video is above and video of Klein's segment is below. During his appearance, Klein discussed the city's cash incentive pilot program for the poor where family members......

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is many things. He's the head of the largest public school system in the country, he's a lawyer (he was a former Assistant Attorney General - biggest case: going after Microsoft) and he's a businessman (he was chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann). But who knew he was someone who should appear on The Colbert Report? The Daily News reports that the Department of Education's media relations department approached The Colbert......

After the Daily News revealed that a school officials actually forbade school deans to call 911 (in order to lower crime stats) only for a 14-year-old student who suffered a stroke to wait 90 minutes for medical attention, the Department of Education is launching an investigation. The News now reports that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will launch a probe, saying, "We'll look into it and take appropriate action." A memo from Assistant Principal Guy Venezia......

Students of all ages are headed back to classes this morning. The NYC public school system is opening its doors this morning all over the city. Insideschools reminds us there are 1.1 million students and 150,000 educators in the system - and that quite a few charter schools have been open since last week! Reforming the education system has been a cornerstone of Mayor Bloomberg's platform, and this school year starts with, per the......

While the jury is still out on whether Mayor Bloomberg's improvements to the public school system have really worked, he, along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and School Chancellor Joel Klein, announced new initiatives to help middle schools improve academic performance and provide better resources for students, parents, and teachers alike - plus $5 million to fund them. The money will go to the 50 lowest-performing middle schools, so they can staff up with......

Mayor Bloomberg loves the arts and supports many arts and cultural institutions as a (billionaire) philanthropist. And yesterday, he made sure that NYC public school students get a chance to love the arts as well, by introducing ArtsCount, a way to make sure schools and their principals are offering arts programs "through accountability and quality improvement initiatives." Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said, "We demand results in math and English and now we are demanding the......

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein offered his opinion of the Brooklyn school situation that raises questions about racial quotas set in place 33 years ago. Eleven-year-old Nikita Rau was rejected from the competitive IS 239/Mark Twain School in Coney Island because her admissions test scores were too low: Her 79 was lower than the 84.4 average score minority students need; white students may be admitted with scores of 77 or lower. Klein said, "I think probably......

If you have kids, we sure hope they like taking tests. Not only do they face regular tests in classes, but the city is set to expand their regimen of periodic tests for the 1.1 million students in the city's public schools. The tests, which the city is paying $80 million over five years for, will be administered 5 times a year for students in the grades 3-8 and four times a year for high......

President Bush visited New York City yesterday to encourage Congress to reauthorize his No Child Left Behind program. Bush gave a speech at the Harlem Village Academy school and praised its founder, faculty and students and emphasized the importance of the NCLB Act. Bush made it a point to visit all eight classrooms and shake every student's hand, prompting one student to tell the Sun, "I think it was the best day of my......

Governor Spitzer and other state leaders finalized this year's budget, to the tune of $121.8 billion, just in time for tomorrow's deadline. While Spitzer has touted greater transparency with public process, the budget deal has been notable for negotiations taking place behind closed doors. The Times Union had Spitzer's opinion on the secrecy, "Do we all wish there had been more public articulation? You bet," but "said a 'wide chasm' between his plan and the......

The Daily News' series, School Bus Disgrace, is nothing short of amazing. There's just tale after tale of questionable behavior by school bus drivers - and that doesn't even include the drivers who have been convicted to convicted of attempted murder and other crimes. And then there's a story about a driver and a class field trip. The driver Ronald Eldridge felt kids were making fun of him, and he ended up arguing with the......

It's always great when surveys confirm what we know, because then it helps make us seem a little less crazy. amNew York reports on the NYC Transit Rider Council's bus survey that shows buses are typically 5 minutes and 15 behind their published schedules. The culprit is traffic and congestion that causes "bunching," which is when "one, two, or even three buses arrive at the same stop almost simultaneously." Another interesting finding: Some buses'......

The chaos caused by mid-year school bus route changes that included things like 5 year old being told to take public buses and kids being picked up after school begins seems to have settled down. The Department of Education apologized for the umpteenth time and even Mayor Bloomberg admitted that the changes didn't go very well (he did emphasize the savings were worth it). Of course, it's questionable how much the DOE will save after......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a car driving south on the northbound West Side Highway, a school bus accident on the Williamsburg Bridge, and an "escaped prisoner" in Queens. Hypocrites! Streetsblog spotted two NYC traffic cops double-parked for an entire lunch break. The average price of a condo in Dumbo is $1,116,541. Perfectly reasonable! Here's a stack of pretty NYC night pictures Dirty, but accurate: Grand Army Plaza from the air. [Via Curbed.] What......

Learnin' ain't what it used to be. Gothamist is so glad we're not a small child in the public school system anymore because the state tests required sound insane. Brooklyn parents Eve Gartner and Joe Morris, whose son goes to PS 372 in the Slope, created a site, Brownie the Cow, that include passages from the state s fourth grade English exam. The NY Times takes up the cause, outlining the fight between parents and......

Officials all over New York got some bad news yesterday: Reading and writing scores of students drop dramatically between fifth and sixth grades. State Education Commissioner Richard Mills said, "Despite improvements in elementary school over the past several years, the Grade 3-8 results show substantially lower achievement starting in the sixth grade. The neediest children require more support. The problem is literacy in the middle grades. These results demand improvement in curriculum, instruction, and professional......

- We're ambivalent of most of the never-ending supply of 9/11 memorials out there (i.e., the one in Jersey which includes the names of 40 people who didn't actually die in the attack!), however we adore the Tribute in Light. Sadly, its funding/fate after 2008 is up in the air, as it were. Not good. - "In 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent United State residents - nearly 96,000 - than......