By ELISSA GOOTMAN New York Times

Published: February 7, 2008

Six New York City public schools, five of them middle schools, were newly placed on the state’s list of schools performing so poorly that they are at risk of being shut down. Four other city schools, state officials said, would have been added to the list, released on Wednesday, had the city not already decided to close them.

Four city schools improved enough to come off the list, the State Education Department said, bringing the total to 32 New York City schools on the list. Of the 32, the city is already planning to close five.

The five middle schools added to the list are clustered in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. They are Intermediate School 286 (Renaissance Military Leadership Academy), Middle School 326 (Writers Today and Leaders Tomorrow), Public School-Intermediate School 224, Middle School 201 and the New Millennium Business Academy Middle School.

To be designated by the state as failing, or among the “schools under registration review,” a school must fail to meet rudimentary performance benchmarks. If it does not improve in three years, it risks being closed.

The SURR list, as it is known, is different from the list of schools designated as failing under the federal No Child Left Behind law, which considers not only overall test scores but factors like attendance and the performance among subgroups of students, including those who are black or Hispanic.

The state also judges schools by a different standard than the city does for its new A through F school report cards; one school just removed from the state list, Legacy School for Integrated Studies in Manhattan, received an F on its city report card.

Andrew Jacob, a spokesman for the city Education Department, said in a statement that the city had “fewer SURR schools than ever before.” Last year, the city had 35 schools on the list, some of which have since been closed.

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, suggested that city officials were too quick to close schools rather than try to improve them.

“We believe that closing schools should be the last resort, not a first step,” she said in a statement. Ms. Weingarten noted that fewer schools were removed from the list this year than in 2005, when 16 were removed, and 2002, when 12 were removed. She said that the new additions to the list showed that “our middle schools are not getting the supports they need.”

The sixth city school added to the list is Bushwick Community High School, a transfer school for students at risk of dropping out. The schools that would have been listed had the city not decided to close them are Walton High School and the Business School for Entrepreneurial Studies in the Bronx, and Junior High School 49 (William J. Gaynor) and South Shore High School in Brooklyn. The other schools removed from the list are Intermediate School 117 (Joseph H. Wade) and Intermediate School 219 (New Venture School) in the Bronx, and Junior High School 265 (Dr. Susan S. McKinney Secondary School of the Arts) in Brooklyn.

I found this New York Times article interesting.  As an education major, I have always heard the threat of schools being shut down; however, I never saw it actually happening.  I’ve always had mixed feelings about the No Child Left Behind act. I believe someone should be monitoring schools to make sure our kids are getting the right education, and there should be consequences for doing poorly.  However, as stated in the article, closing down a school should be a last resort not a first thought.  According to NCLB a school “at risk” has 3 years to improve their test scores or else they get shut down.  I have to ask though, in that 3 years is the state doing anything to help improve that school?  I feel that if school, state, and community work together to improve the quality of education in a school, there is no way it should fail.

As I am going through my Education classes in college, I am told by all of my Professors, ” When you become a teacher, you need to know your students.” I am bringing this topic to your attention because if anyone is stomped on what to do on his/her first year as a teacher on that first week of school, here are some ideas I learned of what you could do to know the students in your classroom.

                                1.) A Handout: “ALL ABOUT ME” (hang everyone’s handout on the wall for everyone to read.)

                                2.) An “ALL ABOUT ME” Collage ( the students could present it to the class.)

                                3.) An “ALL ABOUT ME” Scrapbook Page ( the students could glue things that interest them from     

                                    things around the house or get scrapbook supplies from a craft store. (BE CREATIVE)

                                4.) To know all of the students Ethnic backgrounds, the students could ask his/her family about their

                                     family backgrounds and construct a report on their background or create a collage as well.

           All of these are great ideas to use in your classroom. I know I will be using these when I become a teacher. So please don’t be afraid to grab some of these ideas for yourself.

      As the years evolve all of these new communication sites are occurring. First I was associated with AIM, which is American Online Instant Messanger. Next, I was associated with MSN messanger and then Yahoo Messanger. Now I am associated with Myspace and Facebook. I don’t understand why there is AIM, MSN messanger and Yahoo Messanger when they do the same thing. Why do we need three of them. I stopped using all three about 6 years ago because, one, it was just getting boring. If I want to talk to my friends, I would just call them. Another reason I stopped is because of all of the predators out there. I didn’t want to get myself stuck in any of those scary situations. Now, I don’t understand why there is Myspace and Facebook. In the article, “How Mark Zuckerberg Turned Facebook Into the Web’s Hottest Platform” when he states the difference between Myspace and Facebook, being that Myspace encourged users to create new identities and meet and link people they barely knew. Facebook users can only view profiles of the people they are linked to.

      I really don’t see the difference in Myspace and Facebook because on Myspace you enter information about yourself as you do on Facebook. You also add in what school you go to on Myspace and on Facebook. The only difference I see is that you can’t view a person’s profile unless you are linked to the person, but on Myspace that can also happen if you just set your profile to private. I only use myspace to keep in touch with my friends and family. I know every person on my Myspace. I don’t add people if I don’t know the person. I just wanted to say that I don’t think that there is a difference between Facebook and Myspace. The only cool thing about Facebook is that there are more features to Facebook than there is on Myspace.  On Myspace you can change  your backgrund, which is the coolest feature of Myspace. Some features on Facebook are: sending different greeting images to a friend and when you add someone, you will see who they have on their list of friends that you may know. These people are linked because of what you have in common with the person you are linked to and then the person you may know is an invitation to link that person to your list of Facebook friends as well. I have one question: With all of these different communication links, what will be next on the menu?