The 25 schools the city is trying to close are low-performing, but their students are among the city’s most challenging — and are only getting needier over time.

Those are the findings of a report released today by the Independent Budget Office, the city’s data watchdog.

City officials argue that these low-performing schools should be closed because other schools serve similar student populations with better results. But critics of the closures often counter that the schools were set up to

Parents writing letters to Gov. Cuomo and making phone calls to their legislators

Yesterday evening the Alliance for Quality Education and the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice were joined by hundreds of parents, teachers, education advocates and community members from across the state to launch a budget fight campaign to ensure that ALL students are college and career ready, and sound the alarm that more cuts will devastate our schools. These kickoff events occurred in the five big cities across the state, all with the aim of raising parent voices to put pressure on legislators and the Governor so that they do right by our

During the first five years of my life, I grew up speaking both English and Spanish with my Puerto Rican family in the Bronx. Both languages reflected the kaleidoscope of my life at the time: I could switch easily from speaking English while romping around Randalls Island and the Williamsbridge playground to speaking Spanish while dancing salsa and merengue at my grandmother’s house in Parkchester.

Once we moved from the Bronx to Long Island in the early eighties, however, a critical shift happened. I was no longer in a community where Spanish was commonly spoken and on top of that, racist school counselors “advised” my mother not to speak Spanish to my brothers and me, in case it might “confuse” us. Respectful of school authorities, my mother obliged this narrow and misinformed demand.

This shift marked the beginning of being robbed of my mother tongue. I have been on a search to recapture it

Wendy Kopp says she doesn't want to be schools chancellor, but it's a great job. Photo courtesy of Tulane Publications.

The occasion of Teach For America’s twentieth anniversary, along with a new book by founder Wendy Kopp summarizing the lessons she’s learned, is pulling the usually low-profile don out of her shell — and leading her to say some interesting things.

Yesterday, the Daily Beast’s Dana Goldstein published a profile in which Kopp said she would love to run the New York City schools.

Or, at least, she seemed to say that. When I asked her to follow up yesterday afternoon, Kopp dismissed the

Update: 11 a.m. EST, Jan. 26, 2011 Edward Williams, Kelley Williams-Bolar's father, called to clarify that her decision to enroll her children in the suburban district had nothing to do with the academic quality of the school and was because of safety issues. Williams-Bolar's house had been broken into and she'd had to file 12 different police reports due to crime in the area, he said. Enrolling the children in the district where her father lived was a safety-based decision, and Williams wants to dispel any