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Education The State budget reduced education funding to the City for FY 2012 by $1.2 billion. This was the largest single-year reduction in education funding to New York City and came at the same time as the City lost $850 million in Federal stimulus dollars used to support teacher salaries. To prevent catastrophic personnel losses in the City's school system, the Executive Budget provides a major increase in City funds dedicated to education, with an increase of $2 billion of City funds compared to the prior year. The State continues to disinvest in education in New York City. In FY 2002, State and City funding comprised a nearly equal portion of non-Federal spending on education. In FY 2012, City funding will comprise 61 percent of non-Federal spending and State funding will only comprise 39 percent of non-Federal spending. If the State had continued to share education costs equally with the City, the State would be providing $2.2 billion more in education funding for FY 2012. City-funded spending on education has increased from $5.9 billion in FY 2002 to $13.6 billion in FY 2012. Description of Bloomberg's Budget Proposal from News From the Blue Room NYC.gov "Despite the City's continued, strong financial commitment to education, historic State education cuts and the need to balance the budget mean that reductions in the size of the City's teaching force are still required. More than 6,000 teaching positions will be eliminated through attrition and layoffs.

Site for people looking for "great schools near apartments you can afford." Interesting to think about who the "you " is in this sentence. Search function includes "Nearest Starbucks"....

"Are charters really doing a better job educating the city's public school students than the traditional public schools? That was the question of the week, after state test scores came out on Tuesday showing not only far greater proficiency in English and math by third through eighth graders who attend the city's charters, but also far more improvement this year."

"In January, at a meeting of parent coordinators from a number of schools, employees of the office asked them to forge relationships with parents who they thought might speak out in support of the department's policies, including its controversial push to close failing schools. "

"A Manhattan woman has sued a $19,000-a-year preschool her daughter attended, arguing that the program failed to adequately prepare her daughter for the test required to enter New York City's hypercompetitive private school system. "

SchoolBook was invented by The New York Times and WNYC, but it is your site to shape, define and grow. Dive in. Read our posts. Check out the individual school pages. Study the data. Analyze the explanations. Consider the guides and resources. Ask a question - or answer one. Post a photo or video. Propose an idea. Share tips and advice. List notices and announcements. Send us feedback. And tell us more about your schools.

ducation Panel to start the program at 6PM on the issues ahead for this coming school year for parents/teachers/children - preserving and enhancing public education. * Yelena Siwinski (GEM/Grassroots Education Movement) * Mark Torres (PPM/Peoples Power Movement) * Brenda Walker (CPE/Coalition of Public Education) * Clarence Talyor (Recently released book - "Reds At The Blackboard") WBAI's Radio Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report

As millions of students prepare to go back to school, budget cuts are resulting in teacher layoffs and larger classes across the country. This comes as the drive toward more standardized testing increases despite a string of cheating scandals in New York, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and other cities. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also recently unveiled a controversial plan to use waivers to rewrite parts of the nation's signature federal education law, No Child Left Behind. We speak to New York City public school teacher Brian Jones and Diane Ravitch, the former assistant secretary of education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H. W. Bush, who has since this post dramatically changed her position on education policy. She is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."

Unions, as a collective representation of working people, can be an incredibly powerful counter-force to corporate interests. Individual working people can have very little impact on policy because they do not have the financial prowess on their own to affect national policy the way those with a good deal of money at their disposal can. I am proud to be a member of a union, and I am very proud of my fellow UFT members. But when union leadership becomes too far-removed from the lived reality of their rank-and-file members and spends a significant amount of their time with the very people who are pushing the policies they should be fighting, they run the risk of losing sight of their mission.