Tagged: Education Reform

It's 7:30 a.m. on a recent weekday, the sun is still rising and the kids at Pulaski Elementary School in Meriden, Conn., are already dancing.

They are stomping, hopping, clapping and generally "getting the shakies out," as fifth-grader Jaelinne Davis puts it.

"If we're like hyper, if we do this, then we can get better at, like, staying mellow and stuff like that," she says.

By 9 a.m., Jaelinne will be back at her normal school day with its core curriculum that is graded by a state test at the end of the year.

In New York City, the failure to agree on a plan for evaluating its teachers is being widely criticized, especially because it means the city will now miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars in state financing.

At stake was $250 million in state aid, and another $200 million in grants, according to WNYC's Schoolbook education blog.

Shawn Rux took over as principal of MS 53, a New York City middle school, last year. At the time, 50 or 60 kids were absent every day. You could understand why they stayed away: The school was chaos.

Twenty-two teachers had quit, the entire office staff had quit, and hundreds of kids had been suspended. The school was given a grade of F from the city's department of education.

"It was in a bad place," Rux says.