By SARAH GARLAND

In a little foray into the higher education beat, I profile a professor who has what few would consider a desirable task: trying to make idealistic, left-leaning college students and conservative, right-leaning academics happy at the same time. His job is to take multicultural requirement in Columbia’s great books program and bring it up to par with the other “serious” courses in the curriculum. A wild guess says Musics of the Caribbean and Intro to Japanese Painting are coming off the list.

http://nysun.com/news/new-york/columbia-professor-takes-overhaul-core-curriculum

Booker Seeks Vouchers
BY SARAH GARLAND
February 20, 2007
Pg. 1

Cory Booker on Education

The mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, says he could turn around his city’s struggling schools in half the time it has taken Mayor Bloomberg to make improvements in New York City’s schools — if voters grant him mayoral control. Merit pay for teachers, vouchers, more charter schools and New York City-style empowerment for principals are also on Mr. Booker’s schools agenda, which he disclosed to The New York Sun in an interview last week.

Church Schools Face Challenge From Charters
BY SARAH GARLAND
February 27, 2007
Pg. 1

Catholic schools face charter challenge

First, the population of nuns began to dwindle. Then, droves of parishioners began moving to the suburbs. Now, Catholic schools around the city are facing a new threat to their increasingly tenuous existence: charter schools.

March 20, 2007
Schools Seeing Fast Rise in Bureaucrats
BY SARAH GARLAND
Pg. 1

Fast Rise in School Bureaucrats

Even as Chancellor Joel Klein is promising to trim excess school bureaucrats, the number of employees working in the central education bureaucracy has reached an eight-year high, and the budget to pay them is projected to rise 12% next year.

The New York Sun
February 13, 2007 Tuesday
The British Have Arrived: They’re Reviewing City Schools
BYLINE: SARAH GARLAND
SECTION: NEW YORK; Pg. 3

British school evaluations

The adults were nervous, the children were rambunctious, and the two middle-age British women who arrived to help them were armed with clipboards, a jolly sense of humor, and firm advice that few would dare question.
The scene could have been from “Nanny 911.” In fact, it was a public middle school in Greenwich Village, and the visitors were reviewers from the British company Cambridge Education, which has a contract with the Department of Education valued at about $6.4 million a year to evaluate how city schools evaluate themselves.

The New York Sun
January 30, 2007 Tuesday
Spitzer Vows School Funds, With Conditions
BYLINE: SARAH GARLAND
SECTION: NEW YORK; Pg. 1

Spitzer Vows FundsSchool systems that want to receive extra state funds ordered by the courts in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case will have to sign a contract promising to do things such as reduce class size or lengthen the school year, Governor Spitzer says.

The New York Sun
January 18, 2007 Thursday
Mayor Sets Schools Showdown
BYLINE: SARAH GARLAND
SECTION: NEW YORK; Pg. 1

Mayor to Overhaul Schools

Mayor Bloomberg is initiating the biggest overhaul of the school system since he won control of it. His effort to devolve many decision-making powers to principals, dismantle much of the schools bureaucracy, and partially tie tenure review for teachers to test scores sets the stage for a fight with unions, advocates, and parents over how the new system will look.

The New York Sun
December 27, 2006 Wednesday
City Schools Try To Replicate a Successful Formula
BYLINE: SARAH GARLAND -, Staff Reporter of the Sun
SECTION: NEW YORK; Pg. 1

City Schools Try to Replicate a Successful Formula

Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have made leadership the centerpiece of their education strategy, with mayoral control the focus at the city level. At the school level, an intense effort to train new principals in the mayor’s Leadership Academy has been combined with the introduction of empowerment schools.
So far, many parent leaders say, their approach has left out an essential ingredient.
“When the history of this administration is written, historians will note that the stakeholders of the school system - parents and teachers - were left out of the critical policy decision making,” the president of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, Timothy Johnson, said.

The New York Sun
December 5, 2006 Tuesday
In Ky., Busing Built Bridges Between Worlds
BYLINE: SARAH GARLAND -, Staff Reporter of the Sun
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 4

Busing in Kentucky

Kentucky was the last of the Southern states to establish a compulsory school segregation law, so it is something of a miracle that Louisville has become one of the most racially integrated school systems in the country. In 2000, a federal judge determined that Louisville had met its obligation to desegregate its schools, though the city voluntarily kept the program intact.
Busing hasn’t completely dismantled segregation, however. On the inside, my school was just as segregated as it had been before 1975.

The New York Sun
December 1, 2006 Friday
Amid Push To Make Public School Gifted and Talented Programs More Diverse, Families Seek Spots for Their Children
BYLINE: SARAH GARLAND
SECTION: NEW YORK; Pg. 1

Gifted and Talented

The new gifted and talented application process uses the same two citywide assessments for every child who applies. The system is meant to level the playing field between families like the Pallazhcos, immigrants from Ecuador, and the Jordans, an well-to-do family from the Upper West Side.
But at several points in the process, both families hesitate to apply, though their worries are very different.