In the first school Cathleen P. Black visited, students in a fifth-grade classroom had one laptop apiece, from which they received individualized lessons. In the second school, for teenagers who had been on the verge of dropping out, counselors routinely show up at the homes of students if they are absent three days in a row. The third was one of four schools in a building that once housed one; students had violin and dance classes, aside from traditional subjects like history, English and math.
Ms. Black, who officially began her job as New York City schools chancellor on Monday, has been visiting schools for weeks. But the tour on Monday, more than an introduction to the system, was a tightly choreographed showcasing of the Department of Education’s biggest successes and newest programs, like using technology to help teachers in the classroom and breaking up big schools into small ones.
It was perhaps a fitting start for Ms. Black, who is taking the job with a mandate to effectively stay the course of her predecessor, and who presumably has only three years before she is replaced. She visited one school in each borough, serving different grades, most of them with similar student populations: primarily black and Latino students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a snapshot of a system where minorities are the majority and poverty is pervasive.
The schools had something else in common: they had all received A’s or B’s in consecutive years in their progress reports, the measure by which the city judges schools. The only exception was the Hungerford School on Staten Island, a middle and high school for students with severe disabilities, which, like other such schools, does not yet receive letter grades.
Still, they all had something novel: about the way their teachers taught their classes, the courses they offered, or the way they prepared their students to take the next step.
Ms. Black, who was followed at one point by close to 50 reporters, photographers and videographers, as well as by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who hand-picked her for the job, was there to witness a little bit of it all.
“We must have schools that are successful or are showing promise of really turning around,” she said. “If not, we really have to take a different approach.”
At Public School 262 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, she watched a pair of teachers guide fourth-grade students through an English lesson, in which the children learned about writing stories with a clear beginning, middle and end. At Democracy Prep Charter School in Harlem, she saw ninth-grade students learn Korean. At North Queens Community High School, she heard about the value of one-on-one counseling for students who had come close to giving up on their education.
The school’s director, Lainey Collins, told Ms. Black, “Every morning, we’re at the front door, checking them in, making sure they don’t miss school, and sometimes going after them at home to find if they don’t show up for class.”
Ms. Black replied, “Making every effort so someone doesn’t fall through the cracks.”
While Ernest Logan, president of the principals’ union, accompanied Ms. Black on her first visit, Michael Mulgrew, the teachers’ union president, did not. He engaged, instead, in his own tour, to a school on Staten Island where a possible PCB leak from light fixtures forced the closing of some classrooms, and a school in Brooklyn trying to find money to hire a math coach.
Of the schools she has visited in the past few weeks, the worst received a C in their progress reports, which are mostly based on how the students fare on standardized tests. A spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz, said that Ms. Black had visits scheduled to schools that got D’s and F’s.
Taking stock of all she has seen so far, Ms. Black said, “Where there’s a strong and effective principal, where parents are committed, you have great schools.”
Little else of what she said had not been heard before. She emphasized the difficulty of reducing class size. (“It’s New York City. It’s not like we can build a whole lot of schools.”) She reinforced her idea of the ideal teacher. (“The most effective teacher is one who cares about her kids.”) And she showed no intention of rethinking any of the reforms that her predecessor, Joel I. Klein, brought to the system, chief among them the use of test scores and algorithms to measure the performance of teachers, principals and schools.
But mostly, she listened. During a geometry class at Democracy Prep, Ms. Black, who carried around a manila folder labeled “briefing material,” huddled with Seth Andrew, the school’s founder and superintendent, and asked in a near-whisper if he had trouble hiring teachers (his answer was no), as well as how he felt about tenure (his answer was inaudible).
At the school in Brooklyn, she gave Mary Simpson, a cook in the cafeteria, “a great big hug” and a kiss on both cheeks, Ms. Simpson said.
At Hungerford, Kelly Garcia, 17, asked through the computer that she uses to communicate, “Are you nervous for your first day of school?”
“The answer is yes,” Ms. Black said. “It’s like everybody’s first day of school. A little bit nervous, but excited.”
Juliet Linderman contributed reporting.
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