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Two years ago Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew announced that the Board of Education would start to hold students to a tough set of international standards.
This year, teachers across the city will begin to learn exactly what that means. Last month the Board of Education okayed a new $15 million, three-year professional development contract to help teachers enact the new standards. The National Center on Education and the Economy will teach public school staff how to use benchmarks for fourth-, eighth- and tenth-graders that include math skills and number of books read per year. Last year, the Washington D.C.-based nonprofit worked with teachers at Manhattan’s District 2 and Brooklyn’s District 15 to craft a Gotham version.
The plan is to work at each school with a handful of teachers, who will then mentor other teachers. “This is the best way to proceed, creating local experts to take the standards back to their schools,” said NCEEP spokesperson Joseph Garcia. “The work at this point is to take the standards from the printed page and make them real.”