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The four boys that are representing P.S. 335 at Nationals have only been playing for two years, but are well versed in strategy. Photo by Jackie Mader/Columbia Radio News.

Each year, the National Elementary Scholastic Chess tournament attracts students from across the nation–this year, to Nashville, Tennessee. The young chess players dream of becoming grandmasters, winning trophies, and earning some of the 20,000 dollars in scholarship money that’s on the table. This year, PS 335, an elementary school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has qualified for the national championships for the first time. Jackie Mader visits the chess team as they prepare for their debut.

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Nat: Today is the first day of the Soho International Film Festival in New York City, where 60 independent filmmakers are screening their movies in the hope of getting them distributed.

The festival is in its third year and had 650 entries to choose from.

Jackie Mader is live at the Sunshine Theater on Houston street where the red carpet is starting to fill up.

Jackie, why did the founders see a need for another film festival here in New York City, especially just a week before Tribeca begins? (23)
Jackie: Well this festival is really for people on the fringe, or the edge of filmmaking. It can be really hard to get into bigger festivals like Tribeca, so the SOHO festival is trying to attract minority filmmakers, women filmmakers, even student filmmakers. There’s a lot of diversity in the films. They have a puerto rican showcase. And they have a good amount of New York City filmmakers who have made films about the city. I spoke to Sibyl Santiago, she’s the executive director of the festival, and she said that a lot of filmmakers don’t get the attention they deserve, so the festival tries to be a solution.
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SANTIAGO: There’s a little bit of frustration with some of the festivals in the city- they’re not giving them the audience they need or not giving them a chance to put their films out. We are trying to give them a medium to have a place to bring indie films. (0:12)

Nat: Ok so which of these indie films are getting the biggest buzz at the festival this year?

Jackie: Octavia Spencer is involved in two films that are getting a lot of buzz. Remember, she just won the Academy Award for her role in “The Help,” and she was relatively unknown before that. She is acting in a film, but she also directed a short film called “The Unforgiving Minute.” It’s a film about a young boy growing up in a broken home.

Nat: So the festival is attracting some pretty big names.

Jackie: Yes, but mainly celebrities who are still into Indie films. So, Octavia Spencer is popular and could probably go to a bigger festival, but she’s still really involved in the independent market, and is very passionate about these types of festivals. Also, Michael Rymer, who directed Battlestar Gallactica, he has a film here that he shot in Australia. It won several awards over there, but not so much over here. So these are very successful people who but also have side projects that they feel strongly about.

Nat: So who are the filmmakers we should be excited about who we haven’t really heard about yet?

Jackie: Right so Leslie Manning, she’s a name to keep in mind. She directed a film called “Leila” that was shot in the UK. That film has already won awards at other festivals. Also, Nate Taylor, he directed a film called “Forgetting the Girl” and that film sold out in the first three hours when the festival put up tickets to the films. So I would say both of those directors are ones to watch and the films should be pretty good too.

Nat: Sounds like it should be an interesting festival. Thanks Jackie. Jackie Mader was live from Sunshine Theater on the lower east side.

Carl Carpenter prepares for his 5th grade class to arrive at P.S. 325.

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Host Intro:  Recently released data shows an astounding 73,000 suspensions in New York City last year. Suspension rates are on the rise across the nation and African-American students are three times as likely to be suspended as their white peers. Some teachers say that suspensions are overused, and studies show they have long-term effects. Jackie Mader reports that the new data is pushing schools to think differently about their discipline policies.

Jackie Mader: On a Monday afternoon at the Bronx Academy of Letters, Andrew Hara was trying to teach an African civilization lesson to a class of 9th graders, when a student’s cell phone started to vibrate in her backpack. This student had just returned from a suspension, and when Hara asked for her phone, she refused.

HARA: So an administrator comes in, tries to get her to step outside, “I ain’t f-ing going anywhere,” goes through it again. Hugely distracting as we’re trying to go through a history lesson.

Jackie Mader: It took the entire period, an administrator, a principal, and a public safety officer to remove the student from the class. Hara says the student’s response showed a discouraging mindset.

HARA: Her big issue was, ‘no, I’ve just been suspended for cutting class.’ Here I am in class trying to do my work and y’all want to suspend me again.

Jackie Mader: In the end, the student was allowed to stay in school. The school is trying to cut down on the number of kids who are suspended.

HARA: Now its more of like, coming up with creative ways with those individual students. We’ve tried different intervention plans, contracts, behavior plans…So we’re trying it all.

Jackie Mader: Bronx Academy’s flexible approach is the exception. In New York City, suspensions are up 130 percent since 2003. There are actually only a small number of offenses that actually require a suspension, like bringing a weapon to school or starting a fire. For less serious cases, Hara says that suspensions don’t always solve much.

HARA: Are they necessary sometimes? Personally, I think so. Are they necessary in the numbers we’re seeing? Probably not.

Jackie Mader: Julia Kaye is the director of an advocacy group which trains law students to represent suspended students at hearings. Kaye says school officials often ask for harsher punishments than offenses deserve.

KAYE: We had a case recently where a six year old student, six years old, was charged with biting a teacher’s toe,

Jackie Mader: Kaye says the school asked for a 30 day suspension.

KAYE: To respond like that to a young child is just horrifying.

Jackie Mader: Carl Carpenter’s fifth grade class at P.S. 325 in Morningside Heights, had a rough day yesterday.

AMB of CARPENTER: “Ok so how did yesterday go? Compared to how it should have been?

Jackie Mader: Bad, one of the kids responded. It had been a long day of testing, and the kids were tired.

AMB: (of kids) Carpenter:  But today is going to be better.

Jackie Mader: Carpenter has found that discussing behavior with students is more beneficial than resorting to suspensions. But one of his student was suspended earlier this year. He threatened a teacher.

CARPENTER: He responded to the suspension by throwing things around the class…He then cried uncontrollably and tried to reason with the teacher, but by that time it was obviously too late and he was sent home.

Jackie Mader: This student’s behavior hasn’t changed much since returning from the suspension. But Carpenter has tried to build a relationship with the student to understand where he is coming from.

CARPENTER: I think knowing that he has older siblings who have been in prison, dealing drugs, you know, you can understand where some of his behavior comes from

Jackie Mader: Studies show that long-term consequences of suspensions are devastating to kids. Legal services attorney Andy Artz says that suspension is part of a school to prison pipeline.

ARTZ: Students who are suspended are much more likely to drop out of school, much more likely to be arrested, much more likely to end up in the criminal justice system as adults.

Jackie Mader: Artz says that the majority of suspensions are at low-income schools and most of those suspended are African American or Latino. He says racism or stereotyping might be a factor in the disproportionate suspension rate for minorities. These schools are some of the toughest, and officials are attempting to tackle behavior.

ARTZ: In some ways the department of education has chosen to stress things like policing in schools over prioritizing guidance counseling.

Jackie Mader: For now, the hard line approach is still the policy of the Department of Education and suspension numbers may continue to increase. Jackie Mader, Columbia Radio News.

Jackie Mader gives the headlines at 4:30.

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Council members gather on the steps of New York's City Hall Wednesday, March 28, 2012, under a photo of Trayvon Martin. Self-defense instructor Steve Kardian said that Florida law makes investigators’ jobs more complicated. (AP Photo/New York City Council, William Alatriste)

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Following the murder of teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, self-defense laws are getting a new round of scrutiny. Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman has admitted shooting Martin. But he hasn’t been charged with a crime because he claims he acted in self-defense. Jackie Maker speaks with Steve Kardian, an NYPD veteran and self-defense instructor about the controversial law.

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BY JACKIE MADER

Intro: As a native of the Pacific Northwest, commentator Jackie Mader heard plenty of stereotypes about Southerners. They were hunters with shotguns, superficial debutantes, or racists. But she had to rethink that when she moved south of the Mason Dixon line.

–

In 2009, I got my dream job through Teach For America, teaching middle school special education. I was living in Los Angeles, and when I told my friends the job was in Charlotte, North Carolina, they did all they could to make the transition easier. My best friend made a card and drew what she labeled  “Southern Jackie” on the front. In the picture I was eating at a place called “Bojangles,” with a man my friend said was my new southern boyfriend. He was wearing a pastel colored polo shirt.

In Charlotte, I could barely understand people’s accents. The girls I met during training seemed like caricatures. Most of them had been in sororities at huge southern schools and only talked about the South.

So I clung to my west coast culture. I turned up the grunge music while my roommates listened to Kenny Chesney. When we went out, they wore colorful dresses, I wore jeans. One girl gently asked me if I was really going to wear that. I insisted there was no reason to wear a dress to a bar, just like there was no reason to fry every single food you could find.

I stuck out even more when I started teaching. I was a white, blonde 22-year-old Northerner in a mostly African American Southern school. My colleagues let me know they expected me to quit. They assumed most white Teach For America recruits came from money and weren’t invested in the kids.

But my students were the first Southerners I’d met who were excited to learn about me, and their immediate acceptance was humbling. In getting to know them, I saw the effects of decades of poverty and segregation. Many of my middle schoolers couldn’t read, but were eager to learn about the world outside their own neighborhoods. I wanted to know everything about them, and started using what I learned. For starters, I began saying ‘yes m’am’ and ‘no sir’ to the other teachers and parents. I realized it was an important sign of respect, especially when speaking to someone older than myself. I started asking more questions. I also started saying y’all, because honestly, it was just more efficient. The stereotypes I had grown up with were extreme, but I started to understand the history behind them.

As I  felt more accepted by my colleagues, I noticed other things. I was lingering by the dress section in boutiques, and casually asking the girls I trained with, now my friends, where we were going to watch the Alabama football game. They were ecstatic that a Yankee like me was “turning southern,” as they called it.

When I left Charlotte last July and moved to New York, I found myself missing certain things. Sitting on a porch in the heat, watching fireflies, and eating fried food.
Now, when I hear the song “Country Roads”  I even miss pretending to hate it.

But I have made it a point to keep the manners I picked up. Calling people ma’am and sir has become my secret weapon. New Yorkers instantly soften, and then give me a curious, confused smile. And when they ask me if I’m visiting from the South, I couldn’t be prouder.

Back Announce: Y’all can find Jackie Mader sitting next to you on the subway, secretly blasting country music.

Success Academy posters have been repeatedly defaced in the Bedford Avenue subway station.

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HOST INTRO: Residents of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn have  been contending with the effects of gentrification for more than a decade. Upscale restaurants have forced out mom and pop residents and poor residents worry that they’re getting priced out. Now gentrification may be coming to Williamsburg schools. A nonprofit charter school is slated to open in an existing public school building and that’s divided the community. Jackie Mader reports.

N1: Stand in East River state park and you get a really clear vision of what has happened to the Williamsburg waterfront.

AMB: Water lapping against the shoreline. Distant construction sounds.

N2: Fifteen years ago, this park was an abandoned former freight depot. Now you can see residential high rises stretching down to the Williamsburg Bridge. Median income in the neighborhood has shot up as the area has attracted more residents and businesses.  It has also attracted the interest of a charter school chain called Success Academy. The non-profit has launched an ad campaign in the neighborhood to let everyone know that it’s coming.

AMB: Subway: “The next L train is now arriving”

N2 The Bedford Avenue subway stop in Williamsburg is plastered with posters for the new school.  Opponents of Success Academy have placed stickers on top of the ads. One accuses the charter school chain of spending too much money on marketing. Another accuses the schools of enrolling too few students who speak English as a second language. And its those two issues- money and ethnicity- that are at the center of the fight over Success Academy in Williamsburg. Along the waterfront and north of Grand street, the neighborhood is primarily white and more affluent. South of there, it is primarily Latino and poorer. Opponents of the schools say their founder, former city council member, Eva Moskowitz, is ignoring the south side and targeting the north side for a specific reason.

DEVOR: Her business model cannot succeed, at this point, without an affluent parent body.

Jim Devor is a parent in Cobble Hill. He says Moskowitz targets affluent parents because they’re more likely to make donations to the non-profit that runs nine schools.

DEVOR: To the extent that her schools are successful is because, and to some degree they are, it is because there is substantially greater resources. Not necessarily coming from public funds, but coming from outside funds.

While Success Academy is targeting parents on the north side, it is actually going to be located in the south side. Latino residents in that area feel that the school has completely ignored their needs.  Esteban Duran is the chair of the education and youth committee for Community Board 1 in Williamsburg.

DURAN: What about the South side of the community which actually- is Spanish, speaks Spanish predominantly and where the school is located. They do any of the gathering of signatures there, they didn’t do any advertisements in Spanish until after the first hearing. Its not a public process.

Duran says that what the community actually needs, is another middle school. He’s also worried because the charter school is going to be located in an existing public school building. He thinks the charter school, with its greater resources, will crowd out the struggling public school.

DURAN: You’re gonna see a school that’s gonna get more resources and then a school that is left to die on the vine, and that’s the public school.

Supporters of Success Academy say that’s not likely to happen. Vanessa Bangser is principal of a Success Academy in the Bronx. She says that when a charter school and a public school operate side by side in a public building, good things can happen.

BANGSER: The bigger point is to go back- what was the root of charter schools? It was to provide choice and provide options but also innovate different ideas for schools and to partner with district schools to help improve all schools. So if we just share best practices and work together, definitely both schools can improve.

The four elementary schools in Williamsburg nearest to where the charter school will open could use improvement. Only 30 percent of their students are proficient in English. Success Academy teacher Jessica Johnson says the controversy more about what adults want than about what children need.

JOHNSON: if you don’t want to send your kid to Williamsburg success, fine then don’t. You have the option to send them wherever you want. I just really strongly believe in parent choice.

But Success Academy opponent Estaban Duran says that parents should be concerned if the new school is going to weaken the existing schools.

DURAN: The larger story here is really this interest of public property, public resources being given over to a public entity. That would be ok if there was actually community input. That’s the real issue here.

Success Academy will open in Williamsburg in August with room for nearly 200 kindergartens and first graders. Jackie Mader, Columbia Radio News.

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Jackie Mader brings us the news at 4:00 p.m.

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For three years, New York City evaluated its public school teachers with “value-added” ratings system. These ratings  were kept private from general public until now.  After much anticipation and controversy, the city released the individual ratings of about 18,000 teachers to the public, and response has been mixed.

BY JACKIE MADER

The week long February school break came to an abrupt end today for a large group of New York City public school teachers. After much anticipation and controversy, the city released the individual ratings of about 18,000 teachers to the public.

The teacher data reports were released at noon today and show what is called a “value added” rating of fourth through eighth grade language arts and math teachers from three separate school years. A formula was used to calculate a score between 0 and 99 based on the predicted standardized test scores of students, the actual scores, and factors such as whether the student is economically disadvantaged or disabled. Teacher Tristan Schwartzman says that it makes sense to compare teachers at a school level, but the ratings should not be used to compare teachers in general. “Where a teacher teaches at a school where students come in already possessing the skills they need to pass an exam like that- their students all pass that exam, versus where my students, 40 percent is solid. I’m happy with forty percent,” he said.

Schwartzman has been teaching for six years at an alternative program for high school students who need to retake earlier grades or classes that they have failed. He isn’t planning on looking at his score if it is published, but he says there may be value to releasing the scores. “It really does reflect on our performance as teachers,” he said, adding, “basically all we’re doing is trying to push them through those exams .So it is of value to know how successful we are.”

Some teachers and activists question the value of the scores. Independent experts say that the relatively small sample size has created an enormous margin of error.  For example, a math teacher could have a 35-point discrepancy in their score. That means a rating of 60 could actually be as low as 25, or as high as 95. The scores are from 2007 to 2010 and the state has admitted that some scores were inflated or contained factual errors. The United Federation of Teachers tried unsuccessfully to block the release of the scores in 2010 but was overruled and lost an appeal with a state court last week. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said that the data should not be used against teachers. “When you are saying that this is a judgment of people, you have to say what is reliable and what is not and these scores are just wrong and misleading,” Mulgrew said.

Many parents responded to news of the release by posting comments on media website. Reactions were mostly against the release of the data, although some parents expressed interest in the information. Elizabeth Weiss is a clinical social worker with a daughter in 3rd grade at the Lower Lab School in Manhattan. She says she would probably be curious by the information, and thinks that there a lot of parents may want to see it. “I think a lot of New York City parents are obsessed with this sort of thing because it reflects on their children,” Weiss said.

Weiss says that she trusts her daughter’s current teachers and most likely won’t look up their data, but may be tempted when shopping for middle schools. She says that while she’s glad the information is out there, it should be looked at in context of the whole school and it doesn’t reflect all aspects of a teacher. “If for example teachers get poor ratings because of these scores- is that a direct reflection on them or a lack of support they’re getting from their school, or parents, or the city?” Weiss asked. She says the individual ratings won’t weight too much for her.

New York City stopped producing the ratings after 2010 and adopted a new evaluation system last week that includes test scores, but also classroom observations and other factors. In response to the city’s actions today, the UFT kicked of a newspaper advertising campaign featuring the slogan “This Is No Way to Rate a Teacher” above a complex mathematical formula intended to highlight what they say is a problematic way to rate teachers.