Talk Bronx New York

High Test Scores, and Criticism, Follow a South Bronx Principal

A South Bronx elementary school that adopted the motto “The Best School in the Universe” on the strength of soaring tests scores is being investigated for allegations that teachers helped students cheat on state tests.

Several students who attended P.S. 48 said last week that teachers would examine their answers during official test administration periods and point out mistakes and how to correct them.

“They would give you the answers on the state tests,” a graduate of P.S. 48, who is now in seventh grade, said. “You’d say, ‘I need help,’ and then they’d tell you what the answer was.”

The Department of Education is also investigating cheating allegations at a nearby school, M.S. 201, which this year was taken over by P.S. 48’s former principal, John Hughes.

Mr. Hughes moved to the middle school after running P.S. 48, to great acclaim. He told the Web site InsideSchools.org that he oversaw a 30-point jump on a math test in 2004, and that year Chancellor Joel Klein spoke at the school’s graduation — reportedly while wearing a “Best School in the Universe” T-shirt.

The test scores subsequently oscillated, but the general upward trend won Mr. Hughes favorable profiles in the New York Times and on PBS, and he has developed a good rapport with a teacher-recruitment nonprofit, Teach For America.

In his first year at M.S. 201, scores have also shot up; the percentage of students passing math tests this year jumped by 17 points, and the percentage passing reading increased by nine points. (Citywide, scores rose by nine points in math and seven points in reading.)

Yet Mr. Hughes has butted heads with many of the teachers at M.S. 201, many of whom have not been invited to return next year when the school is restructured.

Some of those teachers said in interviews that they fear Mr. Hughes is importing a culture of cheating to their school.

In a recent letter to the Department of Education, a group of teachers reported that Mr. Hughes asked several teachers to help students during the state tests.

One teacher, Sandra Ameny, who came to M.S. 201 through Teach For America, said Mr. Hughes asked her to help her students on the math test, but that she refused.

“He asked me to guide my students to the right answers during the test, and I said that’s helping them; I’m not supposed to do that. And he said, ‘Well, just guide them towards the right answer,’” Ms. Ameny said.

She added: “He basically said during the exam that I should go over close to them, and for example if they mark ‘D’ and ‘D’ is not the right answer, tell them, you know, ‘That’s not the right answer, try something else,’ and just keep guiding them until they get the right answer.”

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New York promotes the Bronx’s parks and gardens

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is blooming!

Despite its urban image, the Bronx has 7,000 acres of park land, about 25% of its total area. In addition to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, the borough’s green spaces include the New York Botanical Garden; a 19th century garden overlooking the Hudson River called Wave Hill; and Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay parks, where you can bird-watch, play golf and ride horses.

New York City is touting the Bronx’s green attractions in a new promotion. “Most people don’t think of the Bronx like that. We want to open their eyes to the actual physical beauty of the Bronx,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism organization.

CITY GUIDE: Where to sleep, eat and shop in New York

It’s quite a turnaround for a place that once symbolized urban decay. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning,” sportscaster Howard Cosell famously said during a 1977 Yankees game, as footage aired of a building in flames near the stadium. An epidemic of arson plagued the city at the time.

New York is a different place now, billed as America’s safest big city and attracting a record 46 million tourists last year. Many of those tourists are repeat visitors, and “their appetite for something other than Times Square and the Statue of Liberty is enormous,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr., who got an enthusiastic reception talking up the Bronx at a recent tourism conference in Berlin.

Green spaces only comprise part of the Bronx’s attractions. There is also Italian food on Arthur Avenue, a hip-hop music tour, a bed-and-breakfast called Le Refuge Inn, and saltwater swimming at Orchard Beach. For more information, visit the Bronx Tourism Council website at www.ilovethebronx.com or NYC & Company at www.nycvisit.com/bronx. Meanwhile, here are some highlights.

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Stickball isn’t a game … it’s a tradition

No Big Bertha’s here … only sticks, rubber balls and your bare hands.

In the Bronx, all roads lead to stickball.

Forget about working the count, you get one swing for the money in stickball.

NEW YORK — It’s nearly noon on the last Sunday in May, and Pedro Eliza walks hurriedly toward a parked black Mercedes SUV in which his friend, Eddie Espada, sits with a baggie of unused syringes. Eliza, 40, who has made the short commute up to Unionport from his home in Spanish Harlem, opens the front passenger-side door and reaches for a piece of rubber tubing that Espadahas extended to him.

The sharp of a severed syringe is clamped to one end of the hose, and to the other a small, 250 CC air compressor. From the dashboard, Eliza grabs a pink ball — indistinguishable in size and consistency from a racquetball — eyes a random spot on it, and eases in the needle. He flips on the compressor and counts off seven seconds before sliding it out. Plugging the pinpoint rupture with his thumb, he hands the ball to Espada, who draws a viscous rubber cement from a jar with a separate syringe, inserts the sharp into the same hole, and plunges out a touch to seal it. Eliza looks up and grins. “That’s how you pump a Bronx stickball.”

Espada and Eliza are two of the nearly 130 men, ranging in age from about 18 to 65, who have descended on this Bronx neighborhood near Parkchester for the New York Emperor Stickball League’s Memorial Weekend tournament. Fourteen teams, including squads from San Diego and Miami, participated in the NYESL’s 24th annual event, generally considered the World Series of self-pitch stickball by those who play the game. There’s no money or trips to Disneyland awaiting the winning team, only a trophy and bragging rights.

Like 16-inch softball in Chicago, stickball has and will always belong to New York City. It’s a sport that has rarely existed outside the confines of a movie screen for the bulk of Americans. To hear the word conjures images of the Big Apple circa Eisenhower: uncapped fire hydrants arcing their precious cargo onto narrow streets while neighborhood kids toss together pickup games on blistering summer afternoons. Many of the NYESL’s older members did inhabit such a landscape growing up, but stickball’s spot as the preeminent preoccupation of New York’s young began to weaken in the late ’70s and early ’80s. As kids started to gravitate more toward basketball courts, a couple of stickball diehards, Frank Calderon and Frank Sanchez, decided to organize a league in the Bronx for those who still loved playing. The NYESL held its first game in 1984.

Richard Marrero has been involved with the league for 22 years, initially as a participant and currently as both a player and the league’s president. Imposing at first glance, with a bull-like physique, dark, heavy beard and a low-set black cap, Marrero’s visage is less that of an ambassador than it is a bouncer, though he embodies the former. Both affable and alert, he stands at the curb and watches a game unfold not four feet ahead on Stickball Boulevard, a side street that the league has adopted as its own.

“This here is the real deal,” he says, taking in the scene. His own team, the Gold, is playing one of four games happening simultaneously in a two-block area. (The Gold are the closest thing to a dynasty in the league, functioning as stickball’s version of the Yankees. They’ve taken more titles than any other team, winning again this year for their third consecutive victory.) For the tournament, every team plays six games, three each on Saturday and Sunday, and the eight teams with the best records going into Monday are seeded accordingly and play single elimination matches until there’s a champion.

The NYESL plays “fungo” or Bronx-style stickball, which means that instead of utilizing a pitcher, batters toss the ball up and pick it off one or two bounces. Games are seven innings, three outs to an inning, and scoring typically mimics that of baseball in that runs are hard to come by. The pumped balls are also unique to Bronx-style, employed so that the ball travels farther. There are eight fielders, positioned in the same roles as in baseball, as well as first, second and third bases 80 feet apart. It’s 90 feet from home plate to first, and the batter is allowed the full range of that first ten feet to hit the ball. If he steps on or over the line painted at the ten-foot mark, it’s an out.

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News 12 The Bronx Celebrates 10 Years Of Local News Coverage

The borough’s first and only dedicated news channel marks its 10th year on cable television; The cable-exclusive channel made its debut in 1998 as the first 24-hour local news channel completely dedicated to covering news of the Bronx.

Bronx, NY (PRWEB) June 30, 2008 — News 12 the Bronx is celebrating 10 years as the first 24-hour local news channel completely dedicated to covering news of the Bronx. The cable-exclusive channel began bringing local news to the borough of the Bronx in 1998. Ten years later, News 12 continues to serve the Bronx community with its 24-hour news channel, and has expanded to multiple distribution platforms including an on-demand channel (News 12 Interactive, channel 612 on iO TV), a cell phone service (News 12 to Go), and on the world-wide-web (www.news12.com). All services are provided at no additional cost to Cablevision subscribers.

“It was a very easy decision to start up a News 12 franchise in the Bronx”, said Patrick Dolan, President of News 12 Networks. “It was clear that Bronx residents were interested in news coverage that reflected the borough they were so proud to call their own. Most news coverage in the area up to that point was focused on crime stories. When News 12 the Bronx launched and showed the real people of the Bronx on television - from the teachers to the firemen to the community leaders and more - we were embraced. We’re proud of our involvement in this incredible area.”

“The Bronx is an interesting place to live and work. It’s diverse. It’s dynamic. It has a wonderful sense of community,” said Leesa Dillon, News Director of News 12 the Bronx. “News 12’s commitment is to provide fair and unbiased coverage of the news that the residents of the Bronx need and want to know. It’s been so for the last 10 years and will continue to be so into the future ”

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