GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Two Opportunity Charter School students, Raeshawn and Amanda, painted a mural during a break in their summer school program earlier this month. The two people at the edges of the picture are volunteers from Goldman Sachs who spent the day helping Opportunity Charter juniors and seniors with resume-writing and interviewing skills.

This picture came to us from a publicist, but we’d like to see anyone’s snapshots from inside city schools. Send your photos to tips@gothamschools.org or submit them to GothamSchools’ Flickr pool.

• The dean of Hunter College’s education school, David Steiner, is set to be the next state ed chief. (Post)
• The Senate agreed basically to keep mayoral control. (GothamSchools, Daily News, Times, Post, NY1)
• Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says he won’t endorse the Senate’s amendments. (Post, Daily News)
• The city will pay the University of Wisconsin to develop a new teacher evaluation system. (Post)
• Nearly 100 schools are moving this summer, many after a long time in their previous home. (Post)
• Tutoring companies have been overcharging the DOE for their services. (Post)
• Jay Mathews questions the notion that top students skip college for financial reasons. (Washington Post)
• More charter schools are unionizing, but the movement is still tiny. (Times)
• The Daily News says the Race to the Top fund requirements should force change in education policy.
• California is also grappling with the Race to the Top fund’s teacher evaluation requirement. (L.A. Times)
• Across the country, there’s a growing acceptance of cell phones as teaching tools. (AP)
• A Manhattan summer music program gives public school kids in-depth musical training. (Daily News)
• A new teaching strategy aims to give kids perfect pitch. (Washington Post)
• The founder of a state education reform group praises the senate’s mayoral control deal. (Post)
• The Daily News forgives state senators for their pasts.

• Bill Perkins says he’s tested the mayoral control cake, and the toothpick is still wet, or something.
• Beth Fertig hopes today’s deal results in fewer Bloomberg campaign mailings.
• Alaska’s the only state not in the red this year. It’s also the only state that’s expanding pre-K.
• Clara Hemphill on the Upper West Side pushes for a school to honor Frank McCourt.
• NYC Educator says he’s glad the hiring system worked for Ruben Brosbe, but it won’t for him.
• An NPR segment about turning around a Bronx school without firing a single teacher.
• Obama didn’t need to be sold on the data-wall requirement.
• Do the national standards folks need some grammar standards of their own?
• Mike Petrilli on Race to the Top, “the carrot that felt like a stick.”
• Rotherham says Duncan has made his job harder by not being firmer on the Race regulations.
• And Azi Paybarah dissects the anatomy of a Bloomberg-bashing press event.

After several hours of heated discussions, Democratic state senators emerged from a meeting today declaring that they had reached an agreement with Mayor Bloomberg on mayoral control.

Standing outside of 250 Broadway, where a dozen of the city’s senators met and others listened in by phone, Democratic conference leader John Sampson said, “One thing you can say today is, we have an agreement with respect to school governance.”

Senators cautioned that the deal’s language has yet to be finalized on paper, but what they described mirrors an earlier agreement that fell apart last week. Today’s agreement would add extra checks to a mayoral control bill passed by the Assembly, including a parent training center based out of CUNY, an increased supervisory role for superintendents, and a new citywide arts panel. According to a statement released by Sen. Carl Kruger’s office, the deal also includes the creation of a Senate subcommittee to oversee the Department of Education.

“All’s well that ends well,” said outgoing UFT president Randi Weingarten, who said that she has been acting as a “go-between” for the two sides, spending Thursday night on the phone helping to broker today’s deal.

A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, Dawn Walker, released a statement saying:

The agreement “preserves the accountability and authority necessary to ensure that the gains we’ve made — in math and reading scores, graduation rates and school safety — continue. At the same time, the agreement addresses concerns that have been raised by legislators in a way that makes sense.”

Sens. Sampson and Pedro Espada were vague about when they would return to Albany to pass the Assembly’s mayoral control bill. Espada said it would happen “before children start school in September.” But Walker’s statement sets the date as the first week of August. (more…)

Sens. Ruben Diaz Sr. and Hiram Monserrate walked out of Senate talks about school governance this afternoon, but they signaled that their disagreement with the Democratic leadership wouldn’t kill a mayoral control deal reached with the Bloomberg administration yesterday, Anna Phillips reports from outside the Lower Manhattan building where the talks are happening.

“It’s a done deal, but we’re not all in agreement,” Diaz said in Spanish to a group of reporters. “The four amigos are divided today.”

Diaz added that he expects a final deal to be released today or tomorrow. No agreement has yet been put to paper.

The Senate’s leading Democrats, John Sampson and Malcolm Smith, are holding the meeting to try to persuade Democrats critical of mayoral control to come on board an agreement struck with the Bloomberg administration yesterday. The agreement would add extra checks to a mayoral control bill passed by the Assembly, including a citywide parent training center based out of CUNY and a new citywide arts panel.

Twelve other senators are still in the meeting, and others are participating by telephone, Anna reports.

Bloomberg administration officials are paying close attention to the talks, which they hope will put a final end to a debate that has been going on for seven months now. The debate hit a serious road bump when mayoral control expired June 30 without any new law passed to replace it, reverting the city back to the pre-2002 school governance law and forcing a hasty meeting of a reconvened Board of Education.

Even if no law is passed, administration officials are planning to move forward with enacting the plan’s major parts, including a citywide parent training center, a source said today. The idea is to send a strong signal to senators that the administration takes the agreement seriously.

UPDATE: Anna reports that Perkins just came out of the meeting looking more staid than usual. He said there will be a deal, and Senate Democratic leaders are about to make a group statement.

Asked if discussions were heated — which we heard from at least one senator who’s not in the room but was calling in for the latest — Perkins said they were “thorough.”

UPDATE 2: Sens. Espada and Sampson just walked out. “We have reached an agreement with respect to school governance,” Espada said, Anna reports. He said the “language has not been finalized,” but that he intends to return to Albany “before our children go to school in September.”

A school system run by Comptroller William Thompson would continue experimenting with teacher “merit pay,” he said yesterday in an exclusive interview with GothamSchools. But he said he wouldn’t expect such an experiment to yield much in the way of results.

His mixed message underscores the odd reality of performance pay plans. Though the plans enjoy increasing political support, no research studies have conclusively shown they improve student achievement.

“Would I continue merit pay? Yes,” Thompson said. “Should it make the difference? Hopefully not.” (more…)

Senate Democratic leaders are meeting right now with the most vehement critics of mayoral control, trying to persuade them to go along with a tentative deal on school governance that Sens. John Sampson and Malcolm Smith struck with the Bloomberg administration yesterday.

The persuasion effort is happening at 250 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, according to Sen. Jose Serrano of the Bronx.

Serrano said he is happy with the deal struck yesterday by Sens. John Sampson and Malcolm Smith and would like to go to Albany as soon as possible to seal it.

“I’d like to go right now!” he said in a phone interview. “Everyone wants to talk about they want to be in their districts for the summer, that’s when all of the events are happening, the street festivals and the family days. My thinking is, the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can start scheduling things here in the district.”

But other senators might be wary. The deal includes a component Serrano favored, a new panel on arts education that would be a subdivision of the citywide school board, acting as a “watchdog” and performing audits on whether arts education is really happening in classrooms. (more…)

The Bloomberg administration and Senate Democrats reached a tentative deal on school governance last night, with the mayor agreeing to some extra oversight of police in schools, a $1.6 million parent training center, and a new citywide panel on arts education, sources familiar with the deal confirmed this morning. The deal would also require the city to add a new factor in superintendents’ reviews of principals: the quality of instruction and curriculum.

Hashed out by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and the two top Senate Democrats, Malcolm Smith and John Sampson, the agreement is several steps away from being finalized. The rest of the Senate’s Democratic conference will have to sign onto the agreement — and so will the state Assembly. Even more difficult, for the deal to become law before the next school year, both houses of the legislature will have to return to Albany this summer to pass legislation.

The Assembly already passed a bill renewing mayoral control of the public schools, with some tweaks, before the end of its regular session. The bill enjoyed the support of the Bloomberg administration, but senate Democrats, once they solidified their thin majority, pushed back against signing onto an identical copy. They pushed for extra tweaks including  a way to guarantee parent involvement in the public schools. (more…)

• Wayne Barrett reports that Mayor Bloomberg and Sen. John Sampson have made a deal. (Village Voice)
• Three borough presidents are calling on the city school board to reconvene. (GothamSchools, Times)
• State senators call for more input in governance negotiations. (GothamSchools, NY1, Post, Daily News)
• Obama is set to release Race to the Top Guidelines today. (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal)
• As they are currently written the regulations would bar New York State from applying. (GothamSchools)
• The regulations contain a lot of things that are sure to gall teachers unions. (Times)
• The regulations could boost teacher pay by pushing states to introduce merit bonuses. (USA Today)
• A new documentary chronicles the first year in the life of a small high school in the Bronx. (Daily News)
• IS 278 in Brooklyn is getting sued over the trash it produces and dumps outside his house. (Daily News)
• A government report has mixed reviews about the introduction of D.C.’s school reform. (Washington Post)

• Is there any “industry” as unproductive as education? The libertarian Cato Institute wants to know.
• Mrs. Mimi, the blogger-turned-book writer, is named Jennifer Scoggin, and she likes GothamSchools.
• Councilman Charles Barron says the Senate fight, which his wife supports, is bad for black leadership.
• Teacher JD2718 says Comptroller Bill Thompson should have tackled credit recovery in his audit.
• A investigative reporter lists what he thinks Thompson’s graduation rate audit should have examined.
• A new Insideschools blogger from the Bronx explains why she sends her children to school in Harlem.
• Can’t we all just get along? Clara Hemphill notes that the mayoral control sticking point is pretty small.
• Two comptroller candidates said Chancellor Klein should be fired; a third, David Yassky, would keep him.
• Lots of Florida kids know the word “quintessential” — many used it on a state writing test. Coincidence?
• The city teacher who took her class’s Flat Stanley to Syria for the summer checks in.
• Aldeman: Mayoral control is good for democracy — just look how much schools are being discussed!
• Alexander Russo overcame his laziness to FOIL Arne Duncan’s daily schedule. Now he’s waiting.
• Eduflack is chomping at the bit to analyze the Race to the Top regulations, which come out tomorrow.
• Liz Willen opposes the cell phone ban in schools, but she’s happy her kids went to camp sans phones.
• A new report about the D.C. schools says Michelle Rhee might have tried to do too much too fast.