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John King (left), the new state education commissioner, meeting with a teacher in February.

John King is New York’s new state education commissioner, after a unanimous vote by the state Board of Regents this morning.

King, the deputy state education commissioner, replaces David Steiner, who announced he was planning to leave at the end of the academic year in April. The announcement was a surprise, but concerns that Steiner might leave the state in the lurch were tampered by the expectation that King, his close partner, would likely succeed Steiner as commissioner.

King and Steiner’s ambitious agenda has included changing the way teachers are prepared and certified, overhauling the state’s standards, curriculum, and assessments, and implementing a slew of other innovations laid out in New York’s winning Race to the Top application.

Part of that plan was an effort to change the way teachers are evaluated. Members of the Regents vote today on whether to approve the plan that state education officials are proposing. Under urging from Governor Cuomo, the plan increases the portion of a teacher’s evaluation that would depend on student test scores to 40%. Any actual teacher evaluation system, though, will have to be bargained in each local district by school officials and local teachers unions. (more…)

New York:

• Proposed new teacher evaluations would place more weight on student test scores. (Times)
• The regulation’s increased emphasis on test scores came at Governor Cuomo’s urging. (GS, Daily News)
• Democrats for Education Reform criticized the regulations for burdening local districts. (Post)
• A study of school grades shows the city’s metrics keep changing, affecting schools’ fate. (Post)
• But in a given year, the grades are a reliable way to compare schools. (Times)
• Among the recipients of Bloomberg charity are charter schools and a principal training group. (Post)
• The city has been temporarily blocked from co-locating an UWS charter school. (Daily News, WSJ)
• The mother of a P.S. 141 student said a teaching assistant put her son in a choke hold. (NY1)
• Students who attended P.S. 86 reunite after 10 years with the teacher who took them to Finland. (Times)
• Parental anxiety is fueling a boom in pre-kindergarten tutoring programs like Kumon. (Times)
• A five-year-old Queens girl’s parents keep her busy, spending $1,500 a week on tutoring. (Daily News)
• The Post accuses Bill de Blasio of being a teachers union “puppet” because of a now-removed link.
• The state is demanding repayment from a Long Island school that vastly overpaid its CEO. (Times)
• Critics believe that parents of playground arsonists are buying them out of trouble. (Brooklyn Paper)

Elsewhere:

• The Wall Street Journal says Rahm Emanuel’s new ed bill is a good start, but only a start.
• Newark advisory task force members say they were left out of the superintendent search. (Star-Ledger)
• In New Jersey, Orthodox Jews and public school parents are fighting for control of a school board. (WSJ)
• The CFO of Philly’s public schools says the budget cuts have never been so bad before. (Inquirer)
• Special ed advocates are accusing D.C. charter schools of steering students to private schools. (WaPo)
• A CT student who was suspended for the way he invited a girl to prom will be allowed to attend. (Post)
• GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann entered politics via the school board. (WaPo)

• Chris Smith reads Cuomo’s position on teacher evaluation as a bargaining chip for Bloomberg. (NYMag)
• Mulgrew is working with religious groups; many electeds attended the UFT’s spring event. (NY Teacher)
• Could Google’s inexpensive “cloud” laptops threaten school IT staffs across the land? (Peter Pappas)
• Norm Scott says E4E opponents should go after their “way of thinking,” not call names. (Ed Notes)
• Edu-advocacy needs “strange bedfellows,” says Winn, formerly of Sharpton and Klein’s EEP. (NSVF)
• Arne Duncan is holding onto the 100%-proficiency-by-2014 goal to show its problems. (Politics K12)
• A 1979 law seems to challenge the USDOE’s ability to direct curriculum and textbooks. (Jay Greene)
• George Miller and Chris Christie debated teachers unions’s role in change; see minute 52. (TWIE)
• Illinois and Houston are both pursuing big changes to the way teachers are evaluated. (Teacher Beat)
• Have you noticed that there are a lot of jobs posted on our jobs board? Including an Ohio opportunity!

Another charter school’s teachers have voted to join the city teachers union, bringing the number of charter schools represented by the union to 15. Teachers at Opportunity Charter School in Harlem, which serves a unique blend of special education and general education students, made their announcement through the United Federation of Teachers today.

The union has been actively recruiting charter school educators to join its ranks for several years, part of a strategy to embrace charter schools into the union fold.

Some schools’ management teams — including the prominent KIPP schools’ New York branch — have resisted the idea, arguing that the absence of union representation is a key tool that helps charter schools have more flexibility over hiring and firing.

Opportunity struggled to get its charter renewed after posting disappointing student test score results. City officials who authorize the school finally recommended a renewal on a shortened two-year timeline, adding a list of steps the school must take as conditions. The state approved that proposal last July. The renewal lasts through June 2012.

A year ago, investigators accused teachers at Opportunity of abusing unruly students. The school’s city authorizer officials said concerns about abuse had alleviated since the report was released.

UPDATE: In a statement, Opportunity CEO Leonard Goldberg and board chairman Philip Pallone said, ”We have received notification from the UFT and are in the process of reviewing it.”

Here’s the union’s press release: (more…)

If Governor Andrew Cuomo angered Mayor Bloomberg by batting off his calls to end seniority-based layoffs, perhaps the governor redeemed himself in the mayor’s eyes today. Cuomo sent the chancellor of New York’s Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch, a letter saying he believes that student test scores should count for a larger portion of teachers’ annual evaluations.

His comments are a critique of a set of regulations put out by the Board of Regents that they will vote on next week. The regulations are to be used by New York City and other districts as a guide to implementing the state’s new teacher evaluation system.

In a statement today, Tisch vowed to support Cuomo’s recommendations at the meeting next week, saying that they “will lead to an even stronger teacher and principal evaluation system for New York.” It’s not clear if the other members of the board will agree with Tisch. A recent appointee to the board, the former city school official Kathleen Cashin, is a quiet critic of Bloomberg’s.

Another hurdle involves getting the teacher evaluations implemented in school districts. The new state law revising the evaluation system granted final power to local collective bargaining talks between districts and unions. That means that no evaluation system will become final without local unions’ approval.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew responded to Cuomo’s letter obliquely, saying only: “We look forward to discussing the Governor’s recommendations with the Regents.”

Bloomberg’s reaction was more effusive:

“The thoughtful recommendations made today by Governor Cuomo will greatly improve the rigor of these new evaluations, and I am heartened that the Regents agreed to adopt them. But it will take the sustained commitment of all invested parties – and perhaps most importantly, the cooperation of the teachers union – if we are to make this evaluation system a reality.”

Here’s Cuomo’s complete letter: (more…)

The list of low-performing schools the city plans to improve with a management-change next year grew to 22 today, when officials added 13 schools to the nine they announced yesterday.

This group of schools will begin what’s known as the “restart” improvement plan next fall. The restart plan is one of four programs districts can take on in order to win federal grants aimed at improving the country’s lowest-performing schools. It calls for putting an ailing school under new management.

Though city officials would have liked to use two of the other school improvement plans, they were unable to convince the teachers union to go along. Two of those plans — transformation and turnaround — would have required the union to allow the city to remove principals and teachers at some of these schools.

Under the restart model, the city will pair schools with non-profit education management organizations — a plan that’s less invasive than firing teachers or removing a school’s principal. One major question is whether it’s invasive enough.

Already, every public school in the city belongs to a support network whose job it is to give them instructional and operational guidance. These networks can make recommendations about which teachers should receive tenure, which principal should be selected to fill a vacancy, and who the school should hire for professional development, among other things. (more…)

A subway ad that appeared in 2009. (Photo courtesy of gguillaumee/Flickr)

Lamenting his ability to trim the city’s budget, Mayor Bloomberg this week assailed increases in teacher salaries. But he hasn’t always seen teachers’ salaries as a burden.

A ad campaign promoting the public schools that plastered subways in late 2008 touted increases in teacher salaries as a statistic to be proud of. ”Because every child deserves a great teacher, New York City public schools have increased starting teacher salaries 43% since 2002,” read one of the posters in the Keep It Going NYC campaign.

In the last two and a half years, of course, the city’s fiscal picture has changed, and Bloomberg is now hoping to persuade the teachers union to accept steep concessions to avert layoffs. Earlier this week, he cited the increase in teacher salaries as evidence that concessions are needed. ”I can tell you we have raised teacher spending in 10 years 105 percent on the Department of Education and we’ve raised it on all other city agencies an average of 28 percent, with an inflation rate of 33 percent [since 2002],” he said.

• Thousands of protesters marched to protest the mayor’s budget, push for tax hikes. (WSJ, NYT, WABC)
• More than 60 groups organized the rally; Randi Weingarten was among the attendees. (NY1, HuffPost)
• A Post editorial about the march says activists “care only about consuming wealth — not producing it.”
• An analysis finds that the city plans to spend $1 billion on consultants next year. (Daily News)
• After union talks failed, the city applied to “restart” schools using federal dollars. (Post, Daily News)
• The little-understood restart model raises questions about what changes can be made. (NYT, GS, NY1)
• A high-ranking DOE official who oversaw a consulting contract that’s under scrutiny resigned. (DN, Post)
• East Harlem high school students will reenact the Freedom Riders’ southern journey. (DNAInfo)
• A Francis Lewis student who immigrated from China in 2003 won a prestigious scholarship. (Daily News)
• Park Slope parents are angry that construction on a playground has been delayed. (Daily News)
• The Daily News sponsored a cooking lesson for special-needs pre-schoolers in the Bronx. (Daily News)
• The families of teens who burned a Brooklyn school’s playground paid $50,000 for the damages. (DN)

And beyond:

• A presidential report recommends expanding arts education to reach more children. (ABC News)
• The Times criticizes Scholastic for publishing a fourth-grade lesson packet touting the benefits of coal.
• A Connecticut student barred from prom because of a suspension has become a media sensation. (NYT)
• Some teachers are using Twitter-like technology to engage students in discussions. (NYT)
• A push to change Texas’s public universities is generating a high-profile backlash. (NYT, Texas Tribune)

• Stuyvesant and Bronx Science quietly cut a program aimed at diversifying their admissions. (Our Town)
• A graduate of the program says it got him into Bronx Science and changed his life. (Amsterdam News)
• Eva Moskowitz warns UWS parents interested in her school not to plan to sleep in on Saturdays. (Capitol)
• Attendance at Lehman High School’s prom is cut in half, maybe because prom is so expensive. (CBS)
• A new study published in Science uses learning research to re-imagine science teaching. (Times)
• Remedial courses that replace what was missed in high school cost the U.S. $3.6 billion a year. (All4Ed)
• Live-tweeting a poetry analysis during English class as a way to engage students in a lesson. (Times)
• The Gates Foundation’s new headquarters is a vast 12-acre campus. (KOMO News)
• Debbie Meier is struck by the “passionate certainty” of the other side of the debate. (Bridging Differences)
• Chinese students’ days begin early in the morning and stretch until late at night. (Hechinger)

With their plans to postpone parent council elections failing to placate critics, city school officials have decided to start the voting process all over again.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced today that already-cast votes will be invalidated and the two-step voting process be pushed to next week. Parents will now be able to vote in the first part of the election, which is advisory, from May 18th to the 25th. The results from that election are non-binding and are meant to guide parent association leaders in their final vote, which will now run from May 27th to June 3rd.

Pressure to stop the election and start from scratch came from a group of vocal parents who felt that the Department of Education’s Office of Family Information and Action had done too little to publicize the election. They also accused OFIA of releasing inaccurate about who was eligible to run. Complaints mounted when the DOE initially password-protected candidates’ information, preventing some parents who didn’t have passwords from seeing it.

From there criticism became contagious. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio held a joint press conference earlier this week to chastise the city for thinking one week would be enough time to fix the troubled election. A group of parents also sued the city this week, asking for a restraining order to halt the elections. (more…)