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For the first time in years, the state test scores set for release today are a big question mark.

For many years, it was easy to predict that the annual test score announcement would be an occasion for state and city officials to point to gains. That pattern ended last year when state officials declared that the tests had been too easy and that the grading would change to raise the score needed for a student to be considered “proficient” in math or reading. For weeks before the city’s average proficiency rate fell 26 percentage points in reading and 24 points in math, the public knew that a dropoff was coming.

We have little warning about what today’s news will bring.

Last week, the New York Post reported that insiders at the State Education Department said the newest scores would show a small jump, about 2 percentage points in reading and 4 points in math. That would bring the percentage of city students rated “proficient” to about 44 percent in reading and 65 percent in math, far below the rates reached two years ago under the old scoring system.

But comments made to Crain’s New York by Success Charter Network CEO Eva Moskowitz suggested that not every school saw its scores increase. Comparing this year’s scores to last year’s, Moskowitz told Crain’s, “I think you are going to be looking at a similar or potentially even worse situation.”

Schools have had their students’ scores results since Thursday but were not allowed to share them publicly.

Four things to note when the new scores are discussed today, first by state officials at 11 a.m. and later by Mayor Bloomberg at a press conference at city Department of Education headquarters: (more…)

News from New York City:

• The city’s Race to the Top spending plan includes funds for managers, analysts, and consultants. (Post)
• Public confidence is shaken and Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy is on the line over education. (Crain’s NY)
• Brooklyn Academy of Global Finance got the lowest safety marks on the citywide survey. (Daily News)
• A Queens high school teacher who was reassigned in May was charged with raping a student. (AP, Post)
• Worried about toxins, the DOE is moving Bronx New School from its 20-year home. (Daily News, Post)
• City public school students are among many who use summer to pad their college resumes. (Times)
• Teachers unions want the state to kill a contract with Wireless Generation. (Daily News, WNYC)
• Many more school principals appealed their schools’ budgets this year. (GothamSchools, NY1)
• The city has relaxed hiring restrictions in English and social studies for the first time in two years. (GS)

• Ed Sec Arne Duncan said he would exempt from NCLB states with their own reform plans. (Times, AP)
• Atlanta’s school year starts today, weeks after revelations about widespread cheating. (Times)
• Across the country, the Gates Foundation is funding local education advocacy groups. (Seattle Times)
• New data show that D.C.’s poorest areas remain untouched by school improvements. (Washington Post)
• Amid scandal, Rupert Murdoch is moving forward with plans to open a London school. (Independent UK)
• Changing are underfoot in Philadelphia in response to cheating allegations in schools there. (Inquirer)

• The city and state teachers unions asked the state to drop its Wireless Generation contract. (HuffPo)
• A suggestion that USDOE might be pitching news stories that target Diane Ravitch. (Mike Klonsky)
• Illinois is the latest state to launch an erasure analysis into possible cheating on state tests. (WBEZ)
• Ex-Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum: Public pre-K equals government indoctrination. (Des Moines Register)
• A class of Chicagoland sixth-graders went a week without using any post-1983 technology. (GOOD)
• Federal reforms require schools to give data to researchers, to great confusion. (Inside School Research)
• Some students made the most and others skipped Saturday programs that are now cut. (Notebook)
• A teacher gives his interview response to a data question, then shares his data fears. (James Boutin 1, 2)
• Georgia officials suggested cheating might have affected the state’s NAEP scores. (Curriculum Matters)
• AFT President Randi Weingarten answered USA Today’s questions about education news. (YouTube)

The total number of budget appeals filed by principals are way up this year, confirming our report last month that school leaders were finding their budgets more unworkable.

The Department of Education received 253 official budget appeals from principals last month, a 50 percent spike over last year, according to figures released today.

The surge reflects the fiscal challenges facing many of the city’s public school system, where principals say they are doing more with less.

This year, the DOE trimmed $178 million from its schools budget, its third straight year of cuts. As a result, we wrote last month, some principals were forced to stretch their dollars are far as they could go and were still unable to come up with enough funds for basic needs.

Lisa Siegman, a principal at P.S. 3 in the West Village who publicly lobbied for more money, said she wouldn’t be able open in September because she “couldn’t staff the school” with enough teachers.

The last-ditch effort in the budget process, which ended on July 22, was to an file appeal. An appeal is a formal request that requires principals to propose how much more money they need and to provide a doomsday scenario of what services they would lose if funding weren’t restored.  Principals also have to include any significant changes that affected their latest budget, such as the loss of Title 1 funding and student population changes. (more…)

For the first time in more than two years, city principals are being told they can look outside the city’s current teaching corps for new English and social studies teachers.

The deadline for new English, social studies, and math teachers to enter the city’s hiring system has been extended until Monday because ”opportunities may exist for schools to hire new teachers in these areas,” according to the Department of Education’s hiring website.

The schools aren’t being given carte blanche to hire teachers externally in those subjects, but they are being told they can apply for exceptions to the city’s two-year-old hiring freeze. In the past, principals have been granted exceptions from the freeze if they could show they had searched exhaustively within the system.

“We are pleased to share that schools may be able to receive an exception” to hire teachers in the subject areas, read an email sent by a DOE official to colleges and universities that supply student teachers.

Principals are responding to the encouragement. In the last week, the DOE’s online hiring system has had positions added by schools that would not previously have been allowed to hire externally under the restrictions. (more…)

More than 50 schools have signed up for a new matchmaking program to help them pool positions.

The Department of Education has created a centralized process for principals looking to share teachers with another school —having a teacher work a few days a week at one school, and the rest of the week at another. In a notice to principals, the city said sharing teachers “may be a particularly efficient way to provide arts instruction.”

In the process’s first month, 38 schools have indicated interest in gaining a shared teacher. Eighteen of the schools are looking for an art, music, or dance teacher. Another 28 schools have indicated that they have someone to share, including nine arts teachers, according to DOE spokeswoman Barbara Morgan.

It’s a positive step toward providing more students with access to the arts, according to Richard Kessler, director of the nonprofit Center for Arts Education. But he’s not convinced principals have the support they need to share teachers effectively.

Splitting teacher schedules presents a logistical challenge for the principals who pay their salaries and teachers who might have to travel. Kessler said those logistical difficulties are one reason why the practice has become rare after being relatively common in the 1980s.

“The majority of principals just don’t know how you share faculty from school to school,” Kessler said, adding that he did not know of any schools currently sharing arts teachers. “There was a reason why it disappeared — it gets tricky traveling from one school to another. But in tough times, this is certainly better than nothing.” (more…)

• Insiders say state test scores, which were released to principals yesterday, showed small gains. (Post)
• Among all states, New York is taking the most aggressive steps to revamp teacher education. (EdWeek)
• The city’s Young Men’s Initiative includes a range of education programs. (GothamSchools, WNYC)
• Adam Brodsky: We should hope for a N.Y. cheating scandal so we can see how bad teachers are. (Post)
• The Daily News says the AFT’s leaked “parent trigger” presentation shows unions aren’t for communities.
• Donations from a hedge-fund manager swayed Bridgeport, Conn., into dissolving its school board. (WSJ)
• A suburban Colorado country is handing out vouchers to boost choice and maybe save money. (WSJ)

• Apropos of today’s news, a rundown of Mayor Bloomberg’s record on the achievement gap. (Wonkster)
• City principals received students’ state test scores today but they won’t go public until next week. (GS)
• Andy Rotherham explains his family’s decision-making process for school choice. (School of Thought)
• The bidding is now open to create testing systems that match up to the standards. (Curriculum Matters)
• An Israeli study of instruction says blending “traditional” and “modern” is best. (Starting an Ed School)
• A push to get the city to make more information accessible online is gaining steam. (Gotham Gazette)
• A first draft of a first step toward common standards content “frameworks.” (Curriculum Matters)
• More on the AFT’s “Parent Trigger” presentation, from which it has distanced itself. (Teacher Beat)
• Questions about timeline and propriety on the Gates-Wireless Generation deal. (NYC P.S. Parents)
• A teacher reflects on powerful words to use on a troublesome student: I’m proud of you. (Mr. Foteah)

One of the largest pots of money in the city’s new initiative to aid black and Latino young men is going to the Department of Education.

Of the initiative’s $127 million price tag, $24 million will be used to study and develop the best practices of city high schools that have best prepared male minority students for college and work. Billionaire philanthropist George Soros will foot the bill for the three-year program, called the Expanded Success Initiative.

The funding will allow the Department of Education to hire a team of research consultants to study 40 high schools with a track record of bridging the achievement gap for black and Latino male students. Josh Thomases, the DOE’s deputy chief academic officer charged with coordinating the program, said the city had not yet identified the schools that would be studied.

“We’re looking for schools with a high concentration of black and Latino boys, with high poverty and Title I funding, but with an evidence of success,” Thomases said.

“We’re agnostic to what kind of school it is,” he added. “We’re looking at the schools that have had success graduating black and Latino boys at a high school level and expanding it to other schools.”

Thomases, citing a study published by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) last year, said that he would look particularly close at small high schools in New York City, which have shown higher rates of graduation and credit accumulation. (more…)

Clemente Lopes is trying to keep his head above water.

As the principal of I.S. 10 in Long Island City for the last six years, Lopes is now in a situation familiar to principals across the city: trying to increase scores with fewer teachers, less money, and more students.

“As budget cuts increase and I have to make my classrooms bigger, I’m not so sure how my scores are going to reflect all those cuts,” Lopes said. “It’s getting to the point when I’m running out of options.”

Since the 2005-2006 school year, he’s eliminated 11 positions, even though he’s gone from a low of 849 students in the 2006-2007 school year to 957 students last year.

Facing the third straight year of citywide budget cuts, I.S. 10′s budget for this coming year is $6.49 million, down from a peak of $7.26 million for the 2008-2009 school year.

Lopes’ solutions to the budget crunch have been common ones: cutting instructional coaches, deans, after-school activities, tutoring, and textbook purchases. Now he’s worried that the trimming will cut into academic performance, too. (more…)