GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• New York is among five states to get Ford Foundation funding to extend the school year. (Times, AP)
• The number of districts that, unlike NYC, have reached teacher evaluation deals is up to 633. (Post, NY1)
• Brooklyn’s District 23 became the third to adopt districtwide choice, the second in a week. (Daily News)
• Park Slope’s controversial school rezoning plan could make P.S. 10 lose pre-kindergarten. (Daily News)
• The Post pans the city for giving high grades to high schools that don’t prepare students for college.
• Los Angeles’s teachers union tentatively agreed to use test scores in teacher ratings. (WSJ, L.A. Times)
• An L.A. union activist says smaller districts are paving the road to a new unionism. (Washington Post)
• A state judge ruled that Louisiana’s school voucher system is unconstitutional. (WSJ, Times-Picayune)
• In some cities, school are losing students because of demographic shifts and charter schools. (WSJ)
• Debate over the Common Core’s nonfiction guidelines is heating up nationally. (Washington Post)
• A former D.C. teacher and current professor says credit recovery is used too liberally in D.C. (WSJ)

Last week on GothamSchools:

• The city is scrutinizing homegrown high school courses to see if they meet high standards. (Friday)
• Mayoral hopefuls came before a group that opposes Mayor Bloomberg’s school policies. (Thursday)
• A related group released research briefs to make their case against Bloomberg’s policies. (Thursday)
• The city and others would like student surveys to affect evaluations, but the UFT doesn’t. (Wednesday)
• Timing and implementation issues could cloud any teacher evaluation deal that gets made. (Wednesday)
• Some schools that got progress reports still have investigations open about last year’s scores. (Tuesday)
• Even with college readiness metrics, more high schools got top progress report scores this year. (Monday)
• Still, the city increased the number of high schools it is considering closing, shortlisting 24. (Monday)
• City officials said they are considering making it harder to get high scores in the future. (Monday)
• The principal of one of four schools with two straight F’s said he doesn’t fear being closed. (Monday)