GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• Senate education bills “solely” about NYC will have to pass through a new subcommittee. (CapTon)
• A poem about a teachers contract more important than what’s between the city and union. (City Room)
• As lawmakers return to session this month, Common Core and school safety are top priorities. (EdWeek)
• One of Mario Cuomo’s proposals in his 1988 state address was to grow early education. (FERA Twitter)
• Randi Weingarten recommends that schools should decide if they want armed guards or not. (HuffPo)
• A reporter read the Mark Zuckerberg donation emails from Newark so we don’t have to. (Fast Company)
• A former education advocate in New York City is now making a splash in North Carolina (UNC TV)
• Gary Rubinstein says the latest MET study masks a lack of correlation found in value-added scores.

The state will underwrite costs for schools that keep students in class an extra 300 hours per year, according to a top proposal floated today in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s third “State of the State” address.

Extended learning time was one of several proposals Cuomo mentioned during the education section of his speech, which lasted more than an hour and covered a variety of non-education issues, including a strict ban on assault weapons, decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana, raising the minimum wage and a new plan to build casinos in upstate New York (the revenue of which will mostly go toward state school aid).

The proposals were part of a “more and better” approach to education reform that Cuomo is crafting for 2013, a year after he targeted education “lobbyists” and school bureaucratic inefficiencies. Cuomo said he also wants to invest in expanding early education programs and creating schools that provide health and social services for poor communities.

Cuomo is making the funds available in the form of competitive grants, which he has used in the past in an attempt to fast-track education reforms. The grants would only be eligible to districts and schools that craft plans that adhere to best practices prescribed by Cuomo.

The previous grants have encountered resistance, both from union officials, the Board of Regents and State Education Commissioner John King. They all agreed that a $250 million mini-Race to the Top grant would be be better used if it were redistributed into the state’s general school aid formula. (more…)

The Regents exam that high school students are most likely to fail will not be scored under a new system designed to curb score inflation.

In recent years, exams across the city received a disproportionate number of 65s, suggesting that teachers might be bumping up the scores of students on the verge of passing, sometimes illicitly. Aiming to reduce incentives to pad scores, the Department of Education last year began rolling out a system in which teachers are not permitted to grade exams taken by students in their school.

A year ago, 27 schools participated in “distributed scoring,” and 163 schools used the model in June. Overall, the proportion of exams scoring exactly 65, the score needed to pass, fell by half.

This month, all exams for all schools were supposed to be scored under the model. But when the department put out a call for teachers to grade the global history exam, only about 1,000 signed up, officials said. That meant the department was short at least 700 teachers to ensure that all global history exams could be graded on time.

The shortfall means the department’s shift to distributed scoring will be incomplete when students take exams later this month. (more…)

• The city and teachers union are returning to the negotiating table over teacher evaluations. (Daily News)
• A Gates Foundation study found good teaching can be measured. (GothamSchools, SchoolBook, WSJ)
• The city increased its school closure list to 26 in total. (GothamSchools, Post, NY1, WSJ, SchoolBook)
• Former DOE official Eric Nadelstern: The more struggling schools that close, the better. (Daily News)
• More allegations against city school workers were made than ever last year. (GothamSchools, Times)
• New Dorp High School will keep its rare health clinic, which budget cuts had threatened. (Daily News)
• A freshman at a Brooklyn school whose parents said she was bullied was found dead. (Post, City Room)
• A Brooklyn councilman opposes a Staten Island vote to arm school guards, which won’t happen. (Post)
• A judge said it was okay for a private school to fire a teacher who let students drink wine in France. (Post)
• California’s schools chief wants students to take fewer state tests, especially in high school. (L.A. Times)