GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

• The D.C. government has stayed quiet on the circumstances around alleged test fraud. (Class Struggle)
• A closer look at allegations made by the principal in the Michelle Rhee documentary. (Learning Matters)
• An East Harlem school’s ascent from “disarray” got an assist from college-bound peer leaders. (Edweek)
• An extended learning time advocate says schools can blend two of Cuomo’s proposals into one. (TASC)
• Education groups were ‘disappointed’ that Cuomo’s speech didn’t address mandate relief. (CapCon)
• Yonkers, the second to last of the “Big 5″ districts in New York, submitted an evaluation plan. (LoHud)
• A parent leader explains how Brownstone Brooklyn devised a diversity quota school. (Schoolbook)
• The Denver school board lost  lost a school board member who had tipped the scales (EdNews)
• Joel Klein again invokes Al Shanker in a call to create a tough bar exam for wannabe teachers. (Atlantic)
• Unemployment rates for school aides is the only K-12 occupation above the national average. (Russo)
• A nascent advocacy group is trying to raise $600,000 for the closing Columbus HS. (PFSA YouTube)

Principals are pushing back against the Department of Education’s plan to seize money from schools whose special education students narrowly miss a bureaucratic cutoff.

Responding to the concerns, department officials said they would issue new guidance to principals that clarifies the department’s commitment to funding special education programs adequately and helping schools keep their budgets stable.

The confusion followed a change in the way the department allocates funds to schools this year as part of a reform effort aimed at helping students with disabilities. The change created tiers of funding levels: The more time special education students spend in classes mixed with general education students, the more money their schools get.

Many principals are finding out for the first time this week, because of a deadline to clean up special education data, that students they thought would bring in a higher rate fall into a lower tier instead — and the department could take back the difference in funds.

“The last-minute data capture has left us scrambling to account for potentially massive cuts to our budgets halfway through the school year,” 20 principals wrote in a letter to Chancellor Dennis Walcott today. “And it is because of our strong commitment to flexible programming and the other cornerstones of the Special Education reform that our cuts will be so dramatic.” (more…)

A new report by the advocacy group StudentsFirstNY found that low-rated teachers work more often in high-poverty schools. The group presented its findings outside City Hall.

The poorer a school’s students are, the more likely they are to be taught by low-rated teachers.

That’s the conclusion of a new report by the education advocacy group StudentsFirstNY. The group, which is critical of the city’s current teacher evaluation system, looked at ratings given to 65,527 teachers during the 2011-2012 school year and found that the low-rated teachers disproportionately worked in schools with high concentrations of poor students.

At schools with relatively few poor students, 1.14 percent of teachers received low ratings last year, according to the report. But at schools where more than 85 percent of students are considered poor, 3.9 percent did.

The inequities were even more pronounced when comparing schools with different demographics. At schools where fewer than a quarter of students are black or Hispanic, just 1.06 percent of teachers got low ratings. At schools where almost all students are black or Hispanic, that figure was 4.13 percent.

The report says the findings support StudentsFirstNY’s position that new teacher evaluations are needed in New York State. (more…)

Changes meant to help schools overhaul their special education programs have instead left principals scrambling for a budget fix.

Middle and high school principals are learning this week that the Department of Education is planning to take back thousands of dollars earmarked to help their schools serve students with special needs — over a budget technicality.

“Students with disabilities are the ones who lose out in this — and schools’ ability to provide what [students] need,” said a principal whose school faces a cut.

The issue stems from a new funding formula adopted this year as part of the Department of Education’s efforts to bring students with disabilities out of self-contained classes whenever possible. (more…)

• California’s teacher pension fund became the first to divest from publicly-traded gun companies. (Times)
• A second test proctor told investigators that a Queens teacher helped provide answers to students. (Post)
• Christine Quinn named a 30-year-old former Bronx teacher to manage her mayoral campaign. (WSJ)
• “More and better” ed programs headlined Gov. Cuomo’s speech. (GothamSchools, Schoolbook, News)
• But Cuomo’s speech was “incomplete” because it barely touched school funding issues. (Times-Union)
• Ten states have started giving letter grades to all schools in the last two years, creating confusion. (WSJ)
• A Bronx Catholic school raised $232,000 in weeks, but still could close. (Riverdale Press, Daily News)
• The school is one of eight Catholic schools on the chopping block due to financial distress. (NY1)
• The city’s effort to curb grade inflation on Regents exams hit a road bump in hiring. (GothamSchools)