GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

With just over a week until the state’s Race to the Top application is due, the city is playing a game of chicken with the state legislature to pressure lawmakers into raising the cap on charter schools.

Today was the deadline for school districts to sign onto the state’s Race to the Top application, signaling they will participate in the state’s reform plans and making them eligible for a slice of the federal funds.

But the Department of Education of New York City —the state’s (and country’s) largest school district — has not yet agreed to the plan, taking advantage of a last-minute state extension of the deadline.

“We’re awaiting action on the charter cap,” DOE spokesman David Cantor said.

The more school districts that sign onto a state’s application, the more points the state earns in the competition for grant funds.

If New York City refuses its buy-in to the state’s plan, it could potentially cripple New York’s bid for the grant, which could deprive the state of a badly-needed $700 million in funding. The governor is currently withholding nearly $600 million in school aid from districts around the state, a move he defends as an attempt to stave off state financial insolvency. (more…)

A list of proposals being pushed by the city teachers union to overhaul state charter school laws could shape the imminent debate over how and when to raise the charter school cap.

The proposals, which conclude a UFT report on charter school demographics, are intended to force charter schools to open their doors to the same populations served by district schools, which would mean enrolling larger numbers of English language learners and students with special needs. In the days leading up to January 19, the deadline for states’ applications to the federal Race to the Top competition, the union’s proposals could become bargaining chips for legislators hesitant to raise the charter cap without requiring significant changes in the way state charter schools are run.

Flanked by legislators from both houses at UFT headquarters in lower Manhattan on Sunday, union chief Michael Mulgrew called on Albany to, among other things, require charters to maintain student populations with similar demographics to the school districts in which they are located, centralize charter school admissions under the city or state education departments, cap the salaries of charter school administrators and ban charter schools from sharing space with district schools in New York City until the city has met its class size targets.

Mulgrew and the lawmakers insisted that the changes would bring the state’s charter schools closer to their original mission, as written in state law, to reduce educational inequities.

“The original intent of the law was fairness and access for all students,” Mulgrew said. “The way the law is written currently, we know that is not happening.” (more…)

State Education Commissioner David Steiner and the Board of Regents today urged the state legislature to increase the cap on charter schools in New York.

While he stopped short of asking for a specific number, Steiner roughly calculated using the Race to the Top application guidelines that a cap of 400, twice the number currently allowed under state law, would best make the state competitive in that section of the Race to the Top application.

The request comes as part of a larger effort by the Regents to create a sense of pressing need for legislative change to help the state compete for a slice of the $4.3 billion federal grant. New York is eligible for up to $700 million of the grant money.

“The crucial thing here is to say, we can’t stand still,” said State Education Commissioner David Steiner.

States earn points in the competition for grants on a variety of measures, including how friendly it is to charter school expansion and to using student test scores to rate teachers and teacher training programs. States will be judged by their policies in place at the time applications are submitted in the middle of January.

The state has nearly hit its current cap on charter schools, and a law banning the use of student data in teacher tenure decisions remains on the books. Legislation introduced in October designed to make the state more competitive for Race to the Top has failed to gain momentum. (more…)

State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch welcome board members to their December meeting in Albany this morning.

The public will get one of its first thorough looks at New York State’s Race to the Top strategy today, as the Board of Regents meets to consider a list of changes designed to make the state more competitive for a slice the $4.3 billion fund.

Anna is on her way to Albany and will report back on the Regents’ discussions. A few interesting things have already emerged from the Board’s agenda.

Tops on the list: a list of proposed criteria for identifying the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools to target for “turnaround,” a method that involves closing schools and reopening them with new leadership and staff. Many of the schools expected to land on that list will be in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also said he wants to turnaround even more schools than the state. The mayor has pledged to close and reopen the city’s lowest-performing 10 percent of schools in the next four years.

The Regents are also likely to vote to urge the legislature to raise the cap on charter schools. Although Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner David Steiner are both defenders of the cap, Tisch has recently said that now is the time to increase the number of charters allowed in the state. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that states that limit the growth of charters will be at a disadvantage in the competition for Race to the Top money.

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch supports raising the cap on the number of charter schools allowed in New York State, she told me in an interview yesterday.

“My opinion is that the charter cap is now at a place where it will prevent us from opening great charter schools,” Tisch said. “I would like to see us have a conversation about lifting the cap in a really thoughtful way.”

Tisch has often voiced support for eventually raising the charter cap, but always in the future tense — a conservative position compared to those like Mayor Bloomberg, who push for the cap to be eliminated altogether. Her comments yesterday indicate that she will still support a cap but is ready for it to be lifted. (more…)

The city’s Department of Education has nearly hit the ceiling on the number of charter schools it is allowed to authorize and will not approve any more until the state cap is lifted.

On Monday, the DOE sent a list of 15 approved charter schools to the State Education Department for final authorization, leaving it and other school boards with only three new charters available.

State law limits the number of charter schools to 200 and there are currently 164 charters operating around the state. Of the 36 remaining new charters available, half may be authorized by the State University of New York. The other half may be authorized by the New York City Schools Chancellor or other local school boards and then approved by the state Board of Regents.

“From our perspective, we’ve approved 15 applications and submitted them to the state and if the cap is not lifted, we will not be submitting any more,” Ann Forte, a spokeswoman for the DOE, said. (more…)

Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew dismissed proposed legislation that would overhaul New York State’s teacher tenure and charter cap laws.

Mulgrew criticized Assemblyman Sam Hoyt’s bill in an interview with GothamSchools on Saturday, after delivering an address to approximately 3,000 parents assembled for the United Federation of Teachers’ annual parent outreach conference.

Proposed to make New York State’s bid for Race to the Top money more competitive, Hoyt’s bill contains a variety of measures, almost all of which the union has opposed. In addition to abolishing the state’s charter cap, the bill would increase the number of years a teacher must work before being considered for tenure and would lift the ban on using students’ test scores as a factor in tenure decisions.

“I think Mr. Hoyt should spend some time with people who understand education,” Mulgrew said. “I am always leery of those who propose education reforms who have never spent time in a classroom.” (more…)