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The fight over teacher evaluations occupied much of Gov. Cuomo’s education talk during his budget address today. But his proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts in April actually contains a host of other education policy proposals.

Here are some details about each of them. Cuomo’s budget proposes to:

• Make more funding dependent on performance. Cuomo announced a first round of competitive grants for districts that boost test scores and cut costs a year ago and started taking applications in November. Today, he steered another $250 million in competitive grants into that program.
• Target school aid to high-needs districts. A little more than $300 million of the $800 million in school aid increases will be targeted to the state’s highest-need districts. The Alliance for Quality Education — whose head, Billy Easton, has drawn criticism from Cuomo’s camp for being “a paid lobbyist for the teachers union” — praised the decision but raised concerns about the competitive component of the state aid proposal.
• Reverse budget cuts to the state’s testing program. Last year, the Board of Regents closed a budget gap by slashing $8 million from the state’s testing program. The cut caused the state to eliminate January Regents exams, which some high school students must pass to graduate. In August, Mayor Bloomberg announced that private donors had pitched in to pay for the tests for one year. Next year, public funds will pay for the tests once again. (more…)

Chart showing trends in K-3 class size. From Class Size Matters PowerPoint presentation. (Click to enlarge.)

Preliminary class size data that the city released today confirms what the teachers union has tallied: Class sizes are on the rise.

Classes grew most this year in kindergarten through third grade, where the average size increased by just under one student since last year to 23.1. On average, classes in those grades are now three students larger than they were in the 2006-2007 school year. They are largest in Queens and Staten Island and smallest in Manhattan.

Classes in those grades are now the largest they have been since 1998, according to a PowerPoint presentation prepared by parent activist Leonie Haimson for Class Size Matters, a group that she runs to advocate for smaller classes.

Class sizes have also inched up in upper elementary, middle, and high school grades, but not by as much, according to the city’s new numbers.

In all grades, average class sizes exceed the goals set forth in the 2007 Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement, which required the state to earmark extra funds for New York City schools to use for six different purposes, including reducing class size. (more…)

The Rutgers University report on equitable school funding released today highlights that how a state distributes its education funds could matter as much as how much it spends.

The report ranked New York close to the bottom among states in terms of how much it spends on impoverished students compared to students in low-poverty districts. (The full report is below.)

The top-ranked state, Utah, spends one and a half times more per student in needy districts than in districts with no impoverished students. By contrast, in New York, districts with high concentrations of students in poverty spend just over 80 percent of what the wealthiest districts spend.

Geri Palast, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, said the analysis pointed to the need to re-work how the state doles out money among school districts.

“In an era where we continue to impose ever greater standards on school kids, the fact that funding inequality persists to this degree — especially in a state like this one, where a lot of money is invested but the poorest kids don’t get their fair share — we have to rethink how we use and distribute our dollars,” she said. (more…)

UFT President Michael Mulgrew announces the union's lawsuit. Behind Mulgrew are, from left to right, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, NAACP NY President Hazel Dukes, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Yolanda Morales, a plaintiff in the suit.

The city teachers union, along with a coalition of parents and advocacy groups, sued the Department of Education this morning, charging it with not spending allocated state money on reducing class sizes.

Since 2007, the state has allocated nearly $761 million for class size reduction, yet class sizes in schools across the city have risen over the past two years.

The lawsuit accuses the DOE of causing the class size increase by willfully misusing those funds.

“As far as we are concerned, this is deliberate,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in a press conference at union headquarters this morning.

“New York City how has the highest class sizes in New York State,” Mulgrew said. “$760 million, for what?”

The lawsuit, filed this morning in the State Supreme Court in the Bronx, was brought by a coalition of parents, activist groups, the UFT, the New York chapter of the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation.

“The charges are without merit,” DOE Press Secretary David Cantor said. (more…)

The city’s Department of Education will likely lift the ceiling on class sizes this year, a department official said today.

DOE chief operating officer Photeine Anagnostopoulos told the City Council education committee this morning that it was realistic to expect the city to “adjust” its class size targets. How dramatic the increases will be is still unclear, she said.

“We have to go back and do some more homework,” Anagnostopoulos said.

Anagnostopoulous’ comments came during a hearing on the department’s use of state Contracts for Excellence funding. The funds are given to school districts that prove they will spend the funds in six key areas, one of which is class size reduction. (more…)

The city is asking elected parent leaders to help it hold mandatory public hearings about school funding that should have happened in June.

The state requires all school districts to hold annual hearings about they plan to allocate Contracts for Excellence dollars, state education funds that can be spent only in certain ways. Other districts held their hearings in June, according to the schedule set out in the law. But New York City did not. (Remember, those were heady days for the city, with mayoral control’s expiration date rapidly approaching.) After Anna reported last week that the hearings hadn’t happened, state officials said they were merely being rescheduled.

Now we have a hint of when the hearings might be held. Martine Guerrier, head of the education department’s Office of Family Engagement and Advocacy, sent an e-mail to district parent councils today asking them to help run local hearings in September.

“We are committed to meeting our statutory requirements for Contracts for Excellence and ask for your support in partnering with the Department to hold public hearings on the 2009-2010 plan at the beginning of the school year,” Guerrier wrote. She said her office would help the councils hold the hearings either during one of their regularly scheduled meetings or at a separate time.

Guerrier’s full letter to district parent councils is after the jump. (more…)

New York City cannot spend state school aid until it holds mandatory hearings on how the money will be used, the state said on Wednesday, correcting an earlier statement that the city could already use the funds.

The state funding, known as Contracts for Excellence, is only doled out to districts that prove they will spend the money in certain kinds of programs pre-approved by state school officials, such as training for teachers and principals, and reducing class size. This summer, the city’s Department of Education skipped the mandated date for hearings, and is now saying that the hearings will be held when the new school year begins in September.

“Contracts cannot be approved without proper public hearings being held,” Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the state education department wrote in an email on Thursday. “Contracts need to be reviewed and approved before any contract funds are released by the State Education Dept.”

Previously, the state had said that the city could use funds continuing last year’s contract, and only money for “new purposes” would require the commissioner’s approval. The state’s grim financial picture has meant that the city will not receive an increase over the amount it was given last year.

A spokeswomen for the city DOE, Ann Forte, said that even though the state has yet to approve the contract, the city Office of Management and Budget has fronted the money to its schools. (more…)

The last months’ governance craziness overshadowed what had become a summer ritual: The process by which the city proposes how it wants to spend state Contracts for Excellence dollars, and the public gets to respond with its thoughts at formal hearings.

The hearings happen because Contracts for Excellence dollars are only doled out to districts that prove they will spend the money in certain kinds of programs pre-approved by state school officials.

But this summer, the New York City Department of Education skipped over the mandated date for hearings, which are supposed to occur in all five boroughs, without holding them. A public comment period will be postponed until the fall, but New York state plans to send the city the funds anyway, before that happens.

“Funds that are continuing last year’s Contract can be used,” a state education spokesman, Jonathan Burman wrote in an email. The “commissioner’s approval is required before funds allocated to new purposes can be used.” The state’s grim financial picture has meant that the city won’t receive any more Contracts dollars than it did last year.

An official at the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, whose lawsuit alleging that the city schools are historically under-funded by the state led to the creation of the Contracts for Excellence fund, said that the state’s logic makes little sense given the tough fiscal climate. (more…)

The city should be prepared to see the average class size continue to increase this fall, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told members of the City Council today.

During a hearing this morning about the Department of Education’s proposed budget, finance committee chair David Weprin asked Klein what might happen to class sizes next year, when school budgets are cut by more than 5 percent, especially given that schools used $84 million to reduce class sizes this year yet the average class size went up for the first time in several years.

“I think they will increase, not dramatically,” Klein said, explaining that the expected decline in the size of the teaching force through attrition would likely cause class sizes to inch up. 

Education committee chair Robert Jackson asked Klein how watchdogs can make sure that state class size reduction money is being spent on its intended purpose if class sizes continue to increase. (more…)

The chart plots a dot for every school that received state money to create new classrooms. The dot represents the amount of money the school received, and the amount that the school's average class size changed. (Data via the Department of Education)

We’ve already reported that average class sizes citywide did not decline last year, despite an infusion of money meant to reduce them. New data suggest the same relationship happens at the school level: Even schools that reported spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on class-size reduction efforts, such as creating new classrooms, did not necessarily see a drop in average class sizes.

Rather, while some schools that reported investing in new classrooms did end up reducing class sizes on average, others actually saw their average class size go up. The data, provided by the Department of Education following a tug-of-war that you might recall, are summarized in the graph above and in a searchable file available here.

The major challenge, according to the schools official who compiled the data, Tania Shinkawa, is not that principals didn’t spend the money as they were supposed to, but that even that pot of money didn’t guarantee that they could lower class sizes across the board.

Take Bronx elementary school PS 57, which reported that it spent $190,000 to open new classes. Let’s be generous and say that the money could pay for three additional teachers. That could go a long way toward reducing class sizes in three grade levels. But would it necessarily lower the entire school’s average class size?

No. (more…)