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State and city education officials took a victory lap today after winning nearly $700 million in federal Race to the Top funds. But they were also emphatic that today’s announcement marks the start of hard work, not the end.

The next step is to flesh out how exactly the funds will be used. Half of the grant money, which federal officials will dole out over four years, will stay with the state education department. The state will pass along the rest to school districts, which have 90 days to pitch the state their plan for spending their share of the funds.

The local proposals must adhere to the state’s school reform blueprint. They can’t be used for other purposes, or to fill budget gaps.

The state’s application centers on four main goals: writing new curriculums and assessments that will be standardized across the state and match the new national standards that the state has adopted; building new databases that track students’ progress from kindergarten through college; finding new ways to train teachers and judge them on their effectiveness; and turn around the lowest-performing schools, sometimes by replacing them with charter schools. (Read our full summary of what the state’s application proposes here.) (more…)

Principal hopefuls line up outside Wagner Middle School to enter the city's new school creation fair.

Bronx assistant principal Michelle Vargas wants to open a school where teachers will have ample time to work together and students will benefit from her years of experience in the classroom.

But before she can get started, Vargas must persevere through the city’s new school creation process. She took the first step Thursday night by joining more than 400 other school leader hopefuls at a fair to learn about what the city wants to see in new schools.

Every year, the Department of Education opens new schools — more than 400 since 2002. Director of Portfolio Planning Debra Kurshan told fair attendees that the city intends to keep up the pace in 2011.

What’s different this year is that the city is telling wannabe principals exactly what kind of schools it wants to open, and where it expects to site them. The request for proposals released today lists schools identified as having extra space and schools that could be reopened with new leadership under new federal rules. (more…)

Now that the State Supreme Court has brought the city’s plans to shutter 19 schools to a screeching halt and the city is planning to immediately appeal the decision, the fates of the schools, their staffs and a large number of students are in limbo.

Here are some questions that we have about the way forward, and here is what we know so far:

What happens to eighth-graders who wanted to attend one of the 14 high schools the city slated for closure?

When the city’s eighth-graders begin receiving their high school placement letters this weekend, none of them will have been assigned to the formerly closing high schools, Chancellor Joel Klein said today. Instead, the 8,500 students who listed one of those schools among their top choices will receive a second letter along with their placement, telling them that if the schools do remain fully intact in the fall, students who want to can choose to attend them.

Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew said today that approach violates the spirit of today’s ruling, which banned the city from halting enrollment at the schools until it goes through the school closing process again. (more…)

Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch addressed members of the New York State School Board Association this morning.

New York State education commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents chancellor Merryl Tisch declared this morning that the state education department is entering a new era.

Speaking to a packed room at the annual meeting of the New York State School Board Members Association, they said that after years of acting as a regulatory body following an outdated curriculum, the department would now focus on innovation.

“We spend an enormous amount of effort regulating districts that frankly would do very well without us,” Tisch said. She said that her goal was to remove as much unnecessary regulations from school districts as possible.

“I would like people to say that we re-invigorated the concept of the state education department, that we re-invented what a state education should be across this state,” Tisch said. “The only way to do that is to restore our integrity. Every chit that takes away from our credibility needs to be addressed.” (more…)

David Steiner is making raising standards and the overhaul of teacher preparation his major goals as education commissioner. But his ambitious agenda for reform may be slowed by a grim financial climate and a large, unwieldy bureaucracy, education leaders said in interviews last week.

Steiner, who was sworn in as commissioner of the New York State Education Department last Thursday, has long argued for making the teacher certification process more rigorous and for adding more in-the-classroom experience for teachers in training.

In his first moments in office, he acknowledged that he has a difficult mandate. But he also pointed to circumstances that he said would help push his agenda forward.

“A lot of powerful forces are coming together,” Steiner told reporters. He noted that the state Board of Regents and the federal government seem to be aligned in a strong commitment to raising academic standards and that he thought parents were becoming more committed to their children’s education than ever before.

“So while this is a very challenging moment, fiscally and otherwise, it’s also a moment of extraordinary opportunity,” he said. (more…)