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.)

Much of the state’s plan relies on expanding programs that the city started under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, including the city’s Leadership Academy to train new principals, the iZone technology pilot and a new data system modeled on the city’s ARIS program.

“The core of our application is about building on successes, replicating successes,” Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch told reporters today.

New York City expects to see between $250 and $300 million of the total. City officials are just beginning to plan exactly how they will allocate those funds within the state’s overall plan, Chancellor Joel Klein said today. While some districts will have to spend heavily to catch up with New York City, city officials suggested that they would pour the new funds into new initiatives, especially developing the assessments that will soon count for 20 percent of teachers’ evaluations.

Alluding to questions raised about city students’ real progress in the wake of the state’s re-calibrated test scores, Bloomberg said today that he is taking the Race to the Top win as an affirmation of the city’s reform policies.

“In essence, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve received the federal seal of approval for what we’ve done here,” Bloomberg said.

The state will face challenges as it puts its plan into practice. The proposal is built on compromises that state, city and union officials cobbled together after often-rancorous political battles, and the implementation of the state’s plan will likely depend on further compromise.

“Standing behind me is a group whose squabbles have become legendary,” Tisch said. But Tisch said that the fact that state and city officials, union leaders and politicians were able to build consensus around the application’s proposals proved that they would be able to work together to put the plan fully into practice.

“The alignment between this state and this city has never been tighter,” Klein said.

Beyond political battles, the state’s ability to put its plan into action will also depend on its ability to hew closely to its budget, which could be a challenge. For example, the state has proposed using $60 million of the Race to the Top funds on building a new statewide database system modeled on the city’s ARIS system. But the city has already spent more than $80 million on ARIS.

State Education Commissioner David Steiner said that $696 million was a “reasonable” budget for the state’s plan. And Bloomberg swatted away the question.

“The money is useful, but the recognition that we’re going in the right direction and the impetus that gives the people up here is the real benefit,” Bloomberg said. “That’s the long-term benefit.”

State education officials spent this morning in a meeting as news of the win began to spread. Governor Paterson, State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, Commissioner David Steiner and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein are expected to hold press conferences later in the afternoon. We’ll have updates as we learn more.

UPDATE:  The other winners are Florida, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Maryland, Hawaii, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia.

One big question we don’t know yet: exactly how much money the state has won. But by our math (see below), it seems possible that all of the winners will get the maximum amounts for which they are eligible. And Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch just told me that she’s heard the state will receive almost all of the $696 million it asked for in its application.

UPDATE: State officials have confirmed that New York’s application will be fully funded. New York City is likely to see about $250-300 million of the state’s award.

Here’s our summary of how the state plans to use the money, and here’s our rundown of the lead-up to today’s announcement.

New York received the second-highest score overall in the competition’s scoring rubric, coming behind only Massachusetts. (The list of the winning applicants and their final scores is below the jump.) This is the state’s second try at the funds; in the first round, New York placed second-to-last among all the finalists.

The formal announcement of winners will come this afternoon from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. We’ll have updates throughout the day.

Here’s the U.S. Department of Education’s breakdown of the scores of each winner. New York came in second place overall, a big jump from the first round.

And here’s our calculation of how much money each winning state could receive. We’ve assumed that federal officials are giving each state and D.C. the total amount for which they are eligible; the total comes to just under the $3.4 billion amount federal officials are awarding today.

Here’s a roundup of our coverage of New York’s application, the policy changes that have been made in pursuit of the grant, and what winning or losing will mean for the state.

• We begin back in March, when New York State was told that it would not collect $700 million in the first round of Race to the Top. Few expected New York to win — many were surprised it was named a finalist — and it ultimately placed second to last among the 16 finalists.
• The two states that won, Tennessee and Delaware, were small enough that $3.4 billion remained for other states to fight over. At the time, Duncan said he expected between 10 and 15 states to win in round two. New York education officials responded to the loss by calling for the state legislature to improve the state’s round-two chances by voting in a new teacher evaluation system and raising the charter school cap.
• In May, the state and the state teachers union reached an agreement on a new teacher evaluation system that would base 40 percent of a teacher’s score be based on student achievement — 20 percent from state tests and 20 percent from “local assessments.” City officials were not thrilled at the prospect of having to negotiate the local assessment portion with the city teachers union. Many union members were anxious as well.
• State legislators also spent much of May locked in negotiations over how to raise the state’s cap on the number of charter schools allowed to open. An aborted attempt to raise the cap in January was widely cited as one reason New York didn’t win in Race to the Top’s first round. At the beginning of May, the State Senate introduced a bill that would raise the cap to 460 to 200 and require the schools to enroll more special education students and students learning English. Charter school advocates hailed the bill, but the state teachers union said it glossed over their concerns about oversight and accountability. The bill passed the Senate by a wide margin, but city union chief Michael Mulgrew insisted it would go no further.
• For the rest of the month, New Yorkers were treated to a heavy advertising battle between the teachers union and charter school advocates. Both sides took to the airwaves, each urging voters to ignore the other. The charter school lobby spent millions of dollars on its campaign, which included heavy online advertising and door-to-door picketing.
• Negotiations between the two factions began again at the end of May, focusing on how charters should be opened and monitored, how many special education students and students learning English they enroll, and how they share space in city district school buildings. The two sides hammered out a deal in the early morning hours of May 28, and both the Assembly and the Senate passed the new charter cap lift bill that day.
• The new law lifted the cap on charters to 460 over the next four years; created a new RFP process for opening them; required charters to enroll needy students in comparable numbers to nearby district schools; banned for-profit companies from operating charters; allows the state comptroller to audit the schools; and creates new rules governing how charters share space. But questions about how exactly some of the provisions would be put into practice remain.
• The state submitted its second-round application, incorporating the evaluation deal and charter cap lift, on June 1, and made the application public an hour later. The state’s proposal asks for a total of $696 million in grant funds, down from $830 million state officials asked for in the first round. In the first round, the application suffered from what judges deemed a lack of support from the state’s teachers unions. But this round, the application picked up greater teachers union support.
• At the end of July, Duncan announced that for the second time, New York reached the final stage of competition. This time, federal officials named 19 finalists and estimated that 10 to 15 of those states will win grant funds. Together, the finalists have asked for a total of $6.2 billion in grant funding, almost twice as much as the $3.4 billion in the Race to the Top fund that remains.
• If New York wins, the money would go to boost four main goals for reform, according to the application: writing new tests and curriculum based on the new national common core standards; building new databases to track students from the time they enter school through college; using the new teacher evaluation system to improve the quality of classroom teaching; and overhauling low-performing schools, often with the help of charters. Many of the details of the application are based on expanding programs that were launched in New York City, often to great controversy, under Klein.
• If the state loses the competition, it’s unclear how state education officials’ reform efforts will fare. Duncan has said he expects even losing states to press forward with their reform agendas. But Tisch warned that the state’s financial situation is so dire that state goals will be jeopardized without an influx of federal funds.
• Two weeks ago, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch traveled to Washington, D.C. with State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Deputy Education Commissioner John King to make a final pitch directly to competition judges. In an effort to bolster the state’s case that its proposal will have a broad impact, the three were joined by city schools Chancellor Joel Klein and teachers union President Michael Mulgrew. Tisch, Klein and Mulgrew have all said the presentation went well but are making no predictions. “We will see,” Tisch said.

Federal officials could announce the winners of the second round of the Race to the Top grant competition as soon as next week. But before they do, teams from each finalist state, including New York, went to Washington, D.C. last week to make their case for a slice of the $3.4 billion in grant funds that remain to be doled out.

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said yesterday that “no surprises” came from the judges during the state’s 90-minute presentation and question-and-answer session Aug. 10. Tisch said the reviewers focused on the meat of the state’s school reform plan, including the timeline for a new teacher evaluation system, the curriculum being developed for new national standards, and school turnaround strategies.

“I just thought it was a very fair, frank conversation,” she said.

Accompanying Tisch in D.C. were State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Deputy Commissioner John King, as well as Chancellor Joel Klein and teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew.

Tisch recruited Klein and Mulgrew for the second round to avert the troubles of the state’s first-round presentation, when judges focused on whether the state would be able to fulfill its promises without more union support. New York was one of three finalists to lose points after the interview round.

Tisch said the judges were “very interested” in Klein and Mulgrew’s attendance last week. Many of the state’s proposals are based on spreading Klein’s city reforms state-wide, and Mulgrew likely vouched for union support of the plan.

Klein said he thought the judges asked questions that were “thoughtfully related” to the state’s application. “The team worked together well,” he said about New York’s delegation.

The winners of the second round of the grant competition will be announced in late August or early September. As they did in the first round, federal officials will post a video of all finalist states’ presentations after the winners have been announced.

Chancellor Joel Klein and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew will go with state education officials when they travel to Washington, D.C., in two weeks, Tisch announced today.

The three will accompany State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Deputy Commissioner John King, both of whom also represented the state in its first-round presentation in March.

For the first-round presentation, Tisch sent a lower-profile, more technocratic team comprised mostly of state education officials responsible for building the grant application. Things didn’t go well, and the presentation cost the state points.

The addition of Klein and Mulgrew — as well as of Tisch herself — represents a shift in strategy. Klein is known nationally as a proponent of the style of education reform favored by the Obama administration, and the state’s Race to the Top plan relies heavily on replicating programs Klein has launched in New York City.

And Tisch will likely count on Mulgrew to convince federal judges that the state’s plan has the full support of its teachers unions. In the first round, New York was one of three finalist states that lost points after the presentation round, largely because judges doubted that the state’s proposals could reach all students in the state without more union buy-in.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has repeatedly said that the in-person presentation is a crucial step where states can demonstrate that their leadership teams have the ability to pull off the reform plans they have proposed.

In recent months, state officials have committed to changing teacher evaluations, creating new databases to track students’ grades and scores, revamping standards, and upgrading tests. But those changes can’t happen unless New York takes home the $700 million it asked for in its Race to the Top application, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch told me today.

“The reform agenda is very contingent upon an infusion of these federal dollars that are earmarked for reform efforts,” Tisch said.

For a cash-strapped education department in a state whose budget is now nearly four months late, it’s not clear where the money to fund costly reform initiatives will come from without federal backing. And New York is not alone among states whose budgets may not support the changes they have promised or even enacted into law.

But speaking to reporters today, Duncan said that states should carry out their reform plans even if they don’t receive Race to the Top funds.

“Race to the Top is an important pot of money, but there are many other sources coming from us,” Duncan said, referring to another $7 billion the department plans to make available in the coming months. “And obviously thinking through, if these are truly priorities, even in tough budget times, how you’ll help to reallocate local resources behind these efforts is hugely important.”

Tisch said that she agreed that states should not be dependent on federal dollars. “But we need to understand, the New York State taxpayers are quite clearly tapped out, and they are looking to the federal government for help,” she said.

“I think that New York State really did significantly well in terms of meeting [Race to the Top's requirements] and I believe that we can, should and will be rewarded,” she said. “But make no mistake — dollar amounts matter.”

Duncan also praised New York today for its efforts to bring state policy into line with federal reform goals. ”I think New York’s come a heck of a long way,” he said.

But other states also boosted their odds by changing education policies, he said. The 19 finalists named today all submitted applications that scored more than 400 points on the federal education department’s 500-point evaluation rubric. (You can read the competition guidelines and rubric here.) Overall, the average score of finalists in the second round was 25 points higher than the first round finalists’ average score, Duncan said.

Duncan has said that in the second round he will likely fund the grant proposals of between 10 and 15 winning states. Together, the 19 finalists have asked for a total of $6.2 billion in grant funding — almost twice as much as the $3.4 billion in the Race to the Top fund that remains to be awarded.

“My goal is not to fund every state,” Duncan said. “My goal is to fund as many strong applications as we can.”

In the competition’s next step, New York will send a team to Washington to present the state’s application to a panel of judges during the week of August 9. Tisch said that she would announce her appointments to that team tomorrow.

As in the first round, Duncan said today that the presentations will be an important part of the final judging, as reviewers gauge whether state education leaders have the capacity to put the plans they proposed into practice. During the first round, New York was one of three finalist states who lost points in the interview round, largely because judges questioned whether proposed reforms would reach every school district in the state.

(Update: this post has been changed to clarify the jump in average points between the first and second round.)

New York was one of 16 finalists in the first round of competition, but then came in 15th in the final scoring. Only two states, Delaware and Tennessee, won grants in the first round of the contest.

For this round, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that there are likely to be 10 to 15 winners of the competitive grant money. New York could be in a better position to win the $700 million grant this round after legislative wrangling last spring resulted in a new teacher evaluation system and a lift on the number of charter schools allowed to open statewide.

The other finalists are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

In a few minutes, Duncan will formally announce the finalists during a speech at the National Press Club. We’ll have more on the announcement later in the afternoon.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will announce second-round finalists tomorrow during a speech in Washington, where he is set to discuss what he is characterizing as the “quiet revolution” of education reform.

New York State surprised many observers by being named a finalist in the first round of awards even though, at the time, the state legislature had not yet lifted the cap on charter schools or passed legislation overhauling the way teachers are evaluated. In the final first-round scoring, New York placed 15th out of 16 finalists.

But in part because of those legislative changes, some observers are predicting that the state’s chances of winning, or at least being named a finalist, are better this round.

New York’s chances could also be boosted through pure statistics. Only Delaware and Tennessee won in the contest’s first round, leaving most of the pot —  $3.4 billion — left to award. Duncan has said that there are likely to be 10 to 15 second-round winners, out of a total of 36 states applying.

You can read New York’s full, second-round Race to the Top application here, and more about what it proposes can be found here and here.

The so-called “edujobs” bill has become the center of a politically charged debate. On one side are supporters of the Obama administration’s reform efforts and on the other are those who argue that saving teacher jobs is worth slowing the pace of change. The bill, headed for the Senate after passing the House last week, would send a total of about $622 million to New York State.

After a previous attempt to save teacher jobs foundered, the bill’s sponsor, Wisconsin Representative David Obey introduced a new bill that would redirect about 10 percent of funding for Race to the Top into a $10 billion fund for teacher jobs. Federal teacher quality and new charter school programs also would be tapped for the jobs fund.

Obama has threatened to veto the measure if passed in its current form, raising the ire of the national teachers unions.

“It’s deeply disappointing that a Democratic administration would threaten to veto a jobs bill because paying for it would require a negligible cut from its new pet programs,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement when the House passed its version of the bill.

It’s not clear how the edujobs bill would actually affect how Race to the Top funds are distributed. The state could win as much as $700 million in Race to the Top funds, more than it stands to gain from the edujobs bill. But the Race to the Top funds can’t be spent on saving teacher jobs.

In New York, charter school leaders have begun lobbying Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer to oppose the edujobs bill. Neither senator attached their name to a letter signed by 13 other senators opposing cuts to the Obama administration programs.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg traveled to Washington with the heads of the city’s teachers and principals unions to lobby Congress last month to pass the original version of the bill. But he has been silent ever since Obey put Race to the Top funding at stake.

On a piece of the application that is worth 60 out of the total 500 points, New York outperformed the national average – but not staggeringly so.

One of the ways a state can win Race to the Top is by proving that its school districts and teachers union support the reforms the application proposes. States prove this by turning in Memorandums of Understanding signed by each of those groups. The more MOUs a state submits, the more points it gets toward the 60-point categories for buy-in. (You can read the full scoring guidelines for the competition here.)

In New York, all of the state’s 744 school district superintendents agreed to participate in New York’s plan if the state wins grant money. That’s a lot more than the average of 61 percent of school districts that signed onto their states’ plans nationally, according to the EdWeek analysis.

But the state only barely beat the national average in terms of teachers union buy-in. Just over 70 percent of the state’s local teachers unions agreed to participate in the plan, a ten percentage point increase from the number that signed on in the first round of the grant competition.  That’s a bit more than the national average of 68 percent of local teachers union heads who added their signatures to their states’ proposals, according to the EdWeek analysis.

You can read more about the Race to the Top competition here, and New York’s second-round application, including a detailed list of which districts and unions signed onto the plans, is available here.

Here’s a quick-and-dirty guide to what the application actually proposes, including some details about the proposal that I hadn’t heard before I read it. The application is divided into four main goals. You can find more background on Race to the Top here, and a copy of the state’s second round application is here.

Making better tests and curriculum:

National reading and math curriculum standards are coming, and New York education officials plan to opt in to them. The state wants to spend $26 million to write curriculum based on the new standards, which will show up in classrooms beginning in February 2012. Another $40 million would be used to create new tests, including a way to judge kindergartners through third-graders’ progress in learning to read. Students would start to take initial versions of those tests in January 2012. The final versions of exams based on the new standards would be due in 2015.

Building new databases to track student progress:

By “data systems,” the state means a program that can track students’ academic progress from the very beginning of their education to the end. The state wants to spend $50 million in Race to the Top funds to help build a program that will be used state-wide. Another $10 million would go toward linking information from grade schools to information from New York’s colleges and universities. The application describes a future data system that sounds a lot like ARIS, the city’s $81 million data system launched in 2008.

State education officials also envision a program that included an “early warning system”: by keeping track of things like attendance problems, disciplinary actions, grades and test scores and the language progress of students learning English, the system will be able to alert schools to students who are at risk of dropping out.

Training teachers and judging them:

Much of this section of the application centers around the new law that incorporates student achievement data into teacher evaluations.  Some uses of the evaluations are pretty obvious: schools will use them to figure out which teachers need more training and which should be removed. Others are less intuitive. For example, the application proposes a new program where teachers who have been highly rated under the evaluations for three years running can get a $30,000  bonus for transferring to teach in a high needs school.

The application also mentions that 20 New York City schools are currently experimenting with the best ways to evaluate teachers and figure out what tools are needed to do it fairly. This pilot is separate from the Measuring Effective Teaching research project that the city is running with the teachers union and the Gates Foundation.

Improving low-performing schools and letting charter schools thrive:

The application’s plan to improve failing schools centers around creating what state officials are calling “partnership zones,” which are very similar to the city’s system of support networks for schools. Each school that is targeted for turnaround would get a total of $3.6 million over three years to support its efforts.

State officials also emphasize in the application that they believe charter schools — particularly the large, well-established charter networks like KIPP and Uncommon Schools — would play a large role in re-making schools. To encourage the growth of charters, the state is proposing a fund that will help “high performing” charter operators reduce the interest on debt they owe from building their own facilities.

The application also gives some clues for where to look to figure out how the state’s new Request for Proposal system of opening new charter schools might work: the RFP process will be modeled after similar programs in New Orleans, Chicago and Denver.

The state is arguing in its Race to the Top application that it can accomplish Obama administration educational goals by replicating city programs around New York.  That could be a smart strategy, as U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called New York City a model for how the federal government should spend its education funds. But city programs the state wants to duplicate include some of its most controversial.

Here are some of the programs that could get cloned, along with the justification provided in the state’s Race to the Top application:

Leadership Academies:

New York will use $6 million in RTTT funds to replicate the successful Rochester and New York City Leadership Academies. Eleven more RTTT Management Team-coordinated Academies are planned, so that all regions of the State — including the remaining three large city districts — will be served…. The Academies will serve more than 700 principals in New York (about 15 percent overall) by Fall 2011. When all Academies are fully operational, school leaders will have access to research-based PD that is focused on the use of student data to improve student achievement and growth.

Teacher data reports:

Building on the approach taken by the NYC Department of Education, the State will use student growth data for individual teachers to develop teacher data reports, which will help shape professional development for every teacher.

Networks and data inquiry teams:

We will build on New York City’s two-and-half-year-old Collaborative Inquiry Network model that has proven to be successful and effective in raising student achievement. This model consists of network teams dispatched from central administration to work continuously with school-based inquiry teams. All network teams are composed of tiered layers of leaders, data experts,and specialists in curriculum, assessment, and instruction. The design is a sustainable model driven by data and evidence that emphasizes both principal leadership and teacher cooperation. It makes time for teachers to work actively together — using the data, analyzing the results, and making and evaluating adjustments in their instruction as needed. Schools are held accountable for utilizing the system and for their results through a quality review process and a subsequent rating.

Children First Initiative:

The current Children’s First Initiative is centered on the belief that autonomy and accountability should lie with those closest to the decision being made-the principals. This autonomy is accompanied by strict accountability standards, with the ultimate goal being to create a new sense of empowerment for school leaders while creating an environment where local decision-making leads to successful outcomes in student performance.

The iZone pilot:

[T]he New York City DOE is already pursuing online initiatives and, in the fall of 2010, plans to launch the Innovation Zone (“iZone”). Schools that are part of the iZone will pilot a set of innovative online courses and blended schools models. A total of 84 schools serving over 13,000 students have been selected to participate in the iZone this coming school year. These efforts will result in innovative options for over-aged and under-credited students and other students disconnected from traditional schools as well as all learners who want to participate in school “anytime, anywhere.” By 2014, we expect this approach to provide alternative pathways to completing graduation requirements and advanced courses of study for up to 20,000 students across the State who will have the opportunity to take online public school courses at no cost.

Just when Micah C. Lasher thought it was safe to finally sleep one recent morning, three words appeared in his in-box: “It’s a sham.”

Mr. Lasher had stayed up all night helping write a bill to increase the number of charter schools in New York, a cornerstone of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s education agenda. But amid the frenzy, a highly contentious provision had slipped by him: the State University of New York would lose its power to approve charter schools.

If SUNY’s Charter School Institute really was only saved during a middle-of-the-night wrangling, that could be a bad sign for the organization’s future: the Institute is currently facing budget cuts that might gut its operations.

But all of our information suggests that lawmakers supported keeping SUNY’s ability to oversee charters. The provision that could have revoked SUNY’s chartering authority was the result of a manic bill drafting process and late-night fatigue, not an attack on the widely-praised charter school overseers.

“The Assembly was on the same page as us, in that the goal all along was to preserve SUNY’s chartering authority,” Lasher told GothamSchools today. “At worst, the language folks were concerned about was an ambiguity.”

That jives with what I heard the day the bill was passed from Jonas Chartock, the head of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, and Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, one of the bill’s main proponents and the sponsor of the chapter amendment that clarified that SUNY would remain an independent authorizer of charter schools.

And even Richard Ianuzzi, the head of the state teachers union who has been skeptical of current charter school oversight practices, is on the record opposing cuts to the Institute as long as they maintain chartering authority.

The percentage of unions signing on to the plan is now 70%, up from 61% in the last round. That includes New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, which, though it signed on last time, added caveats along with its “yes,” as Steven Brill reported in the New York Times Magazine. One major exception was a clause saying that unions could ignore any part of the plan that violated a union contract — even though, in the same memo, the unions promised to negotiate new contracts following the plan’s main ideas.

In the first round, some judges noted the caveats and the 61% figure as a reason they docked points from the state’s application. I couldn’t find any caveats in this round’s Memorandum of Understanding documents that unions and school districts had to turn in by Tuesday.

Still, among the dissenters are some pretty major unions, including the ones in Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Albany. That’s three of the state’s “Big Five” school districts. A typical explanation why came from Buffalo’s union president earlier this month, in the Buffalo News:

“When the state Education Department and the Board of Regents start insisting on mandatory smaller class sizes — then I’ll be willing to discuss having test scores be a part of teacher evaluation,” said Philip Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation.

He described the measure as a political and public relations effort that won’t solve the problem of poor performance resulting from poverty.

“It’s not that we have droves of poor teachers that happen to be in the poor rural and urban areas,” Rumore said. “It’s not that teachers aren’t doing a good job. They’re working their hearts out.”

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said today that the newest version of the application is “round one plus the legislation.” She was referring to the two major pieces of legislation Albany passed in recent weeks designed to boost the state’s application: a new teacher evaluation system that includes measures of student achievement and Friday’s move to raise the state’s cap on charter schools.

Tisch added that the state education department also boosted the application’s section on its data systems, an area where the state lost points in the first round.

“Everything is good,” Tisch said. “And here we move on.”

But there are likely to be some changes in the 450-page application released today that go beyond the addition of a new teacher evaluation system and the possibility of 260 more charter schools. State officials have already said they intended to scrutinize the budget’s every line to weed out expenses such as the now-infamous executive chairs that helped doom the first application. And there are likely to be other substantive changes as well.

We’ll have a run-down of the highlights of this round’s application later; in the meantime, help us find the most interesting parts by posting in the comments below. You can read more about the Race to the Top competition here, and read New York’s first-round application here. And the full second-round application is below the jump:

New York State Capitol, photo via Flickr.

One consequence of the charter cap legislation passed in Albany today is clear: it’s now possible for 114 new charter schools to open in New York City over the next four years, more than doubling the number of charters and students in them. Statewide, the door is open for 260 new charter schools to open by 2014.

But the new law also includes a slew of changes to the way the schools are opened and run, leaving advocates, officials and observers with at least five big unanswered questions.

1. What’s the deal with the new Request for Proposals process?

Under the old charter school law, educators could ask to open charter schools simply by applying to do so. Now, prospective school leaders will have to formulate their applications as responses to Request for Proposals. These will be issued by both the Board of Regents and the State University of New York’s Charter School Institute.

Advocates and union officials today disagreed on exactly how the RFP’s will be used. One school of thought is that the RFP will be a tool for limiting charter school leaders’ freedom to open in a location of their choosing. Indeed, the law declares that operators that receive an endorsement of their school district will have a leg up in the RFP process. That could make it harder for operators to open schools in some upstate districts whose school boards strongly oppose charter schools. (Or imagine a less charter-happy mayor in New York. Mayor de Blasio?)

In an interview today, city teachers union President Michael Mulgrew said that the union plans to “advocate through the RFP.” He meant, he explained, that the UFT will lobby authorizers not to issue RFPs for schools in neighborhoods deemed overwhelmed with charter schools.

But charter school advocates said they aren’t concerned about the RFP process. Beyond creating more bureaucratic hurdles for authorizers and new charter schools, they said, the process will not significantly change how authorizers determine which schools should open. “The difference may appear larger than it actually is,” said James Merriman, head of the New York City Charter School Center.

2. Can the New York City schools chancellor continue to authorize charter schools?

Until today, the city Department of Education’s charter school office played a similar role to SUNY: It accepted applications for new charter schools, reviewed and approved them, and then passed the applications on to the Board of Regents for final approval. The city acted as the main authorizer for those schools, monitoring the schools and shutting them down for poor performance.

Under the new law, the schools chancellor can still recommend charter school applications to the Regents — and now can also recommend schools to SUNY for approval. And that recommendation matters to some degree: The rubric authorizers must use to evaluate applications gives preference for schools with a district endorsement. But it’s unclear whether the city will retain the power to oversee and shut down failing charters.

John White, a deputy chancellor for the city, noted that the law still names the chancellor as one of the state’s three “charter entities” who legally have power to oversee schools.

But Jonas Chartock, the head of SUNY’s Charter School Institute, said that his reading of the law suggests that his center will retain the ultimate oversight over schools it authorizes.

“To me, it’s not exactly clear,” said Merriman. “A reading of the bill would allow either interpretation at this point. It’s something that I think we have to see how counsel for the various parties…view that.”

3. How does the law force charter schools to accept more English language learners and special education students?

The law requires that charter schools maintain a certain number of English language learners and special education students over time. Schools are supposed to hit targets for both student enrollment and student retention that match neighborhood schools. Here’s what the law says authorizers have to make sure of:

THAT SUCH
   37  ENROLLMENT TARGETS ARE COMPARABLE TO  THE  ENROLLMENT  FIGURES  OF  SUCH
   38  CATEGORIES  OF  STUDENTS  ATTENDING THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITHIN THE SCHOOL
   39  DISTRICT, OR IN A CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT IN A CITY HAVING A POPULATION  OF
   40  ONE MILLION OR MORE INHABITANTS, THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, IN WHICH
   41  THE  PROPOSED  CHARTER  SCHOOL  WOULD  BE  LOCATED;  AND  (2)  THAT SUCH
   42  RETENTION TARGETS ARE COMPARABLE TO THE RATE OF RETENTION OF SUCH  CATE-
   43  GORIES  OF  STUDENTS  ATTENDING  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  WITHIN THE SCHOOL
   44  DISTRICT, OR IN A CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT IN A CITY HAVING A POPULATION  OF
   45  ONE MILLION OR MORE INHABITANTS, THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, IN WHICH
   46  THE PROPOSED CHARTER SCHOOL WOULD BE LOCATED; AND

But it’s not clear how that requirement will be enforced. Among other implementation problems is data-keeping. “SUNY’s going to need access to data we’ve never been able to obtain,” Chartock said.

4. Does the law change relationships between charter schools and district schools that share space?

The new law creates a “building council” to coordinate collaboration between schools housed together. Right now, co-located schools have building councils that include only principals from each school. The new councils will include principals, teachers and parents from each school in a building.

The council does not have the power to veto the city’s co-location plans. But it will be able to draw public attention to the plans. And public attention isn’t without its own kind of power: The new mayoral control law created public hearings when schools were recommended for closure. The hearings created quite a firestorm and arguably played a role in the recent court decision overturning city-enforced school closures.

5. Where does the money come from?

The increased bureaucracy and oversight required by the new law will require resources. Given the state’s doomsday fiscal climate, it’s unclear where that money will come from. Already SUNY’s Charter School Institute, which will see the number of charters it oversees double, is facing a proposed 70 percent funding reduction under budgets proposed by both the Senate and the Assembly.

The law also includes a provision requiring that any improvements to a charter school facility worth more than $5,000 must be matched in the district schools that share its building. The measure was widely praised on all sides as a way to assure equity between charter and district school students.

“But I want to be very, very clear,” Merriman said. “We do expect that the mayor and the chancellor step up and meet their commitment to provide such funding so that charters and district school students attend school in equal and high quality facilities.”

The vote was 45 to 14, with a handful of senators who had been vocal opponents of charter schools swinging to the pro-charter side. Among them was Senator Bill Perkins, whose Harlem district is home to one in five of the city’s charter schools, and who is facing a primary against a candidate put up by charter school supporters.

Opposition to the bill came from Senate Republicans, who opposed a provision in the bill that bans more for-profit charter schools from opening.

The no votes (via Liz Benjamin) were: Farley, Flanagan, Golden, Griffo, O. Johnson, Larkin, Lavalle, Libous, Maziarz, McDonald, Nozzolio, Padavan, Saland, Young.

With both the union and charter school supporters declaring victory, let the spin begin.

The deal, hammered out in negotiations that lasted into the early morning, raises the cap on charters from 200 to 460. But charter operators hoping to open new schools will have to jump through a new hurdle, a new Request for Proposals process managed by the Regents and the State University of New York charter authorizers.

The bill includes several measures dear to charter school critics. It bans for-profit charter operators from managing schools, allows the state controller to audit the schools, and creates new regulations around how the schools serve special education students and English language learners. And the bill sets up new rules that govern how New York City charters share building space with district schools.

The bill includes one change from the version of the bill that was being circulated this morning. The Assembly passed a chapter amendment that clarifies that SUNY can act as an authorizer independently from the Regents.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where sources tell us that Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson is ready to vote the bill up. But Republicans are holding up the bill because they oppose its prohibition of for-profit charter operators.

Many of the key players in the debate, including authorizers, are just seeing the legislation in detail for the first time this morning. Lots of questions, including exactly how the RFP process will work and how the bill will affect where charters will be able to open, should become clearer over the course of the day.

The full press release from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office is below. The full text of the bill that just passed is here.

ASSEMBLY APPROVES SWEEPING EDUCATION REFORMS TO SUPPORT NEW YORK STATE’S APPLICATION FOR RACE TO THE TOP FUNDING

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Education Committee Chair Catherine Nolan today announced the passage of legislation to reform the state’s charter school system.

The legislation (A.11310) would raise the cap on charter schools from 200 to 460, helping to ensure that New York State will have one of the nation’s most competitive applications for federal funding under the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant program in time for the June 1 deadline. This measure, in conjunction with a strong teacher evaluation system authorized earlier in the week and funding for long-term assessment of student achievement, will help ensure that New York State receives maximum RTTT funding.

“These sweeping reforms will help put an end to divisive fighting over school space and give a meaningful voice in the process to traditional public school parents,” said Silver (D-Manhattan). “The legislation also increases transparency by giving the State Comptroller auditing power over charter schools, while ensuring that they enroll and retain children with special needs. This measure will undoubtedly encourage the creation of more successful charter schools in New York State.”

“This bill will allow New York State to submit a competitive application for federal Race to the Top funding and increase our chances at receiving up to $700 million for our schools,” said Nolan (D-Queens). “I would like to thank New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Senior Deputy Commissioner John King for their leadership, cooperation and hard work.”

The legislation creates a new request for proposals process for the creation of 260 new charter schools. The new system favors applications which best respond to certain Race to the Top objectives such as increasing high school graduation rates and addressing student achievement gaps in reading/language arts and mathematics. Requests for proposals for new charter schools would be issued by the Board of Regents and SUNY trustees after undergoing a public review process.

In addition, the legislation would:

• Institute a four-year period over which the 260 new charter schools would be created;

• Prohibit for-profit organizations from operating or managing any new charter schools;

• Ensure that charter schools serve more children with disabilities, English language learners and free- and reduced-price lunch program participants;

• Require the chancellor to develop building usage plans for fair allocation and usage of space;

• Require matching capital improvements to the traditional public school portion of a building when such an improvement is made in excess of $5,000 to the co-located charter school;

• Authorize the State Comptroller to audit charter schools at his or her discretion; and

• Increase accountability by new disclosure and ethics provisions.

The Assembly also passed legislation today that would provide financial support for a state longitudinal data system to measure long-term student achievement (A.11309). Earlier this week, the Assembly passed legislation enhancing the statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals (A.11171).

The full text of the bill in the most updated form we know of is here. Background on Race to the Top is here.

This bill would raise the cap on charter schools to 460 from 200, but change the way schools are opened. Prospective charter school operators would have to respond to Request for Proposal documents, like contractors, rather than applying on their own. Exactly how this process would work is unclear, but one effect could be slowing the pace of charter school growth. The bill puts a cap on the number of newly approved charter schools that could open by September 2011 — 32.

The deal also aims to ease the tensions (and sometimes all-out wars) that have happened when charter schools are placed inside traditional public school buildings. Now, before schools are placed together, the city’s Department of Education would have to write up a new document called a “building usage plan” outlining exactly which rooms would be used by which schools, and proposing how the schools can share common spaces like cafeterias, libraries, playgrounds, and auditoriums.

The two schools would also have to set up a “shared space committee” — comprised of representatives from each school — to make sure they follow the plan. As far as I can tell, though, in this version of a deal charter school critics lost their battle for parents at the traditional public school get a say in whether or not charter schools can move into their buildings.

Finally, the bill as it’s now written explicitly allows the state comptroller to audit charter schools. It also ramps up regulations forcing charter schools to reach demographic targets that match nearby public schools. That means that charter schools would be expected to have similar numbers of special education students, students still learning English, and students eligible for free lunch because of family poverty.

In order to be eligible for any grant funds that the state might win, school districts, charter schools and unions are required to submit a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to participate in programs proposed by the state’s application. This round’s deadline to sign onto the application is 5 p.m. tomorrow.

In the first round, the MOU listed individual tenets of the state’s Race to the Top plan and allowed districts to choose a la carte which provisions they supported. The teachers union agreed only to provisions that would not require a change to its contract. Though the state claimed to have the full support of the city union, Race to the Top judges said that the qualified agreement would hurt the state’s ability to enact its plan. (You can read more about the state’s failed first-round application here.)

This round’s MOU is an all-or-nothing deal — districts, schools and unions must agree to everything in the state’s plan or not sign on at all. That won’t be a problem if union and city negotiators hash out a deal tonight to raise the charter cap and smooth the way for full passage of the teacher evaluation deal struck by the state and union earlier this month.

But if a deal falls apart, the city and union will be forced to choose whether to sign onto the application anyway. In the first round, the city unsuccessfully tried to use its MOU signature as a bargaining chip to pressure legislators into lifting the charter school cap.

A copy of the current MOU, as well as the state’s “Frequently Asked Questions” document about it, is below the jump: