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The person who could reshape how the state handles cheating allegations in public schools has been named.

In September, the Board of Regents authorized an independent review of the way the state handles test security and cheating allegations. Today in Albany, Valerie Grey, a State Education Department deputy commissioner, told the Regents that the state had picked a special investigator — and he will conduct the review at no cost to the state.

Hank Greenberg, a lawyer who represented the state’s attorney general’s office when Gov. Andrew Cuomo occupied it, will have immediate and full access to all state education records, according to the state’s press release about his appointment.

From the release:

Commissioner [John] King said Greenberg would have complete, unfettered access to SED assessment records, including records of alleged test integrity violations and how those allegations were tracked and resolved. Greenberg will examine reports of alleged irregularities in the administration and scoring of State assessments, and examine the intake, review, referral investigation and response to those allegations. Based on the findings of his review, Greenberg will make recommendations to the Commissioner and Board of Regents to improve SED policies and procedures.

“We are very grateful and fortunate to have his service pro bono,” Grey told the Regents.

Grey also said that she had met with Cuomo’s office to outline SED’s $2.1 million request for a slate of test security measures that the Regents approved last month. ”[We] made our case,” she said. “And we will continue to do that.”

An essential piece of the state’s Race to the Top plans is in limbo after State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli shot down a controversial contract.

On Friday, DiNapoli rejected a $27 million contract with Wireless Generation to build a statewide “Education Data Portal” that would have allowed schools and teachers to track and use student performance data.

State teachers unions and advocates had protested the contract because it was offered without competitive bidding and because Wireless Generation’s parent company, News Corporation, is embroiled in controversy over illegal wiretapping conducted by some of its publications. DiNapoli cited both concerns in his letter to the State Education Department turning down the contract.

The rejection marks yet another setback in the state’s school reform plans. Last week, a judge ruled that the state should not be allowed to use student test scores to count for 40 percent of teachers’ evaluations, bringing to a standstill a centerpiece of New York’s Race to the Top plans. Now the data clearinghouse that would make the evaluations possible is also at risk. (more…)

The city teachers union will have to go to the State Education Department to protest rising class sizes in New York City, rather than skip straight to the courts, after an appeals court today dismissed a 2010 suit by the union.

The suit aimed at forcing New York City to dedicate a certain pot of state funds toward making class sizes smaller. The union charged that the city misused the funds, sending them to offset budget cuts rather than using them as they were intended — as a means of reducing class sizes. The NAACP also signed onto the suit.

But in a decision handed down today, an appeals court unanimously dismissed the union’s suit, saying that the union must take its complaints to the State Education Department before going to court. (Read the full decision below.)

The union president, Michael Mulgrew, vowed to continue protesting rising class sizes. “Lowering class size is a key issue for the parents and teachers of New York City and we intend to pursue it vigorously,” Mulgrew said in a statement this afternoon.

The appeals court did not address the heart of the disagreement: whether the city actually did, as the union charges, improperly fail to lower class sizes — and use Contracts for Excellence funds instead to stave off budget cuts. At issue is the state Contracts for Excellence funding stream, and in particular, a specific clause forcing New York City to write a plan to reduce class sizes.

What’s not disputed is that class sizes have creeped up for the last two years even as funds aimed at bringing them down have flooded into schools. Class sizes for the coming school year aren’t yet available, but all signs point to likely increases, which principals are preparing for. It’s not clear, however, that the Department of Education deliberately sought to prevent schools from lowering class sizes by sending funds elsewhere. (more…)

David Steiner. Photo courtesy of State Education Department.

Yet another top education official is making plans to vacate his position — this time at the State Education Department.

SED Commissioner David Steiner will leave the department at the end of the school year, he announced today.

Steiner appears to be leaving entirely of his own accord. People close to him described him as less interested in the “nuts and bolts” work of implementing the vision he helped the state set out for education. They said that Steiner, a former education school dean, is considering returning to the quieter and less political territory of academia.

The news outdid Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement this morning that his deputy mayor, Dennis Walcott, will replace Chancellor Cathie Black — at least in the department of rattling surprises. Even Steiner himself did not know that he would be announcing his departure today, according to people close to him.

“The only reason the announcement came today is because there clearly were rumors, and then after the Susan Arbetter show, and she raised those rumors, it felt like we needed to address them because we didn’t want to have rumors continue to percolate and circulate over the next few days,” a source at the state education department said.

Asked about rumors that Steiner might resign on that show, Capital Pressroom, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said that Steiner was “exploring other options” after less than two years in Albany. Tisch appeared on the show to discuss teacher evaluations but also addressed the resignation of Cathie Black as New York City schools chancellor.

Steiner became commissioner in July 2009, replacing 14-year veteran Richard Mills. Steiner had been chair of the School of Education at Hunter College, where he pioneered the practice of videotaping teachers as they worked and then critiquing their performance.

Improving teacher evaluation emerged as one of the main themes of Steiner’s tenure as commissioner, with the state reaching an agreement with teachers unions on a plan to change how teachers are assessed. That plan has yet to go into action because it requires individual school districts to develop their own assessments and have those assessments approved by local unions. Recommended guidelines for the local assessments were released only this week.

“With the anticipated approval of a final teacher evaluation program in the coming months, I have informed Chancellor Tisch and members of the Board of Regents that I intend to leave the State Education Department later this year,” Steiner said this afternoon in a statement. “Together we will begin to plan for a seamless transition.”

People close to Steiner said he had grown disinterested in the job of commissioner. (more…)

State Education Commissioner David Steiner has named the panel of education experts that will help him decide whether to allow magazine executive Cathie Black to become the next schools chancellor.

Without a background in education, Black needs a waiver from the state that will let her bypass the prerequisites: that she have a degree in education and several years of teaching behind her. Though the final decision rests with Steiner, the panel will play a role in reviewing the city’s case for why Black is qualified and making a recommendation.

Reviewing the list of panel members, New York University Professor Pedro Noguera said the commissioner had covered his bases.

“Steiner’s aware that this is very controversial,” Noguera said. “So if you think about it, instead of just him making the decision he can say, ‘Look, I got a group of very reputable people in education who agreed with me.’” (more…)

The New York State Department of Education has singled out 34 New York City public schools, most of them large high schools, that it believes should be replaced.

Many of the schools are already on the city’s to-be-closed list and others have had poor reputations and low grades on the city’s annual report cards for years. Now that SED has designated which schools are the bottom five percent across the state, school districts will have to submit plans to Commissioner David Steiner detailing which of four federally mandated plans they intend to implement.

The plans are a menu of sorts: four options the U.S. Department of Education believe can transform “persistently low achieving” schools into success stories. Before the list came out today, state officials said they planned to replace many of the schools with charter schools, a proposal that could be severely delayed by the state legislature’s recent decision not to lift the state’s charter cap.

Long before the list came out, Chancellor of the Board of Regents Merryl Tisch said the state’s choices would not be controversial. (more…)

A charter school that hoped to focus on students who don’t speak English is changing tactics after being told by the state that it cannot give admissions preference to the students it wants to attract.

Though New York City’s charter schools admit relatively few English Language Learners in comparison to district schools, Inwood Academy for Leadership intended to be the exception. When Principal Christina Hykes applied for a charter, she envisioned a school where half the students were English Language Learners and half were general education students, making Inwood Academy the first charter school in the city to propose such a model.

Hykes planned to achieve this balance by giving admissions preference to ELL students living in Inwood, something Department of Education officials agreed she could do. State law encourages charters to focus on students “at risk of academic failure,” and students with little English seemed like prime candidates. They routinely have lower scores on the state tests than their English-speaking peers and are less likely to graduate high school.

But officials at the State Education Department disagreed with the city’s reading of the law, telling the DOE and Hykes that ELL students don’t fall in the “at risk” category. As a result, Inwood Academy’s application would have to lose all the language giving ELLs enrollment preference if it wanted to get a charter. (more…)

For years, one pesky paper has stalked David Steiner, the man elected New York’s education commissioner this morning. The paper, published in 2003, while he was a professor at Boston University, attacked education graduate schools as intellectually weak and ideologically slanted, marking Steiner as a brave “maverick” among those critical of traditional teacher education — and enemy no. 1 among those who defend it.

Steiner, who was raised in England but was born in America and spent one year at P.S. 41 on West 11th Street, has shrugged off the to-do in the years since. He kept a reasonably modest profile as dean of CUNY’s Hunter College School of Education for the last four years. In conversations, he calmly insists that there is a middle ground in the fierce debate about how to improve public schools.

But the paper that marked him also foreshadows some of the innovations he has tested out at Hunter and the thinking he might bring to the state Education Department, where he is set to become commissioner Oct. 1, replacing Richard Mills, who announced his intention to retire last year. Mills had served in the position since 1995.

The position means Steiner will run the state Education Department, the large bureaucratic organization that enacts education policy set by the state Board of Regents and oversees both universities and public primary schools. (more…)