GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

As mayor, City Councilman Tony Avella would undo Mayor Bloomberg’s trademark school funding program, Avella told GothamSchools in a an exclusive interview.

Currently, the city uses a program called Fair Student Funding to give schools money based on the needs of the students they serve. Under Fair Student Funding, a school with more students scoring at the lowest level on state tests would get more money than a school where the majority of students are meet the standards for proficiency, for example. (more…)

Tony Avella, the underdog mayoral candidate, doesn’t want to be left out of the fight that’s brewing between Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller William Thompson, Avella’s competition for the Democratic nomination.

In an exclusive interview with GothamSchools, Avella said he’s the reason that Comptroller William Thompson has taken to calling for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to be fired. ”He’s now copying me because he’s now seeing that I’m — my campaign is getting some attention because of my stance when it relates to education,” Avella said. Avella’s campaign issued a press release accusing Thompson of flip-flopping last week, when Thompson first said he would fire Klein.

Avella also echoed the mayor’s criticism of Thompson’s education record. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t see how he could ever run for mayor given that everybody knows how bad the Board of Education was,” Avella said in the interview. Thompson was the president of the Board of Education from 1996 to 2001.

The first big blows of the election season are being traded today over the two leading candidates’ education records. 

Much of the action is happening in the comments section of a Huffington Post column posted yesterday by Comptroller William Thompson, who has been gaining on Mayor Bloomberg in polls. In the column, titled “Why Joel Klein Should be Fired,” Thompson described what he called “a pattern of brazen actions taken by the Department of Education that fly in the face of basic management standards.” 

Within hours of the column’s publication, DOE press secretary David Cantor had responded. ”Virtually all of Mr. Thompson’s claims are incorrect or distortions,” Cantor wrote in his comment, the first attached to Thompson’s column. 

Then, the mayor’s campaign manager, Howard Wolfson, jumped into the fray, posting a link to the campaign’s official response today, which indicates that Thompson’s five-year tenure as Board of Education president in the 1990s could be a prime target for the Bloomberg campaign. (more…)

A school system run by Comptroller William Thompson would continue experimenting with teacher “merit pay,” he said yesterday in an exclusive interview with GothamSchools. But he said he wouldn’t expect such an experiment to yield much in the way of results.

His mixed message underscores the odd reality of performance pay plans. Though the plans enjoy increasing political support, no research studies have conclusively shown they improve student achievement.

“Would I continue merit pay? Yes,” Thompson said. “Should it make the difference? Hopefully not.” (more…)

Comptroller William Thompson called the letter grades given to city schools “arbitrary” and said he would probably eliminate them if he is elected mayor. Thompson made the remarks in an exclusive interview with GothamSchools today.

The controversial reports assign each school a letter grade using a complicated formula that takes into account student test scores and responses to surveys. Critics of the reports have said that they are not statistically reliable and unfairly stigmatize good schools. Today, Thompson called the reports “foolish.”

“Information about schools is important,” Thompson told me. “I think that we’ve seen how arbitrary these letter grades are and I probably would not keep letter grades.” (more…)