GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

The city and the teachers union have struck a performance pay deal that will tie some teachers’ salaries to a range of measures of their effectiveness, including their students’ test scores.

The deal is part of a federal grant program to “turn around” the city’s most struggling schools. It also builds on a teacher evaluation agreement reached between the union and state education officials last month. According to the deal, 34 schools that have been designated as persistently lowest achieving will be able to pay model teachers significantly more money to take on greater responsibilities. Deemed the best-of-the-best, these teachers will mentor their colleagues, write curriculum, and open their classrooms to teachers who want to watch a lesson.

City officials have decided that 11 of these 34 schools will undergo the transformation model beginning next September. This means they can get support services, have an extended school day or an entirely new schedule, and can keep the teachers they have. In some cases, the city may decide to replace these schools’ principals. (more…)

In an attempt to improve some of the worst schools in the country, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is offering states four methods of turning around their lowest performers. But New York City officials say the union contract here rules out one of the three —  the so-called “transformation” model — even though it’s the only one that wouldn’t cause teachers to lose their jobs.

The other three methods either turn schools into charter schools, close them down, or force their principals and at least half of the staff to be fired. “Transformation” calls for the principal’s removal, but keeps the school’s staff in place.

Yet crucially, it also requires that schools use students’ test scores as a significant factor in evaluating teachers, that merit pay be put in place, and that teachers whose students don’t show enough improvement be fired. Since New York state law bars principals from using student data in teachers’ tenure decisions and the teachers contract only allows merit pay for entire schools that perform well, not individual teachers, city officials claim they cannot use it.

That’s despite the fact that the city actually wants to use the transformation model at some of the 34 schools on the state’s turnaround list, a Department of Education official said. He mentioned (but did not name) a small group of schools that are improving and have above-average graduation rates despite their overall-poor performance. (more…)

State Education Commissioner David Steiner and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch welcome board members to their December meeting in Albany this morning.

The public will get one of its first thorough looks at New York State’s Race to the Top strategy today, as the Board of Regents meets to consider a list of changes designed to make the state more competitive for a slice the $4.3 billion fund.

Anna is on her way to Albany and will report back on the Regents’ discussions. A few interesting things have already emerged from the Board’s agenda.

Tops on the list: a list of proposed criteria for identifying the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools to target for “turnaround,” a method that involves closing schools and reopening them with new leadership and staff. Many of the schools expected to land on that list will be in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also said he wants to turnaround even more schools than the state. The mayor has pledged to close and reopen the city’s lowest-performing 10 percent of schools in the next four years.

The Regents are also likely to vote to urge the legislature to raise the cap on charter schools. Although Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner David Steiner are both defenders of the cap, Tisch has recently said that now is the time to increase the number of charters allowed in the state. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said that states that limit the growth of charters will be at a disadvantage in the competition for Race to the Top money.

Believe it or not, there are just four months before the city’s mayoral election, and tonight the three declared candidates will take questions from a group whose endorsement is still outstanding.

Tonight’s Working Families Party forum isn’t a debate, per Mayor Bloomberg’s refusal to debate his two challengers, Democrats William Thompson Jr., the comptroller, and City Councilman Tony Avella. Instead, the candidates will each answer the same seven questions, of which one is about the city schools:

The question alludes to the recent Center for New York City Affairs report that showed that some large high schools suffered as the city opened more small schools.

The Working Families Party hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate, which Elizabeth Benjamin at the Daily News says doesn’t bode well for Thompson. (The teachers’ union is a major financial backer of WFP; in a recent gift, the union sent $20,000 to the party in February 2008.) Tonight’s forum could be a deciding factor in whom the party endorses. Watch the forum online here starting at 5:30 p.m.

I have a story in this week’s Village Voice about the fight over how to improve struggling public schools. Should the schools be rescued from the inside or replaced?

I focus on P.S. 194 in Harlem, which school officials favor replacing with the fledgling Harlem Success Academy 2. Both the principal at HSA 2, Jim Manly, and the principal at P.S. 194, Charyn Koppelson Cleary, are trying to give Harlem’s children a radically different experience of school. Yet they have very different tools to work with.

Cleary’s world:

Before the school year began, staffers recall, she gathered her whole faculty, from the teachers to the security officer to the secretary, in what she called a “circle of change.” Each person talked about what needed changing at the school. “The good news,” Cleary told them, according to people who were there, “is that 94 or 95 percent of the stuff you guys are talking about, we can change.”

In some ways, Cleary was constrained in her efforts. She could not hire a staff of her own, since the bulk of the teachers were inherited from the school’s previous years. She could not ask the custodian to repaint the entire building, since his contract only permitted a certain percentage. But she did the best she could, asking for the neediest rooms to get fresh paint and finagling a handful of other educators she trusted onto the payroll.

She also only had last three months to prepare for her turnaround: She began the job last July.

Now, here’s Manly’s world: (more…)