• Cuomo on Triborough
• Silver on taxes
• SED on paperwork
• Fellows on loan
• Buffalo News on cyber-bullying

Cuomo on Triborough
During a radio interview on Friday, Governor Cuomo appeared to rule out seeking changes to New York State’s “Triborough Law” which guarantees that the provisions of an expired public employee collective bargaining agreement remain in effect, until a successor agreement is in place.

Whenever we ask superintendents what actions the state could take to help their districts reduce or control costs, relief from Triborough is always at or near the top of the list.

Specifically, they cite Triborough’s guarantee of “step increases,” as reducing management leverage in negotiations, arguing that it gives unions little reason to agree to a new contract with cost saving measures, since most members will continue to receive raises and maintain other benefits under their old contract.

This dynamic was cited as a contributing factor to the rejection of a proposed contract by the members of the second largest state employees union, the Public Employees Federation.

As a result of the rejection, the Administration is proceeding with plans to lay off 3,496 PEF members, including 19 State Education Department employees.

Discussing the PEF rejection on the Capitol Pressroom radio show, the Governor acknowledged, “you could see that that’s a pragmatic judgment,” for some union members to conclude they could oppose the contract since they would not be laid off because of their seniority, and would receive raises because of Triborough.

Host Susan Arbetter asked, “Do you think it’s time to revisit Triborough?”

The Governor responded, “I think it’s a political non-starter to try to revisit Triborough.  Period, you know, and we live in the real here.”

In my experience, getting “big” legislation enacted, like amending Triborough, requires two ingredients:   noise from the outside (from advocates and voters) and a champion on the inside — at least one leader who won’t allow budget negotiations to close or the legislative session to end unless the issue gets addressed.

Obviously, the most potent champion for an issue would be the Governor.

Silver on taxes
Gannett News reported that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver reiterated his support for retaining higher income taxes on the state’s wealthiest taxpayers while appearing on an Albany area radio show last Tuesday.

The Speaker said, “I still think we should not allow people making more than $1 million to have the benefit of a tax cut.”

Higher tax rates on New Yorkers with incomes above $250,000 were adopted in 2010 and are due to expire on December 31.

Rather than extend the entire increase, Speaker Silver has proposed limiting the extension to taxpayers with incomes over $1 million.

Meanwhile, Governor reiterated his opposition, saying, “If I raise taxes, I’m in a running race every day with Connecticut and Jersey and other states.  If I raise my taxes, they can move 20 minutes away in some directions and I’m hemorrhaging from the borders. That’s not true federally.”

The two leaders’ characterizations of the issue are revealing.  The Governor refers to extending the rates as a tax increase, while the Speaker calls ending them a tax cut.

Had the higher rates not been scheduled to expire, it’s hard to imagine state leaders would have chosen to cut them while also grappling with closing the projected $10 billion gap they faced in assembling this year’s state budget.

SED on paperwork
The State Education Department has launched a consolidated web-based reporting system, giving school officials one place to go to for information on all the plans, reports and applications they are required to submit each year.

This is a very welcome step by SED.

Nearly 10 years ago, the Council issued a report, “Drowning in a Sea of Paperwork,” describing the time school district leaders had to spend completing plans and reports of questionable usefulness.

Legislation was passed requiring the SED to complete a report on reports.  The Department was conscientious and identified roughly 100 more plans, reports, and applications required of districts than we did.

There have been administrative and legislative attempts at reducing the paperwork burden.

Until very recently, however, we continued to receive requests for our 2002 report – because it very clearly laid out specific reporting deadlines school officials were expected to meet.  We referred people to newer SED resources, but the new web-based portal is a big step forward.

Fellows on loan
The State Education Department has faced some questioning for its use of privately funded “Regents Fellows” to assist on activities undertaken as part of its $696 million federal Race to the Top grant.

But The Capitol reports that the U.S. Education Department recently called on the Fellows and State Education Commissioner John King for advice in developing the Obama Administration’s plans for waivers from No Child Left Behind requirements.

SED officials would neither confirm nor deny that the Fellows were involved in designing the waiver plan.  But The Capitol quoted an unnamed source, ““We’ve been loaning them manpower. It’s embarrassing.”

The Capitol says New York has not decided whether to apply for a waiver.  But SED is consulting with stakeholders, including superintendents and the Council, and all signs are that the Department will develop a waiver request.

Buffalo News on Cyber-Bullying
The recent death by suicide of a Western New York teenager following “cyber-bullying” and other harassment drew national attention for a time.  Understandably, the tragedy continues to command attention from regional media.

On Saturday, for example, The Buffalo News ran an editorial titled, “More steps needed:  State must pass tougher measures to fight bullying in the digital age.”

The editorial cites proposals by Senators Stephen Saland (R-Dutchess) and Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) to strengthen penalties for cyber-bullying.

Addressing cyber-bullying presents special challenges for schools because the act often occurs off school grounds, outside the school day, and without using school resources.

Yesterday, the News ran a column by a local middle school teacher who writes, “As a teacher, I’ll be the first to admit that students have more power in schools than any of us hired to instruct usually give them credit for.”

She calls on adults to do their part by teaching students to exercise positive peer pressure,

If a culture of respect is nurtured, and students are taught to voice their displeasure when they see and hear bullying of any kind—especially if they are simply bystanders — the actions will all but disappear. To put it simply, if it is very uncool to be rude or threatening to someone, the behavior will change.

Her observation makes sense to me, chiefly based on a conversation with one of my own teenaged children.  But how to translate the idea into widespread practice, and whether a new state law might play a role, is not clear.

Meanwhile, Newsday reported on Facebook’s efforts to reduce its use in bullying.

State Education Commissioner John King attended the White House event and issued a statement saying the Board of Regents will start discussions on the waiver opportunity at its October meeting and that the State Education Department will seek recommendations from stakeholder groups and accountability experts.

Council members are well represented on the stakeholder group SED will consult.

The requirements for obtaining waivers resemble those of the Race to the Top competition, so New York should be well-positioned to gain approval.

The opportunities for flexibility the new waiver system will allow include:

• no longer requiring states to set school and district performance targets based on a requirement that all students be proficient by 2014.  Instead states will be permitted to establish “ambitious but achievable goals in reading/language arts and mathematics to support improvement efforts for all schools and all students.”

• relief from “…a system that over-identifies schools as ‘failing’ and prescribes a ‘one size fits all’ approach to interventions.”   Instead, states will be allowed to design “…a system that targets efforts to the schools and districts that are the lowest-performing and to schools that have the largest achievement gaps, tailoring interventions to the unique needs of those schools and districts and their students.”

• increased flexibility to use several funding streams “in ways they determine best meets their needs, and rural districts will have additional flexibility in using their funds.”

To receive waivers, a state will be required develop a plan to improve educational outcomes for all students, close achievement gaps, and improve the quality of instruction including these elements:

• a state must have already adopted college- and career-ready standards in reading/language arts and mathematics designed to raise the achievement of all students and commit to helping  its schools and districts transition to implementing those standards and to administering statewide tests aligned with college- and career-readiness.

• establish a differentiated school and district accountability system that gives credit for progress towards college- and career-readiness, requires districts to implement rigorous interventions to turn low-performing schools around, and recognizes and rewards the highest-achieving schools that serve low-income students and those that show the greatest student progress.

• set basic guidelines for teacher and principal evaluation and support systems developed with input from teachers and principals; the systems assess performance based on multiple measures, including student progress over time and measures of professional practice.

The model resembles the administration’s blueprint for reauthorizing federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs, last reauthorized as No Child Left Behind in 2002.

But reauthorization is already four years overdue and prospects for action before 2012 elections are nil. In his remarks unveiling the plan, President Obama said, “So, given that Congress cannot act, I am acting.”

Education Week reported that Congressional Republicans said the administration was exceeding its authority with the waiver initiative and the action could poison efforts to renew the law.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said,

While I appreciate some of the policies outlined in the secretary’s waivers plan, I simply cannot support a process that grants the secretary of education sweeping authority to handpick winners and losers. This sets a dangerous precedent, and every single American should be extremely wary.

Our national affiliate, the American Association of School Administrators, issued a statement objecting to attaching conditions to the waiver process,

If we all agree that the regulations that are to be waived are onerous and an impediment to real change in our schools, then they should be waived for all schools, not just the ones in states that apply for and receive the waivers.

The time lines are organized around the four RTTT priority areas:

• Standards and Assessments;
• Data Systems;
• Great Teachers and Leaders; and
• Turning Around Low Performing Schools.

The Department anticipates issuing more than a dozen RFPs (requests for proposals) in just the next year for RTTT-related work.

The time lines were part of an update to the Board of Regents earlier this week.  Here is the accompanying prose summary given to the Regents.

Here is my compilation of some of the items of greatest concern to school district leaders:

“Waiting for Superman” is the latest effort from Davis Guggenheim, director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film about global climate change that helped Al Gore win both an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.

New York Magazine has a preview that is worth reading for its insights into national education politics.

I’ll probably write more on this some day soon.

UPDATE:  Here is a comment on the movie from New York State United Teachers.

Here is a chart comparing how scores changed between the first and second rounds of the Race to the Top competition on each of the criteria used to evaluate applications for New York and the averages for all the other finalists in each round.

After New York finished out of the money (15^th out of 16 finalists) in the phase one competition for Race to the Top funding, some critics blamed the state’s failure to raise its cap on charter schools, or proposals to use the grant to make extravagant furniture purchases.

In a post back then, we argued that the truth was more complicated.

Now, some have suggested that New York could have still won in phase two without raising the charter school cap.

Again, reality is more complicated.

In our earlier post, we noted that although charter school legislation and furniture purchases got blame for the phase one failure, in fact New York was furthest behind the winning states (Delaware and Tennessee) in two other areas – building a data system to track student progress, and using teacher and principal evaluations to inform key decisions.

New York was 14 points behind the two phase one winners in the data system category, and trailed both by seven points in using teacher and principal evaluations to inform key decisions.

In contrast, New York was only four points behind second place Tennessee in the charter school category.

We also noted, however, that although New York was close to the winning states on the charter school item, it was one area with a large number of points still available to be gained, since New York received 27 out of 40 on this criterion.

Our chart illustrates how scores changed between phase one and phase two for New York and the average of all the other finalists.

In phase one, New York received a total of 409 points.  The highest ranked non-winning state in phase two earned 438 points.

With the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, this indicates that New York needed to gain around 30 points to be in the phase two winners’ circle.

In fact, New York picked up 56 points.

New York’s biggest gains were as follows:

• Implementing a longitudinal data system:  +14 points
• Using evaluations to inform key decisions:  +11 points
• Ensuring successful conditions for high performing charter schools and other innovative schools:  +9 points.

A total of 15 additional points was gained in scattered criteria grouped under State Success Factors, Standards and Assessments, Turning Around the Lowest Performing Schools, and a General category.

Summing up, New York won a Race to the Top grant by strengthening — at least in the eyes of federal reviewers — the two weakest areas in its phase one application (data systems and using evaluations in personnel decisions) and by picking up points on one of the two criteria with the most points available to be added after phase one — ensuring successful conditions for charter schools.  (There were 13 points remaining to be gained on the charter school critierion; 14 for data systems).

State legislation was enacted in all three areas — providing capital funding for the data system, mandating the consideration of student performance data and other changes in personnel evaluation, and raising the charter school cap.

It is mathematically possible that New York could have gained enough points to win a phase two grant without raising its charter school cap, but that would have been a risky strategy, gambling that reviewers would find enough improvements in scattered areas to gain the necessary points, and that continued inaction on charter schools would not bias their reactions to other elements of the state’s plan.

As I’ve written, the Race to the Top grant potentially provides an otherwise unattainable boost for improving the state infrastructure that schools rely on — standards, assessments, curricula, systems for preparing and evaluating teachers and school leaders, and turning around low performing schools.  The direct financial benefit for most districts is very modest.  And for some districts, the financial impact of more charter schools will vastly and permanently exceed whatever funds they directly receive from the Race to the Top grant.

The short answer is I don’t know and it will likely take some time to resolve.

A longer answer might begin, “We all have other things to focus on while the financial details of the Race to the Top grant get worked out.”

As we tried to indicate to school district leaders considering whether to sign memoranda of understanding in support of the state’s application in January and again in June, the primary reason for doing so should be that the grant would provide financial support for valuable state-level initiatives not available from any other foreseeable source, not for its impact on district finances.

Here are some observations:

• The $696 million grant which the state won is to be received over a four year period.

• The state must still negotiate some details of the grant with the U.S. Education Department over the next 90 days.

• By law, states must allocate one-half their grant amount to local education agencies (LEAs — school districts and charter schools) according to shares under the federal Title I, Part A program.

• The $348 million required to be allocated to LEAs looks like a big number, but in the world of statewide school district finances it is not so big – the cut in state-funded School Aid this year was more than three times as large.

• Because of the requirement to allocate these funds according to Title I shares, New York City could receive about 70 percent of the half that must be distributed to LEAs.  A preliminary, “ballpark” estimate of a grant for an individual district might be derived by multiplying its Title I, part A grant by 30 percent. Actual grants might be somewhat higher, because not every district signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to implement provisions of the state Race to the Top plan.  Here is a link to a table of estimated Title I allocations for 2010-11.

• Whatever a district’s grant figure, it is the total amount the district will be eligible to receive over the four year period.  Districts would NOT receive that grant amount each year for four years.

• Here is an excerpt from SED’s Q&A issued with its June MOU request to districts:

“Grant funds will be distributed to participating LEAs using the standard grant process employed by NYSED for all federal grants (i.e., the FS-10/25/10F process). This process enables LEAs to draw down funds as needed to pay program costs while minimizing the time that elapses between the draw and disbursement by the subgrantee. Participating LEAs will be accountable for meeting annual performance goals and timelines. USED will award RTTT Phase 2 funds to states in September 2010. States will then have a four-year project period from the time of the award in which to implement their plans and spend their grant money. A similar timeframe will apply for participating LEAs.”

• The funds will only be allowed to be used to support initiatives in the state’s Race to the Top plan, not general ongoing operating costs.

• New York’s application promised that the state would use $129 million from its half of the grant to make additional grants to LEAs for specific initiatives. These funds will be allocated primarily through competitive processes and so no district funding estimates are possible at this time. Districts not receiving Title I, part A funds could receive funding through these initiatives.

• While the $348 million required to be allocated to districts is modest when measured against annual swings in School Aid, the $219 million to be used for direct state purposes is comparatively huge.  The Education Department now receives only $42 million in state tax dollars to support its operating budget (staff salaries, travel, equipment, supplies, and contractual services).  The part of the grant to be retained for direct state purposes exceeds the entire budget from all funding sources for SED’s office handling preschool through high school.

As we suggested in our statement on the state’s winning application, the Race to the Top grant provides an “otherwise unobtainable boost” to efforts to update and improve the infrastructure of the state’s education system – standards, assessments, curriculum, training for teachers and school leaders, data systems to track student progress, and programs to turn-around chronically struggling schools.

Details on the planned expenditures from the state’s grant are available here, starting on the page numbered “348 of 449″ or page 353 of the “PDF.”

New York will receive the maximum grant possible, just under $700 million, to be used over a four-year period.

New York achieved the second highest score among the winning states.  Massachusetts had the highest score.

The funds must be used to implement systemic reform initiatives in four areas, as outlined in the state’s winning application:

• Adopting internationally-benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace
• Recruiting, developing, retaining, and rewarding effective teachers and principals
• Building instructional data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practices
• Turning around the lowest-performing schools

Race to the Top funds cannot be used to fund basic, ongoing operations — to avert layoffs, or offset local taxes.

The federal program requires each winning state to allocate at least half its grant among school districts and charter schools which have signed agreements to implement its plans.  New York’s application calls for using part of the state’s half to make additional grants to local school systems to support specific reform initiatives.

Here is a link to the statement released by the State Education Department.

Here is the statement the Council released:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:    August 24, 2010

CONTACT:        Robert Lowry Ÿ 518/449-1063 or 518/435-5996 (cell)

E-mail:  boblowry@nyscoss.org

NYS School Superintendents Congratulate State Education Leaders on Race to the Top Win

“Today’s news that New York is among the winning states for federal Race to the Top funding will give an otherwise unobtainable boost to our efforts to improve learning opportunities for all schoolchildren.

“The federal grant will help our state to update and improve the foundations of our education system – standards, assessments, curriculum, training for teachers and school leaders, data systems to track student progress, and programs to turn-around chronically struggling schools.

“Given the state’s budget woes, there is no way this crucial work could proceed without the help from Washington.  With it, we will be able to better ensure that our schools are giving all students the skills and knowledge they will need to thrive in life beyond school.

“We congratulate Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Commissioner David Steiner for their leadership of our state’s successful effort.  The application they developed won widespread endorsement from education leaders across New York.  Over 90 percent of the state’s school districts submitted agreements signed by their superintendents supporting the state’s application.”

Robert J. Reidy, Ph. D
Executive Director
New York State Council of School Superintendents

###

See here and here for example.

UPDATE:  Education Week and other sources are saying it has been confirmed that second round Race to the Top winners will be announced tomorrow

New York is among the 18 states and the District of Columbia competing as finalists this time around.

Also, last week, gothamschools.org reported on how New York State’s August 10 presentation to Race to the Top reviewers went, in the eyes of the state’s team.

The team included Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, Commissioner David Steiner, State Education Department Senior Deputy Commissioner John King, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and New York City teacher union president Michael Mulgrew.

GothamSchools reported Chancellor Tisch said that “no surprises” came from the judges during the state’s 90-minute presentation and question-and-answer session two weeks ago and that she added, “I just thought it was a very fair, frank conversation.”

No details are available yet on individual district allocations; presumably those will be forthcoming very soon.

It is expected that the aid will be allocated primarily on the same basis as the state budget restoration for School Aid approved by the Legislature but vetoed by Governor Paterson.  That approach would reduce each district’s lump sum total aid reduction (the Gap Elimination Adjustment) by an equal percentage.

The federal law does permit state governments to retain 2 percent of the grant for administrative purposes.  There were also discussions exploring whether this federal aid could help restore funding for Teacher Centers.

By signing the letter promising to enact state legislation needed to allocate and expend funds, the Governor and Assembly and Senate Leaders seek to avoid the necessity of having the Legislature return to Albany before the start of the school year.

The expectation has been that the Legislature would not return until after the September 14 primary elections.

Also Governor Paterson has threatened to call the Assembly into special session in October, closer to the general election, to increase pressure on that chamber to approve his proposal for a property tax cap on school districts and local governments.

The agreement announced yesterday will permit the state to tell districts their allocations before the start of the school year.  However, the state will not be able to make actual payments until the Legislature and Governor approve an appropriation of the money.

Last Friday, the U.S. Education Department released initial formal guidance on how Education Jobs Fund money may be used.

That guidance makes clear that federal law permits school districts to use the aid in 2011-12, not just the current school year.

Although the Department expects and encourages districts to use Jobs Fund aid in the current school year, districts have until September 30, 2012 to “obligate” the money.  When used to pay employees (as the Jobs Fund money must be used), federal aid is obligated when the work is performed.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported on the worries of school districts around the nation for their fiscal prospects beyond the coming school year.

Over the weekend, the Buffalo News published an article covering many of the questions arising from the federal aid.

Also, last week Syracuse superintendent Dan Lowengard and I discussed the initiative on the statewide Capitol Pressroom radio show.