Rise & Shine: State to extend school year with foundation funds

  • New York is among five states to get Ford Foundation funding to extend the school year. (Times, AP)
  • The number of districts that, unlike NYC, have reached teacher evaluation deals is up to 633. (Post, NY1)
  • Brooklyn’s District 23 became the third to adopt districtwide choice, the second in a week. (Daily News)
  • Park Slope’s controversial school rezoning plan could make P.S. 10 lose pre-kindergarten. (Daily News)
  • The Post pans the city for giving high grades to high schools that don’t prepare students for college.
  • Los Angeles’s teachers union tentatively agreed to use test scores in teacher ratings. (WSJ, L.A. Times)
  • An L.A. union activist says smaller districts are paving the road to a new unionism. (Washington Post)
  • A state judge ruled that Louisiana’s school voucher system is unconstitutional. (WSJ, Times-Picayune)
  • In some cities, school are losing students because of demographic shifts and charter schools. (WSJ)
  • Debate over the Common Core’s nonfiction guidelines is heating up nationally. (Washington Post)
  • A former D.C. teacher and current professor says credit recovery is used too liberally in D.C. (WSJ)

Last week on GothamSchools:

  • The city is scrutinizing homegrown high school courses to see if they meet high standards. (Friday)
  • Mayoral hopefuls came before a group that opposes Mayor Bloomberg’s school policies. (Thursday)
  • A related group released research briefs to make their case against Bloomberg’s policies. (Thursday)
  • The city and others would like student surveys to affect evaluations, but the UFT doesn’t. (Wednesday)
  • Timing and implementation issues could cloud any teacher evaluation deal that gets made. (Wednesday)
  • Some schools that got progress reports still have investigations open about last year’s scores. (Tuesday)
  • Even with college readiness metrics, more high schools got top progress report scores this year. (Monday)
  • Still, the city increased the number of high schools it is considering closing, shortlisting 24. (Monday)
  • City officials said they are considering making it harder to get high scores in the future. (Monday)
  • The principal of one of four schools with two straight F’s said he doesn’t fear being closed. (Monday)