The UFT printed campaign posters for all major mayoral candidates in advance of today’s meetings to endorse a candidate, so that materials are ready as soon as the choice is made. The union posted the photo to Twitter on Monday.

For education voters, the mayoral campaign season has been building in large part to today, when the United Federation of Teachers will announce which candidate it is supporting.

But the decision, which will come out around 5:45 p.m. today, hardly ends the education election. Instead, it simply opens a new phase, one in which education policy’s prominence is far from assured.

Until now

From the time that campaign season kicked off so many moons ago, all of the Democratic candidates have been careful not to alienate the UFT. While the union’s picks don’t always win — as Mayor Bloomberg pointed out on Monday, it hasn’t backed a winning mayoral candidate in over two decades — the UFT endorsement does confer money, cachet, and bodies to fuel a ground game that will be essential in the coming months.

Even candidates seen as unlikely to win the union’s support, such as City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, whose help letting Bloomberg suspend term limits four years ago put her at a sharp disadvantage, were careful to infuse their education platforms with union-friendly positions. And all of the candidates who attended a forum the union held at its annual spring conference were effusive in their praise.

In recent weeks, though, only Thompson and de Blasio — and, to a lesser extent, Comptroller John Liu, whose campaign has been hamstrung by scandal — have actively seemed to be angling for the nod. When the city announced new graduation rates on Monday, they were the only candidates to release statements, all criticizing the Bloomberg administration for not helping students more. Thompson announced that he would guarantee at $200 a year to every teacher for discretionary materials, something the union has long sought. And de Blasio was the only candidate to stand beside Mulgrew at a press conference announcing a platform for reducing the city’s emphasis on standardized testing.

In de Blasio, the union would get a candidate with liberal bonafides and the chance to consolidate some the labor movement’s support. But with Thompson, it would be choosing a conciliator with education credentials who is seen as having a strong chance of becoming mayor.

What happens today

The union wants to advance a policy agenda that matches its vision for education and benefits its members. But even more than that, it wants to support a winner in November’s election, breaking a three-decade cycle of failure and ensuring that City Hall’s occupant feels beholden to the union. That’s why — even though, in a show of openness, the union has printed campaign posters for all major candidates — it would be a real surprise if anyone other Thompson ends the day with the union’s support.

But even though the decision appears to have been made, there is still a process the union must go through to make the choice official. That process includes some room for union members to express dissent, and their voices could be quite strong.

The union is using the same process that it goes through whenever it makes major policy decisions. First, Mulgrew will tell his closest advisors which candidate is his favorite. They’ll recommend the choice to the union’s 89-member Executive Board, which includes some representatives of minority parties within the union. Then the Executive Board’s recommendation will go to the 3,400-member Delegate Assembly for a floor vote, in which delegates from each school and chapter will hold up cards to signal whether they support the recommendation. Advocates and, potentially, opponents of the decision will make their cases until a majority of delegates support the resolution.

The union anticipates this process going quickly. The three meetings are scheduled back to back to prevent news from leaking before the end of the day. The Delegate Assembly meeting is scheduled for 4:45 p.m., and a decision is expected about an hour later, union officials said.

One reason the union can expect quick support for its leadership’s recommendation is that a strong majority of delegates are affiliated with Unity, Mulgrew’s party within the union. But a sizable number are not, suggesting that debate could be fierce if Mulgrew allows it to be. Some members are unhappy with Thompson’s relationship with Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, who helped engineer the state’s new teacher evaluation rules, and the fact that he has cozied up to charter school supporters even as he has worked to woo the union. In borough forums, de Blasio and Liu, seen as more left-wing candidates, received widespread support.

When the principals union voted to endorse Thompson on Tuesday, it did so with just 40 percent of the executive board behind him. President Ernest Logan suggested that while Thompson had garnered twice as many votes as the next closest candidates, at least four candidates had received wide support. The UFT has a stronger infrastructure for managing dissent and it won’t be tallying support for runners up, so it’s unlikely that the numbers will end up being quite so divided. But what happens inside 52 Broadway today is worth watching.

Not an end but a beginning

A divided union UFT would undermine one of the union’s chief goals in endorsing a candidate, which is to reassert its might in the city’s political ecosystem. According to a story in today’s New York Times, Mulgrew has devoted himself since first becoming president four years ago to bolstering the union’s political machine, once seen as capable of delivering candidates with ease.

That machine has a sizable war chest to help the endorsed candidate pay for campaign ads, including some that could potentially tilt the race into more negative territory. The machine should also have no trouble coming through with volunteers to make phone calls for the winning candidate and support his (or her) ground game. The union’s strong cadre of retired teachers in particular — known as the “daytime union” because they can step up when active members are at work — are notable for being willing to do what they are asked to.

But many retirees do not live in the city, and many current teachers do not, either. Combined with the fact that not all members will fall into line with the UFT’s pick, exactly how many votes the union will deliver in September’s primary and then in November’s general election is unclear.

What happens tomorrow, and for the next two and a half months until the primary election, could make the difference. It could be that the candidates begin to differentiate themselves more strongly on education, without the prospect of UFT support keeping them close to the union line. It could also be that they stop talking about education at all as they try to win over new constituencies. Candidates also have a reason to distance themselves from the union if they aren’t receiving its support. In office, a new mayor will have to weigh all of the city’s interests each time they sit down to bargain a single union’s contract. The high costs of health care and back pay, which the UFT wants, could be hard to deliver.

One role the union’s pick will play is to make sure that issues that are important to teachers do not fall off the radar, and to entice other candidates into making commitments that the union would like them to make. Mulgrew believes he can deliver this election, but he surely won’t mind insurance.

The problems represent at best a significant inconvenience and cost and at worst a threat to students’ scores and graduation status, according to educators with knowledge of the grading process.

This is the first June that all Regents exams taken at city high schools are being graded through “distributed scoring,” an arrangement devised to prevent teachers from scoring tests taken by students at their schools. Until last year, teachers graded their own students’ exams, but under pressure to show that test scores are not inflated, the state barred that practice. The city’s scoring system extends the state’s rules.

After a pilot last year, the Department of Education opted to have four of the most-taken tests — Living Environment, Global Studies, U.S. History, and English — scored electronically. McGraw-Hill, the vendor administering the process, collects the exams at schools, transports them to a scanning site in Connecticut, and then distributes answers one by one to teachers stationed at computers in city grading centers.

The company is getting $3.5 million this year from the city to administer the distributed scoring program, part of a $9.6 million, three-year contract to manage the logistical acrobatics that the new arrangement requires.

The process resulted in quicker and scoring during the pilot, according to Adina Lopatin, the department’s deputy chief academic officer. She said teachers moved more quickly through exam responses because they did not have to shuffle through papers.

But the time savings have been more than negated by serious glitches as the city has scaled up electronic scoring to include all high schools this month. At some schools, exams were not picked up until days after they were taken, teachers said. Teachers have reported to scoring sites daily, only to be sent back to their schools after being told that not enough items had been scanned for them to grade.

And even when there are answers to score, bandwidth issues have prevented teachers from grading them quickly in some schools, and in others, McGraw-Hill’s efforts to redact identifying information about students left answers partially obscured. One teacher said his site had graded just 20 exams on Monday and another 50 today because of the problems.

The cumulative result is that three exams required for graduation will not be graded by the department’s expected deadline. Niket Mull, who directs the Office of Assessment, sent an email to principals on Monday explaining that the Living Environment exam would be scored not by Wednesday but by Friday. Instead of being scored by Thursday, the history exams will not be complete until the end of the week or even Monday.

Schools begin holding graduation ceremonies on Thursday, although most are scheduled for next week. Schools are also in the process of determining who needs to attend summer school and what courses students should take next fall, decisions that can’t be made until scores are in.

One principal who estimated that at least 50 students at his school need scores to graduate that seem unlikely to arrive in time for the school’s commencement. He said he would be asking their parents to sign a form indicating that they understand that graduation is conditional on the test scores.

“I’ve never had to do that before,” the principal said. “I’m pretty strict about allowing kids to walk if they haven’t met the requirements. … But this is different.”

That’s the process that the department will be advising principals to use, softening a normally hard and fast rule that students cannot walk at graduation if they have not met all of the requirements, according to Erin Hughes, a spokeswoman.

Hughes said McGraw-Hill would pay for teachers’ overtime pay if scoring has to happen over the weekend, something she said she was not sure would happen.

When the department put out a call for teachers to grade the global history exam in January, only about 60 percent as many signed up as were needed, and the city was forced to drop the requirement that schools not grade their own tests. Many, many more exams are taken in June.

A teacher who was sent home early from a Brooklyn grading site on Monday after exhausting the answers in the online system said he was told that weekend scoring would be inevitable. Only about a quarter of the city’s 60,000 global studies exams have been graded, he said administrators at the site told graders today.

He said he also worried that the electronic scoring system would adversely affect students’ scores. Many of the essays he saw had the first several lines blocked out by McGraw-Hill’s effort to obscure details about students, and he said he marked all of the essays as unreadable.

Another issue, teachers said, is that graders might have marked essays as unwritten if students began them in the wrong place in the test booklet, or as not responding to the question if students wrote the wrong essay in each space.

“Back in the paper days you could flip around the booklet to see what else the student wrote, and figure out if the first essay was in fact the DBQ, and the essay in “Part IIIB” page was the thematic,” said a teacher with eight years of experience grading Regents exams, referring to the two essay types on history exams.

And a third teacher said bandwidth issues meant that several minutes elapsed at times between when graders asked for the next page to load and when it appeared on their screen. “This is asking a teacher with tired eyes from staring at a computer screen to remember that essay they were reading and pick up later,” the teacher said. “I can’t imagine this … having no negative effects on students.”

Overall, teachers said, the glitches raised serious questions about the city’s decision to outsource a grading process that had always been done in-house.

“We could have done this already if we’d had the exams in the school,” one teacher said. “It’s very unsettling and not good for the students.”

The proposed model, which was formally approved on Tuesday, included a methodology to calculate student growth that was nearly identical to the “value-added” model that State Education Commissioner John King brought to the board in April. Both models add new data points to the formula used to approximate how much each teacher has contributed to students’ growth.

But under state law, any model termed “value-added” would have required, controversially, that its weight increase from 20 to 25 percent on some teacher evaluations. King’s alternative this month was for the state to adopt an “enhanced growth model” that adds virtually all of the same data points but doesn’t have the value-added moniker. Spurning the name allows the state to avoid increasing the weight of test scores until all districts have at least one year of implementation under their belts, something the state teachers union has asked for.

“I would have thought that adding all these factors would qualify as ‘value-added,’ but this distinction was always opaque,” said Jonah Rockoff, a Columbia University economist who advised the state on its methodology “If the commissioner wants to keep the weight at 20 percent for another year then staying within the ‘student growth’ framework seems like the simplest way to do it.”

Both models will factor in more complex student and classroom characteristics to calculate learning on those state tests. But the April proposal was met with resistance from members who questioned the methodology’s reliability and opposed increasing the weight from 20 percent to 25 percent. The increase was one that lawmakers envisioned would take place for the current school year when they enacted the teacher evaluation legislation in 2010.

King’s proposal would stay in effect through end of the 2013-2014 school year, until New York City, which lags behind the rest of the state, has a chance to implement its teacher evaluation system for the first time.

With barely a peep of opposition, the board voted to adopt the “value-added” model at 25 percent beginning in the 2014-2015 school year. The changes affect only elementary and middle school teachers who teach English and math, who together make up less than 20 percent of the state’s teachers.

Chancellor Merryl Tisch first signaled that King’s proposal in April was in jeopardy last week, saying that forgoing the added weight of state test scores was a concession the Regents were willing to make.

“This is not the stuff that I feel we go to war over,” Tisch said.

The state teachers union was quick to claim credit for the amended proposal, issuing a lengthy statement that praised Tisch and the Board of Regents. In a sign that the chilly relations between the union and the State Education Department have not thawed, the statement does not mention King.

“NYSUT, as the voice of teachers across the state, remains committed to working as partners with the Regents and other policymakers toward our shared goal of raising standards and improving outcomes for all students,” said Dick Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers.

New York City Department of Education Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky said the city did not stake out a strong position on the issue.

“Honestly, it makes no difference,” he said. “I know this was a big issue for the state teachers union, but it really makes no difference between 25 and 20 [percent]. It isn’t what’s going to impact the teacher’s final score. It doesn’t change the data in a substantive way, so we don’t have strong opposition or support for the change.”

The state teacher’s union release refers to the “untested, unreliable Value-Added Model,” but the growth model that the Board of Regents formally approved today isn’t all that different. The basic growth model in place currently takes into account just four individual student variables: previous years’ test scores, whether a student is learning English, whether he has a learning disability, and whether his family is in poverty.

The “enhanced” growth model — as with the value-added model — takes into account many new and more complex variables. Now, the test scores of a student who was held back a year or who is new to a school will be weighted differently. Previous test scores in other subjects will also be considered.

Growth ratings will also be weighted based on how many special education or English language learning students a teacher has in her classroom.

The state will also count the test scores of students who were in attendance at least 60 percent of the school year, a change from the 2011-2012 school year that could account for nearly 150,000 students. Their scores will be weighted in part based on their rate of truancy.

Two factors that were part of the “value-added” proposal that got nixed from the newer version were a teacher’s class size and the number of overage and under-credited students. Those factors will be considered in 2014-2015 when state tests incrase to 25 perent. King said that there might be other data points to review with its contractor, American Institute of Research, to further refine the growth model.

A day before the teachers union is set to endorse a mayoral candidate, New York City’s principals union has backed former Board of Education president Bill Thompson while acknowledging that they don’t agree on all policy issues.

“I don’t know if we’ll always agree on what’s best,” said Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators. ”But that’s the difference here — having someone talk to you and be collaborative and listen to you.”

He added about Thompson, “He respects school leaders … and we’re not getting that” under Bloomberg.

Logan signaled that the union’s executive board was not at all unanimous in its decision. Thompson had twice as many votes as the next closest candidate, Logan said, but he won just 40 percent of the board’s vote.

The UFT’s endorsement is due out Wednesday afternoon. A CSA spokeswoman, Chiara Coletti, said the unions had not consulted each other on their picks. The last time the UFT and CSA endorsed the same candidates was in 2001, when both endorsed then-Public Advocate Mark Green in the general election. But the principals union stepped out in 2005 to endorse Fernando Ferrer for mayor, when the UFT sat out the election completely.

Logan said his union had been ”encouraged by [Thompson's] promise to call a moratorium on the co-location of new schools within older ones.” While Thompson has called for a temporary ban on charter school co-locations, he has also cozied up to the charter sector by supporting its expansion and declining, as some other candidates have, to call for charter schools that operate in city-owned buildings to pay rent.

Other reasons CSA chose Thompson, Logan said, include his pledges to cede control of the Panel for Education Policy, install an educator as chancellor, and return power to community superintendents.

The union endorsement confers cachet for the candidate, and it also suggests that CSA will work to turn out its members to campaign for Thompson. Logan said he would do everything he could to help Thompson get elected.

When Logan was asked what separates Thompson from mayoral candidate and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — another top contender for tomorrow’s UFT endorsement — Logan said, “Bill and Bill… have always been good friends of public education. … What separates them is our members have voted to endorse Bill Thompson.”

Bill Thompson stumped at an education event earlier this year. Thompson, seen as a strong contender for the UFT’s endorsement this week, has also cozied up to charter school advocates during the primary season.

Even as Bill Thompson has continued to criticize the Bloomberg administration’s education policies, he has courted the mayor’s education allies.

Thompson has privately dined with charter school backers and assuaged their fears about what his mayoralty would mean for them. He’s taken thousands of dollars in campaign donations from a Success Academy board member and won the fundraising support of Merryl Tisch, a top state education official who helped expand the charter school sector.

Most recently, he has distanced himself from some Democratic rivals by refusing to oppose a key education policy that the Bloomberg administration has used to help non-union charter schools thrive.

Thompson has managed to stay in favor with these groups even while getting support from Randi Weingarten, an old friend, and emerging as a favorite to get the United Federation of Teachers endorsement, which is scheduled to come on Wednesday (The principals union, a close UFT ally, is endorsing him on Tuesday). His ability to cultivate support from advocates who are often at odds with one another on education is a testament to his political savvy and his experience as a schools policymaker in New York City, political observers say.

“He’s been around a long time, he knows the political landscape and he has a lot of education cred,” said Jeffrey Henig, a political science professor at Teachers College Columbia University, referring to Thompson’s tenure as president of the Board of Education.

It also doesn’t hurt that Thompson’s odds of making it to a run-off in the crowded Democratic primary look increasingly good, said Doug Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College. “The UFT doesn’t want to back a loser and the smart money is that Thompson is in the run-off,” he said.

But the balancing act has drawn criticism from his rivals, including a Democratic opponent who is competing for the UFT’s endorsement.

“I think any organization wants to know if a candidate is consistent,” said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who said Thompson had changed his opinions on education to placate certain interests. “If you can’t believe in someone’s position, why would you feel comfortable endorsing him?”

In a brief interview last week, Thompson disputed the notion that support from certain groups would sway where he stands on education.

“I just continue to put forward what I believe is right for New York City schools, for our education system,” he said. “And I’m going to continue to do that no matter who finds that acceptable.”

A power breakfast

Throughout the early stages of the mayoral campaign, Thompson was doing what de Blasio and other Democratic candidates had also done: cozying up to the UFT and bashing Bloomberg’s record on education. In late January, Thompson stood with UFT President Michael Mulgrew and called for a temporary ban on charter school co-locations. A few weeks later, Thompson told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer what he thought about Bloomberg’s legacy on schools.

“In so many ways his administration has really had a failed approach to education,” Thompson told Lehrer on Feb. 15.

But just days later, Thompson had an intimate breakfast meeting with a small group of New York City’s deep-pocketed and influential charter school backers. The venue was Tisch’s home. The Regents chancellor would not publicly endorse Thompson for another two months but was already working feverishly behind the scenes to build support.

“Come January 1, 2014, the world is not going to end,” Thompson told the group, according to Gideon Stein, a Success Academy Charter Schools board member who attended the meeting.

Stein said it was the second time he’d met with Thompson and came away “impressed and encouraged with his evolution in thinking on a number of things that I care about in education.”

Stein said he took Tisch’s presence in the campaign as a strong indicator about how Thompson would govern the city’s school system. As New York State Board of Regents chancellor, Tisch appointed two commissioners, David Steiner and John King, who have overseen sweeping changes to state education policies, and was part of a lobbying effort that doubled the number of charter schools allowed to operated in the state.

“While I don’t agree with Thompson on every position, he has shown flexibility on the issues and, given the fact that Merryl is so involved in his campaign, I believe that he will be a real champion for all kids in New York City,” said Stein, who later gave nearly $5,000 to Thompson, the maximum allowed under the city’s public campaign finance rules. (Stein is the board treasurer of the Education News Network, GothamSchools’ parent organization.)

Thompson declined to discuss the meeting in an interview. “Bill’s had scores of meetings with people interested in improving education for kids across the city, because nothing is more important,” said Jonathan Prince, Thompson’s campaign manager.

Campaign officials also pointed to Thompson’s education speech for an idea of where he stood on the issues relating to charter schools.

Where he stands

Thompson didn’t talk much about charter schools in his speech, except to say that he’d hold them to the same standard as district schools, a pledge he’d have difficulty following through on since much oversight of charter schools take place at the state level.

A review of Thompson’s positions expressed at forums and in interviews suggest that he’s harder to pin down than as being in the UFT’s pocket or a serial Bloomberg critic, as he has been portrayed at times. He opposes school closures and has said he’d cede some of the mayor’s control, notably pledging to give up the majority on the city school board. But he supports expanding the charter school sector, supports giving charter schools space in city-owned buildings, and opposes requiring them to pay rent.

The February breakfast at Tisch’s home seemed to relieve others in attendance, who included New York City Charter School Center CEO James Merriman and Democrats for Education Reform Executive Director Joe Williams. Neither would comment for this story, but a political memo that Williams’ group released to supporters in May noted Thompson’s viability and Tisch’s role in reviving his campaign.

“His recent surge in momentum has surprised everyone but Merryl Tisch, who has been working behind-the-scenes to secure support for his race for months,” the memo says. “He is a real candidate who seems to be pacing himself well for the entire race.”

A tightrope act

Thompson’s ability to please — and frustrate — different sides of the education camps was on display last week. On Tuesday, Thompson angered many charter advocates when he skipped a mayoral forum hosted by a group that organizes charter school parents.

“I thought it was telling that he didn’t show up for the forum,” said Bill Phillips, president of the Northeast Charter School Association, one of the groups that sponsored the event. “I think if you wanted to show an interest in education that served all public school students in New York, you don’t cancel at the last minute. I don’t know how you take that as a positive sign.”

On Friday, Thompson showed up at a mayoral forum and was asked if he would require charter schools to pay rent in city-owned buildings. He said no, a response that drew some gasps from the charter-averse audience and a rebuttal from de Blasio.

“Lotta respect for Bill Thompson,” de Blasio said, “but totally disagree with his answer about rent for charters.”

De Blasio piled on after the forum ended. “He clearly is not willing to demand that they pay their fair share of rent and I was struck by the fact that DFER feels comfortable with him.”

Privately, charter school advocates say they still have reservations about Thompson, but he might just be the best option they have to work with. One of them paraphrased former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s comments about the U.S. Army to characterize his support for Thompson.

“You go into the campaign with the candidates you have, not the candidates you want,” said the supporter. “What are your alternatives? There’s some cause to say that he might be okay.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky announce the city’s graduation rates.

For Mayor Bloomberg, putting a positive spin on the city’s latest high school graduation numbers required him to get creative with his number-crunching.

The city’s four-year graduation rate fell by half a point, to 60.4 percent, making Bloomberg’s final press conference about the data the first to contend with a sharp decline.

During a press conference at City Hall this afternoon, Bloomberg said the fact that the city’s graduation rate did not fall more because of the state’s tougher graduation requirements was reason for celebration. Last year was the first time that students had to pass five Regents exams with a grade or 65 or higher, as opposed to 55.

“Everybody predicted that our graduation rates would fall precipitously and that did not happen,” Bloomberg said. ”This is showing improvement, not decline.”

In a PowerPoint presentation, Bloomberg highlighted how far the city’s graduation rate would have climbed had the standards in place last year also been in place earlier in his term. City officials pointed out that if the state had not raised its graduation standards, the city’s rate would have climbed by 1.4 points instead of falling.

And Bloomberg said he could have raised graduation rates even more had his policy proposals never been stymied by the United Federation of Teachers, spurring a fresh round of mutual criticism.

“Just think as far as we’ve come, just think how much more progress we’d be able to make if these reforms that we had proposed hadn’t been opposed at every turn by union leadership,” Bloomberg said.

He noted that graduation rates are higher in new small schools than they had been in the large schools they replaced under a school closure policy that the union has sued repeatedly to stop.

Bloomberg, who has sparred with the union fiercely in recent years, made his comments at a politically heated moment of the mayoral race. The UFT is set to endorse a candidate on Wednesday for the first time since 2001.

“The last time the UFT’s endorsement got somebody elected, it was better than two decades ago,” Bloomberg said, referring to David Dinkins in 1989. “It’s almost the kiss of death.”

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said in response, “Dozens of candidates in local and citywide elections have won with UFT backing in recent years, and many are seeking it this year, while running away from Bloomberg and his record. Right now most candidates would rather be the victim of zombie attack than get a Michael Bloomberg endorsement.”

Both Bill Thompson and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, seen as the top two contenders for the UFT endorsement, issued statements critical of the graduation rate gains under Bloomberg.

Mulgrew also took on Bloomberg’s characterization of the city’s graduation rates. “We’ve had a decade of no real curriculum, repeated reorganizations, relentless test prep and a lack of support for struggling schools,” he said. “The result is that black and Hispanic students are graduating at a far lower rate than whites and Asians, and a college readiness gap — 11.7 percent vs. 46.8 percent — that is completely unacceptable.”

Unlike most other large districts that posted graduation rate declines, New York City did show an increase in students’ college readiness, according to state standards. More students also graduated prepared for college according to the city’s own measurement of readiness, which reflects City University of New York remediation and entrance standards and third-party tests such as the SAT.

But while the graduation rate gap separating black and Hispanic students from white students narrowed slightly, white students still achieved the state’s college-readiness metric more than three and a half times as often as black and Hispanic students. And citywide, just 22 percent of students who entered high school in 2008 graduated ready for college last year.

Bloomberg did acknowledge that the largest decline in student subgroups was for English Language Leaners, which went from from 39.4 percent to 35.4 percent. Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the department would give more training and resources to schools with large ELL populations and make $2 million in new grants available for extended day programs, online courses, and additional instructional materials.

“More students are graduating ready for college and 21st-century careers, but we know that we have more work to do,” Walcott said.

Bloomberg closed the conference by saying the next administration has to continue the work he has done while in office.

“We would just become the laughingstock of the country if you were to roll back everything that has worked so well,” he said.

Chart

Like the other large school districts in the state, New York City saw its graduation rate decline last year. But it bucked the trend when it came to graduates’ preparedness for college, posting an increase where the other districts did not.

In recent years, acknowledging that a high school diploma does not guarantee college success, the state and city have each begun calculating high school graduates’ college readiness rates.

The state calculates an “Aspirational Performance Measure,” or APM, based on the percentage of students who graduated in four years with at least a 75 on their English Regents exam and at least an 80 on a math Regents exam. Those benchmarks are important in predicting students’ success in college, according to the state.

New York City’s APM rose slightly, from 20.7 percent for students who entered high school in 2007 to 21.9 percent for students who entered high school in 2008.

While the state cautions that the year-to-year figures are not directly comparable because the Regents exams that students had to take changed during that time, it is true that the city’s APM rose while other districts with similar or smaller graduation rate declines saw their APMs fall.

Yonkers was the outlier, going from having 13.8 percent of students hitting the state’s college-ready metrics in four years to 22.8 percent. Statewide, 35.3 percent of students who entered high school in 2008 were considered college-ready four years later.

New York City calculates a different metric, the College Readiness Index, which reflects admissions and remediation standards at the City University of New York as well as scores on third-party exams such as the SAT. The city said in a press release that 43.6 percent of graduates (and a smaller percentage of the original cohort) hit that standard.

On the state’s measure, New York City’s racial achievement gap narrowed slightly as black and Hispanic students achieved the APM at a higher rate, while white students achieved it slightly less often than in 2011. Still, white students achieved the college-readiness metric more than three and a half times than black and Hispanic students, or 39.1 percent of the time for white students compared to 11.1 percent of the time for black students and 12.2 percent of the time for Hispanic students. Asian students hit the APM at the highest rate of all, 52.8 percent.

State Education Commissioner John King presented new data about the state’s high school graduation rate to the Board of Regents today in Albany.

ALBANY — After listening to State Education Commissioner John King present the state’s latest graduation rate data today, members of the Board of Regents were divided on how to respond.

Some grumbled about the rates, pointing in particular to declines that the state’s five largest cities experienced. But others said they had expected far worse.

Though statewide graduation rates stayed steady at 74 percent, rates in the “Big Five” fell by 2.8 points on average, a dip that was largely weighted by a seven-point decline in Buffalo. In New York City, the four-year graduation rate dropped by half a point, to 60.4 percent.

Elsewhere in the state, districts considered “low-need” because many students come from relatively affluent families graduated students on time 94 percent of the time.

“Our affluent children do as well as anybody,” said Regent Kathleen Cashin, of Brooklyn. “Where we don’t do well is with the poor. This concerns me because of the fact that every single large city district has gone down.”

Cashin said the declines masked more significant problems in the big cities because they came “at a time of unfettered credit recovery,” when few regulations constrained how students in last year’s graduating class could earn make-up credits for classes they had failed. (In New York City at least, more regulations are now in place.)

But other Regents said they saw more reason for optimism in the new numbers because the declines were less than they had feared.

Students who entered high school in 2008 were the first required to earn a Regents diploma by passing five Regents exams with a 65 or higher. A less rigorous local diploma option disappeared, a change that critics said would leave thousands of students at risk of dropping out.

James Tallon, who represents schools along the state’s Southern Tier, said there had been a mentality that the graduation rate would plummet.

“To me, the conclusion that jumps out is that … when we got rid of the local diploma, the sky didn’t fall,” he said about the new numbers.

Wade Norwood, from Rochester, whose graduation rate fell 2.1 points from 45.5 to 43.4, said he thought the data showed mixed measures of success. He said it was clear that some but not all students earned the more challenging Regents diploma who might otherwise have graduated with the local diploma.

“We’ve raised the floor without crumbling the foundation, but we haven’t raised the ceiling,” Norwood said.

The standards for graduation will continue to get higher. Next year, the state will begin aligning Regents exams to the Common Core standards, after tying elementary and middle school reading and math tests to the standards this year. The phase-in will start with incoming ninth graders for the 2013-2014 school year, who will have to pass a Common Core-aligned algebra exam.

“We don’t expect any negative impact on graduation rates” in the upcoming years in response to the Common Core implementation, King said.

King’s announcement, to the Board of Regents during its monthly meeting, set the stage for a press conference that Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Dennis Walcott have called for this afternoon. The annual graduation rate announcement is typically a festive occasion for the mayor, who has staked his education legacy in large part on increased numbers of students finishing high school each year.

But last year, when the city’s graduation rate flattened (showing a 0.1 point decline) after several years of steady growth, Bloomberg acknowledged that tougher graduation requirements could put pressure on the city’s graduation rate.

Students who entered high school in 2008 were the first required to earn a Regents diploma by passing five Regents exams with a 65 or higher. The less rigorous local diploma option, which for years helped prop up the city’s overall graduation numbers, disappeared, a change that critics said would leave thousands of students at risk of dropping out.

Statewide, the dropout rate last year was 3.5 percent, up from 2.7 percent in the previous two years, according to a report issued by the State Education Department earlier this spring. The increase was highest among students with special needs, whose “safety net” graduation rate option also vanished last year.

The city also made it tougher for students to earn the course credits and test scores required to graduate. City principals were required to limit the controversial practice of credit recovery, which allows students to quickly earn class credit through online work.

The city also began prohibiting teachers from grading exams taken by students at their schools, a practice seen as conducive to inflated test scores. Amid a citywide decline in Regents exam scores last year, schools that participated in a pilot of “distributed scoring” last year saw scores fall more than schools that did not. Citywide, just-passing scores fell by half.

“If you raise standards, it is going to be tougher to get everybody up to the same level,” Bloomberg said last year. “But we’re in favor of raising standards.”

Bloomberg does have some opportunities for spin when he takes the podium at City Hall this afternoon. Despite the decline, the city’s graduation rate is still about 15 points higher than it was in 2005. And two other big cities’ graduation rates fell even more: Buffalo saw its four-year rate drop by 7 points, and Rochester dropped by 3.4 points.

But Syracuse and Yonkers, which round out the state’s “Big Five” districts, saw declines that were smaller than New York City’s, King said. And the state’s overall four-year graduation rate held steady at 74 percent, he said.

Jack Cahn (center), who was disqualified from Stuyvesant’s student body president election this week, talks with a former opponent, Keiran Carpen (left), and his running mate Remi Moon.

A series of seemingly minor campaign violations cost the winning candidate for student body president at elite Stuyvesant High School the election. But with a flair for drama that conjures up scenes from the movie “Election,” he isn’t giving up.

When votes were tallied earlier this week, Jack Cahn won in a relative landslide, 447 votes to 329. But Cahn, a junior, learned he was disqualified late Tuesday night when the school’s Board of Elections, a 19-member student body, released the results.

Now, Cahn and his supporters, led by a twin brother who is also editor of the student paper, are waging a campaign to have the decision over turned. They are petitioning online, posting updates to Facebook and appealing their case to administrators, despite already getting word that the ruling would be upheld.

The saga is decidedly low stakes. It’s Regents week and most students at the 3200-student school today were focused on their exams. Many seemed only vaguely aware of the controversy and two teachers said they hadn’t heard about it at all.

Some students also said that they didn’t consider the election to have much of an impact on their school lives, though everyone agreed that a chronic lack of toilet paper and paper towels in the restrooms, a major issue in the race, was a legitimate concern.

Like most positions in student government, the role of president at Stuyvesant is primarily one of advisory. But Cahn campaigned aggressively. He pledged to elevate student voice and demand changes to some school policies, even vowing to threaten to go to the press if promises weren’t kept.

“Right now, students at Stuy have very little power,” Cahn said. “We are feeling very disrespected.”

His campaigning also landed him in hot water with the Board of Elections, which enforces the school’s 8-page election regulations. Before the election, Cahn received ”strikes” for posting too many posters in one place and leaving personal belongings in the school’s student union office.

The third violation, which was reported on election day and triggered the disqualification, was for “slander” of Cahn’s opponent. A small faction of the board made the decision based on a private Facebook message that gently criticized his opponent’s record, which Cahn sent to other candidates seeking their endorsements.

Cahn said he believed he has been unfairly targeted by the Board of Elections because he posed a threat to the administration.

“There’s a general perception that the reason I’m being disqualified is that I’m the first candidate in probably four years that anyone has seen that actually stands a chance of strengthening student government,” Cahn said outside the school on Friday. He wore a suit because he was planning to meet with administrators again to discuss his appeal.

Cahn said that he had ambitious plans as president, which included setting up a way for students to evaluate teachers online. That proposal, he said, drew criticism from one teacher at the school who called him “anti-teacher” while campaigning.

In some ways, the controversy is the latest incident in a long history of activism at the prestigious school that has occasionally rankled the administration. Often, that activism has been channeled through the century old student newspaper, The Spectator. In 1998, a 16-year-old Micah Lasher was part of an editorial team that published articles criticizing the policy of filling teacher vacancies based on seniority. The administration eventually shut the paper down until Lasher launched a successfu campaign to get the paper restored. For Lasher, it was the first of what would become many disputes with education bureaucracy.

Cahn’s brother, David, started a petition on Change.org that has 250 signatures calling on the principal, Jie Zhang, to overturn the decision. And while David, editor of The Spectator, has recused himself from the paper’s coverage because of the conflict of interest, articles and op-eds published to its web site have been favorable to Jack.

The controversy has also been fodder for debate on Cahn’s Facebook page, where students involved in Stuyvesant elections, both past and present, have argued over how the election was handled. Some said the Board of Elections abused its authority by enforcing rules for petty violations.

“Even though these rules might be antiquated and might seem unfair, we can’t change the rules in the middle,” wrote a former board chairman who has since graduated. “It is as if the judge changed the rule in the middle of the soccer game.”

Zhang heard Cahn’s appeal and upheld the Board of Education’s decision on Wednesday.

“We recognize that the BOE, like all organizations, is imperfect, nevertheless it serves as a vital buffer between the school administration and the election process,” Zhang wrote.

In her email, Zhang, who did not respond to requests for comment, said she hoped that Cahn “will accept this decision with dignity, and will find other ways of serving the school.”

But Cahn said he would keep fighting and hoped that support from his opposition would help his case. Keiran Carpen, a sophomore who ran as vice president on the opposing ticket, said that he was prepared to concede the victory, a source of disagreement between him and the new president, Eddie Zilberbrand.

“As much as I want to win … I just don’t think it’s fair to win on these grounds,” Carpen said.

A chart prepared by the Department of Educations shows the proportion of children screened for gifted programs who were deemed eligible, applied, and were offered a seat in a program in the last three years. The department offered seats in gifted programs to fewer applicants this year than in the past.

A smaller proportion of applicants to city gifted programs this year will get good news in placement letters that the city mailed today, nearly a month after it was originally supposed to notify families.

After the city changed its policy so that eligible applicants are no longer guaranteed seats in gifted programs, just 68.5 percent of applicants were given one, according to data that the Department of Education released today.

Last year, 82.7 percent of applicants were given with seats, down from 87.2 percent in 2011. (Applicants were only guaranteed seats in the past if they ranked every gifted program in their district, which is why not every applicant ended up with an offer.)

The lower placement rate means that fewer children were offered spots in gifted programs this year than last year, even though the number of students meeting the city’s standards was significantly higher. The tally of eligible children rose sharply after Pearson, the company that administered the screening tests, revealed that it had made major errors in calculating the scores.

The errors delayed the admissions process by weeks and could cost Pearson its contract with the city. A legal challenge to the city’s methodology for calculating giftedness further delayed the admissions decisions.

Department officials said they had made fewer offers in part because less than 60 percent of families offered seats last year ended up taking them.

Officials also cautioned that gifted programs should not be viewed as the only way to get a high-quality education in the city.

“We try to make offers to as many families as possible, but our gifted and talented programs are just one part of the wide menu of school options we’ve created for parents,” said a Department of Education spokesman, Devon Puglia. “A great neighborhood school or program can deliver instruction that is just as good as any gifted and talented program.”

The most email newsletter of Democracy Prep Public Schools touted Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations secretary general, as the speaker for the charter network’s first high school graduation ceremony. He joins dozens of other prominent people who will appear at city schools’ graduations this month.

The secretary general of the United Nations joins luminaries in media, the arts, and public service as speakers at city graduation ceremonies this month.

Ban Ki-Moon will speak June 24 at Democracy Prep Charter High School, which is graduating its first class this year. Recruiting the graduation speaker was a feather in the cap for Seth Andrew, the charter network’s founding director, who is stepping down at the end of the month.

Among the many Ray Kelly, the city’s police commissioner, and Salvatore Cassano, the fire department commissioner, are each speaking at high schools with a focus on public safety. A Baltimore Ravens football player will speak at a Manhattan school that serves many transfer students. And in a coup that is likely to excite teachers, Jad Abumrad, host of NPR’s “Radiolab,” is speaking June 24 at Lyons Community School in Brooklyn. 

Chancellor Dennis Walcott will speak at 20 graduation ceremonies, four more than then 16 he appeared at last year. He will appear at elementary, middle, and high schools; selective schools and ones that accept students who have flunked out before; schools that prepare graduates for work as well as college; and two charter schools, including Democracy Prep. Walcott will also share the stage on June 24 at the Cinema School, which is also graduating its first class, with James Murdoch, a top deputy at NewsCorp to his father, Rupert Murdoch.

The city also released statistics about high schools’ top graduates:

For the Class of 2013, there are approximately 398 valedictorians. Of these students, 66% percent are female, 48% percent speak a language other than English at home and 74% percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Those statistics are mostly identical to those posted in each of the most recent years. Some of them also mirror national trends: Estimates put the proportion of valedictorians who are women at over 70 percent. The proportion of valedictorians who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, however, is 9 percentage points higher than in previous years. Citywide, poverty has been on the rise among students and their families.

The city’s full press release about the graduation speakers is below.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS FOR NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS’ GRADUATION CEREMONIES REPRESENT THE ARTS, BUSINESS, AND GOVERNMENT

Artists, business leaders, authors, educators, actors, and government officials this month are coming to New York City’s public schools to congratulate and offer words of wisdom to the graduates of 2013.

Here is a list that highlights some of the graduation keynote speakers by date of the graduation and school:

June 20

Rob King, vice president of editorial, print, and digital media at ESPN – Business of Sports School.
Robin Roberts, ABC’s “Good Morning America” host – Young Women’s Leadership School, Harlem.
Lauren Velez, television actress – Leon M. Goldstein High School.

June 21

Wendy Williams, media personality and author – Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology.
Salvatore Cassano, FDNY commissioner – FDNY High School for Fire and Life Safety.
Charles Rangel, United States congressman – PS 79 The Horan School.
Christopher M. Livaccari, director of education and Chinese language initiatives at the Asia Society – East-West School of International Studies.
Dr. Ricardo Fernandez, president of Lehman College – High School of American Studies at Lehman College.
Jennifer Raab, president of Hunter College – Hunter Science High School.

June 24

Raymond Kelly, NYPD commissioner – High School for Law Enforcement and Public Safety.
His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations – Democracy Prep.
Grace Meng, United States congresswoman – Francis Lewis High School.
Hakeem Jeffries, United States congressman – Transit Tech Career and Technical Education High School.
Mary Wittenberg, president and CEO of New York Road Runners – Gaynor McCown Expeditionary Learning School.
James Murdoch, deputy COO of Newscorp, and Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs – The Cinema School.
Chris Canty, defensive end for the Baltimore Ravens – Murray Hill Academy.
Jad Abumrad, co-host of NPR program Radiolab – Lyons Community School.
Clem Richardson, New York Daily News columnist – Channel View School for Research.

June 25

Dr. Joseph Polisi, president of the Juilliard School – Frank Sinatra School of the Arts.
Vanessa Williams, actress, singer and dancer, and Will Chase, Tony Award-nominated actor – Bronx Theatre High School.
Cheryl Wills, NY 1 news anchor – Unity Center for Urban Technologies.
Daniel Reed, president of the NBA Development League – Manhattan Business Academy.
Dr. Pedro Noguera, urban sociologist at NYU – Academy for Language and Technology.

June 26

Ann Tisch, founder and president of the Young Women’s Leadership Network – Young Women’s Leadership School, Astoria.
Nancy Giles, CBS Sunday Morning contributor and actress, Jamaica High School.
Maher Nasser, Director, Outreach Division, United Nations Department of Public Information – CSI High School for International Studies.
An-My Lê, artist, 2012 MacArthur Grant winner – Bard High School Early College, Manhattan.

Keynote addresses by Department of Education officials:

Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott – Hospital School Program, June 13; D75 Program at JFK Jr. School in Queens, June 14; PS 3 Margaret Gioiosa in Staten Island, June 18; Urban Institute of Mathematics in the Bronx, June 19; P.S. 219 Kennedy-King in Brooklyn, June 19; GED Plus, June 20; OACE Nursing Program, June 20; J.H.S. 57 in Brooklyn, June 20; P.S. 196 in Queens, June 20; P.S. 86 in Queens, June 21; LYFE program, June 21; Tompkins Square Middle School in Manhattan, June 21; The Cinema School in Manhattan, June 24; Kingsborough Early College School in Brooklyn, June 24; Democracy Prep Charter High School, June 24; University Neighborhood High School in Manhattan, June 24; Queens High School for Information, Research and Technology, June 25; New Dorp High School in Staten Island, June 25; Bard High School Early College (Manhattan & Queens), June 26; Explore Charter School in Brooklyn, June 26.

Chief Academic Officer and Senior Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky – International High School at Lafayette in Brooklyn, June 21; High School for Excellence and Innovation in Manhattan, June 25.

Senior Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg – Uncommon Charter High School in Brooklyn, June 14; Sunset Park High School in Brooklyn, June 26.

Deputy Chancellor Corinne Rello-Anselmi – Hospital School Program, June 13; P.S. 108 Philip J. Abinanti in the Bronx, June 20.

General Counsel Courtenaye Jackson-Chase – Hellenic Classical Charter School in Brooklyn, June 25.

Deputy Chancellor Dr. Dorita P. Gibson – ReStart Academy Program, June 19; OACE Nursing Program, June 20; GED Plus, June 20; The BELL Academy in Queens, June 21; Kingsborough Early College Secondary School in Brooklyn, June 24.

For the Class of 2013, there are approximately 398 valedictorians. Of these students, 66% percent are female, 48% percent speak a language other than English at home and 74% percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

New York City teachers fared slightly better than teachers in the rest of the state on metrics that will now factor into their annual ratings.

In the city, 8 percent of teachers received ratings of “highly effective” on their state growth scores for the 2011-2012 school year, compared to 6 percent in the rest of the state, according to data that the city released today. Another 76 percent of city teachers netted “effective” ratings, compared to 77 percent in the rest of the state.

In both the city and the rest of the state, 6 percent of teachers received “highly ineffective” ratings on their growth scores.

Growth scores calculate students’ improvement on state math and reading tests, adjusting for the students’ past performance, the performance of similar students, and the reliability of the exams. Starting next year, under the city’s new evaluation system, they will count for 20 percent of the ratings of teachers whose students take state math and reading exams in grades three through eight. (The state had planned to adopt a different formula and increase the weight to 25 percent but appears likely to drop the plan for now.)

The new numbers support city and union officials’ argument that new teacher evaluations that weigh student test scores, which will be produced next year for New York City teachers for the first time, are unlikely to result in large numbers of teachers receiving low ratings. Two consecutive “ineffective” ratings could trigger termination proceedings under the law.

The state released the teacher rating data to districts back in August, nearly a year ago, and teachers who received the scores got a chance to the view them in December. In the future, the public will get a window into the scores, but in accordance with a law passed last year, only aggregate data will be available and parents will have to ask their principal for access. The state is supposed to shield all information that could allow people to link ratings with individual teachers.