Several Texas school districts filed suit this week against the Texas Education Agency, charging that education commissioner Robert Scott is misinterpreting a new state law on grading policy, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Scott says the new law, which banned no-fail and minimum-grade policies used by most Texas school districts, applies to assignments and report cards, but the school districts say the law should only apply to assignments. The policies mean, for example, that teachers can't give a student a grade on an assignment lower than a 50. The idea is that while students are still getting a failing grade, they can catch up later on.

"The ultimate goal is to give kids hope," said Sarah Winkler, the president of the Alief school board. "Kids make mistakes. A 50's still an F. We're offering them the opportunity to still pass."

But the bill's author sided with the commissioner.

"It is never appropriate to force a teacher to give a student a grade that they haven't earned," she said in a statement. "When I explained the bill to the Senate and when it passed unanimously in both houses, it was very clear that the policy was to apply to all student grades, including cumulative report card grades."

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The Boston school district has targeted 14 schools for serious restructuring that could lead to closure if they don't improve.

Superintendent Carol R. Johnson announced plans for the schools last night during a meeting where she presented the district's new "Acceleration Agenda 2009-2014," a plan Johnson hopes will help the nation's oldest public school district close achievement gaps and graduate most students ready for college and career.

The schools were chosen based on persistently low state test scores. The options include longer school days, replacing some or all of the school's staff, closing the school and opening another in its place, or closing the school and sending the students to another school.

"For our very survival, we must launch a new era for Boston public schools,'' Johnson told a packed auditorium. "We are prepared to innovate.''

The schools must post a 10-point gain in either math or reading scores by June 2012, according to the district's literature.

Johnson is probably one of the nation's most experienced superintendents when it comes to school turnarounds. She employed similar strategies while leading districts in Minneapolis, Minn. and Memphis, Tenn.

The Boston approach to "fresh starting" a school has a twist, however, on the strategy she's employed for a decade—one likely to help Massachusetts with its Race to the Top application. Such schools, at which the entire staff would have to re-apply for jobs and the principal would be replaced, would no longer be directly run by the district, but by a charter school operator, charter management organization or other education management organization.

This is a shift for Boston, where Mayor Tom Menino, who controls the schools, had long opposed the growth of charter schools, a position he softened in his successful campaign for re-election this fall.

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The New Orleans mayoral race could get more interesting today--especially for those who care about public schooling--with the entry of Leslie Jacobs, a former member of Louisiana's state board of education and the city school board, into the contest.

Jacobs, an insurance executive in New Orleans, is reportedly going to announce her candidacy today. She's already got a Web site in place to enlist supporters.

It's safe to say that Jacobs is responsible for much of what public education in New Orleans looks like now, four years after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters devastated the city. She was one of the main architects of the Recovery School District, the state-run entity that had already taken over five failing schools, and subsequently took over the rest of the city's low performers after the storm. Jacobs, who stepped down from the state board last year after serving 12 years, has been one of the loudest champions of charter schools, which are now the dominant form of public schooling in New Orleans. She was also behind the creation of Louisiana's accountability system, including its high-stakes state exams.

What would it mean for schooling in New Orleans if Jacobs were to become mayor? Given that the mayor of the still-recovering city has a panoply of issues to attend to, like health care and housing, it may not be possible to put schools front and center. That's especially true since the state of Louisiana, in the form of schools chief Paul Pastorek, and Paul Vallas, the superintendent of the RSD, have such a heavy hand in operating and governing New Orleans' public schools.

But education is certainly where Jacobs has made her mark and it will surely have to make up an important part of her message to voters. I think it's probably safe to assume that she'd take a much keener interest in the city's public schools than Mayor Ray Nagin, who has largely stayed out of the education arena.

I also can't help but wonder whether Jacobs is interested at all in the idea of mayoral control for New Orleans' schools. After all, the state RSD authority for New Orleans expires soon, and it's still very unclear what form of governance will take its place.

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A federal judge told Chicago Public Schools it must move quickly on allowing students to transfer out of a high school made infamous this fall by the death of one of its students. A group of students had sued the district last week, saying it was denying their right to education by not allowing them to transfer, the Chicago Tribune reports.

At least 100 students have transferred from Christian Fenger Academy High School since the September beating death of student Derrion Albert a few blocks from the school. The fight leading to Derrion's death was videotaped and broadcast across the country, bringing attention to youth violence. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder traveled to the Windy City last month to meet with students at Fenger and encourage a national dialogue about youth violence.

The district has offered three options to students who want to leave Fenger, but parents and community activists want a school turned into a military academy to re-open as a neighborhood school. Fighting between two rival neighborhoods at Fenger sparked the fight that killed Derrion.

Four Chicago teens have been charged with first-degree murder in Derrion's death, three in regular court and another as a juvenile.

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The Dallas Independent School District has made progress in recovering from a series of financial mismanagement problems that left it with a yawning deficit last year, but the north Texas district isn't out of the woods yet, The Dallas Morning News reports.

A new audit shows the district ended the 2008-09 school year with a $22 million deficit, an improvement over the $74 million deficit the school district faced early last school year. The gap, caused by bad spending practices, forced the district to lay off hundreds of teachers in mid-fall and provoked anger among community members.

In the ensuing controversy, top district executives resigned or were dismissed, and local advocacy groups were calling for superintendent Michael Hinojosa to be fired.

To help get back on track, the district hired Larry Throm, who is well-respected for his work in managing the finances of the Austin, Texas school district, as the chief financial officer. Throm told The News the district is no longer overspending and will use short-term borrowing against projected tax revenues to help regain stability.

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District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee says she would feel "very responsible" if Mayor Adrian Fenty didn't win re-election next year.

Rhee made the comment during a question and answer panel on Friday, The Washington Post reports. Fenty, a former city councilman who is in his first term as mayor, made the city's beleaguered school system his first priority when he took office in 2007, successfully lobbying his former colleagues to give him control of the school system. Fenty has said he's told other city department heads to give Rhee whatever she needs to make improvements.

"The decisions we have made...were not always things that would guarantee harmony among adults," Rhee told the audience at Bloomberg's invitation-only Washington Summit, which drew CEOs, elected officials and other bold-faced names.

The hard-charging chancellor's reforms have made her a national star in and out of education policy circles, but have caused some heartburn at home. Rhee and Fenty have found themselves locked in a battle with the city council after she laid off more than 300 teachers and other school staff members last month. The action escalated tensions with the unions, led to student protests and hours of council hearings.

Even as the pair has faced criticism, Rhee says her boss told her "... if I'm not re-elected then we'll go down in history as the only administration that made every decision in what we believed to be the best interests of children instead of what was in the best interests of getting re-elected."

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Is the solution to closing the achievement gap in the suburbs?

Judging from the findings of this new study by Columbia University researchers, the answer is yes.

After examining the nation's eight remaining desegregation programs that enable disadvantaged students to cross school district boundary lines to attend more-affluent, suburban public schools, the researchers conclude that the programs are "far more successful than recent choice and accountability policies at closing the achievement gap and offering meaningful school choices."

It's a fascinating conclusion that runs counter to most of the methods and strategies at work in public education right now to close the achievement gap. The authors acknowledge that the programs--in Boston, East Palo Alto, Calif., Hartford, Conn., Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Rochester, N.Y., and St. Louis--are "out of sync" with current practice. Except for the program in Minneapolis, all have been in place for at least two decades, and all the programs stem from court rulings and legislation meant to create equitable educational opportunities for disadvantaged students.

The research team, led by Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, will present its findings today at a conference at Howard University in Washington. The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, based at Harvard Law School, convened the conference and is using the study's findings to call for restoring "a desegregation focus to U.S. education policy."

The authors also conclude that the desegregation programs have improved racial attitudes in the mostly white suburban communities where the urban kids attend school.

So, should we be talking as much about letting poor students in failing urban schools transfer to high-performing suburban campuses, as we do about creating more charter schools and other alternatives for them in their neighborhoods?

Take a look at the study and the specific findings for each city, then let us know what you think.

RELATED: Check out Russo's earlier post here on the proposed new student assignment plan in Chicago's magnet schools, which would use socioeconomic factors as a way to make schools more diverse.

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It's clear now in the final rules for the Race to the Top grants that states will have to guarantee some big time buy-in from local school districts if they want to snag a slice of the $4 billion prize.

A state's "success factors," which include securing commitments from local districts, is worth 125 points of out of a total of 500. That's second only to teacher and principal effectiveness, worth 138 points. And of those 125 points, 65 are connected to how well a state can guarantee that local districts will carry out whatever reform agenda it proposes.

As Michele McNeil writes in her story today, the support of local school districts is so key that if there's a tie between states, and not enough money to award both of them, then the strength of the districts' commitment is the tiebreaker.

So, just how will a state's school district commitments be judged? According to the rules, states will have to show that districts, through binding agreements, have committed to "implement all or significant portions of the work outlined in the State's plan." On those agreements, Race to the Top judges will be looking for signatures of superintendents, school board presidents, and local teachers' union leaders, as well as "tables that summarize which portions of the State plans [local districts] are committing to implement and how extensive the [local district's] leadership support is."

I scoured the rules to find more on this, and, on page 223, found language explaining that once a state wins an RttT grant, its local districts will have three months to detail how they will implement the state's chosen reforms by completing "specific goals, activities, timelines, budgets, key personnel, and annual targets for key performance measures."

And if you look on page 768 (yes, I said page 768) of the full lineup of rules, you will find a "model" Memorandum of Understanding that the department would consider to be a strong agreement between states and their local school districts.

Judges will also be looking at not just how many districts have bought in, but how broad an impact they will have on student outcomes, which is probably good news for a state like California where it would be next to impossible to corral agreement from more than 1,000 school districts.

If California can get a few of its massive districts such as Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Long Beach, Sacramento, and Fresno to commit, the potential statewide impact would be broad indeed. Those six districts alone educate roughly 1 million of the state's 6 million public school children.

But would that be looked on as favorably, say, as a state like Colorado, where more than half of the 178 school districts have already signed letters of intent to indicate that they are on board?

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As most of you know, Pittsburgh is one of five four finalists in line to get big dough from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its plans to upgrade teacher quality in the district. (Omaha ducked out of the competition last week after learning the most it would receive from Gates would be $50 million for a plan that the district says will cost $65 million).

Last week at the Strategic Management of Human Capital conference here in Washington, I sat in on part of a presentation by Pittsburgh's deputy superintendent, Linda Lane, and John Tarka, the president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, as the pair explained their $85 million, multifaceted strategy. (Gates is expected to announce how the $500 million will be parceled out to the three school districts and coalition of Los Angeles charter schools later this month).

Pittsburgh has set a districtwide goal of improving students' college readiness to 50 percent by 2014, up from 29 percent this year. The district defined college readiness by looking at the number of students who scored at the advanced level on state math exams in 2008. Getting students to college undergirds Pittsburgh's entire proposal because of the city's "Pittsburgh Promise," a scholarship program that guarantees $5,000 a year for four years of college to students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average and an 85 percent attendance rate.

To get there, the district and the PFT have developed a menu of strategies to increase teacher effectiveness. At the center of it all is a new evaluation system that the district and union created jointly and have put in place in nearly half of the schools this fall. Teachers will be judged on multiple factors and by multiple people, though principals will remain the primary evaluators. In high schools, for example, some evaluations will include feedback from experts in a teacher's content area.

Labor and management have also committed to craft a performance-pay program that will be bargained.

"It's got to take more than a test score into account," Tarka said. "We've got to design something valid, equitable, and transparent, and [that] makes teachers feel like they can influence their own pay."

Other pieces of Pittsburgh's plan include a differentiation of roles for teachers and additional pay for those who take on those roles. For example, Lane said, the district will develop a 9th and 10th grade "teacher excellence corps" that aims to change the culture in the city's high schools by putting the best teachers in front of the youngest high school kids, who are the most vulnerable to dropping out. Those teachers would stay with the students through their freshman and sophomore years.

"We want the prestige to be attached to working with the most vulnerable kids," Lane said.

The district and union have also agreed to create an intensive approach to grooming new teachers who are hired to teach mathematics, English, science, and special education. Those novices will go through a year-long induction process that will include pairing them with experienced educators in high-needs schools for several months before they are assigned to their own classrooms.

Tenure, Lane said, will no longer be automatically granted at a teacher's three-year anniversary. "We are going to make it a milestone."

One audience member asked Tarka and Lane how they've been able to strike such a collegial, collaborative tone between labor and management over what are usually combative issues.

"Never surprise your union," Lane said. And Tarka, who said there's still plenty of tension to work through, particularly over a pay-for-performance program, gave props to Lane's trustworthiness before issuing a warning to the audience of officials from other school districts whom he surmised might be eyeing her.

"You all stay away from her," Tarka said.

ADDENDUM: Word is starting to spread about Pittsburgh's Board Watch, a good governance program that has been up and running in the city since January. I profiled their work recently in our Leading for Learning report. Board Watch is comprised of trained volunteers who attend all school board meetings and grade the members on how they adhere to the district's goals and stay focused on policy. If you'd like to see a Board Watch-like group emerge in your school district, you can learn how the folks in Pittsburgh did it in a free Webinar on Nov. 18 at 4 p.m. Eastern. Here's a link to register for the event.

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In San Diego, trustees on the city's school board are hopping mad at San Diego State University leaders, who have scrapped a long-held tradition of granting admissions preference to local students who meet the minimum eligibility requirements.

Because of its popularity, San Diego State has long used higher admissions standards than other California State campuses, and now, under the new policy, local students will have to compete with applicants from across the state, starting with next year's admissions cycle. Some San Diego Unified leaders worry that local students, many of them low-income Latinos, will be shut out.

The school board is holding a special hearing on the issue later today.

Officials at the university, which is the largest of the 23 campuses that make up the CSU system, insist that extreme budget pressures (which couldn't get much worse in the Golden State) forced them to shrink enrollment. Dropping the local-preference policy to make all students compete for admissions is one way they are reducing the size of their freshman classes.

It doesn't sound like San Diego State executives are likely to budge on this one, in spite of the public pressure the school district is putting on them.

While the school board goes to the mat for its students, the university's stance could perhaps spark a conversation in the district about the rigor of its high school curriculum. Another local district, Sweetwater Union High School District, has a special admissions agreement with San Diego State for its students who meet certain academic requirements, and university officials have said that program isn't going to change. A university official said the same arrangement could be made for San Diego Unified students, if the district were to adopt "major curriculum changes."

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