Mamdani Declares One Year Moratorium on AI in Elementary and Middle Schools

 from Mother Jones:

. . . . The decision, which comes a week before New York City public schools begin the year, “includes all software that uses student-facing generative AI.” Elementary and middle school students—about 600,000 students in total—will receive screen-time restrictions that loosen over advancing grades, ranging from zero to 45 minutes per day. Companion chatbots will also be prohibited for all grade levels. 

The city is also introducing biannual AI critical thinking training for high schoolers that cover determining what is and is not AI, impacts on careers and future skills, and AI-related biases, among others, along with limited pilot programs for a few classes per high school that incorporate AI tools into students’ learning “under the direct supervision of a trained educator.” 

“Children need their teachers and human connection in order to learn and in order to grow. And they need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with their teachers, and wrestle with tough problems on their own,” Mayor Mamdani said in a Wednesday press conference. “The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but that it is necessary. We do not see it that way.” . . . .

Corporate Welfare Charter Kingpins Try to Buy a New NYC Mayor

With the clueless Bill Deblasio soon vacating the Mayor's office, the hedge funders and the box store  billionaires who want to crush public schools and unionism in order to advance paternalist corporate charters and chain gang pedagogy are dumping tons of dollars into the trough where Eric Adams and Andrew Yang feed. From the NYTimes today:

. . . . Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire who owns the Mets, donated $500,000 to Mr. Yang’s super PAC and $500,000 to Mr. Adams’s in mid-May, when the two candidates were leading the polls. But as Mr. Yang’s support appeared to wane and Mr. Adams’s grew, Mr. Cohen cut off Mr. Yang and donated another $1 million to Mr. Adams.

A similar trajectory characterizes the giving patterns of Daniel S. Loeb, another hedge fund billionaire and an outspoken supporter of charter schools and former chairman of Success Academy Charter Schools. He donated $500,000 to Mr. Adams’s super PAC and $500,000 to Mr. Yang’s super PAC in mid-May. Three weeks later, as Mr. Adams was cementing his front-runner status, Mr. Loeb gave Mr. Adams’s super PAC another $500,000.

Both Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang have expressed support for charter schools.. . .

. . . .One thing some may hope to get is an expansion of charter schools in the city. Other billionaires financing super PACs in this primary include four investors who support charter schools, a favored cause of financiers skeptical of district public schools: Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones, who donated $500,000 and $600,000, respectively, to the Adams super PAC; Kenneth Griffin, another hedge fund manager, who has donated $750,000 to both the Adams and Yang super PACs; and Pennsylvania investor Jeffrey Yass, who donated $500,000 to Mr. Yang’s super PAC.

As it happens, the president of Mr. Adams’s super PAC is Jenny Sedlis, who is on leave from a charter school advocacy group, Students First NY, and co-founded Success Academy, which has received direct financial support from Mr. Griffin.

If you support public education, do everything you can to make sure that Eric Adams and Andrew Yang are defeated.

A Half Century of Segregated Schools in NYC

Important piece of journalism today in the Times.  Here's a clip:

New York City is starkly different today than it was 50 years ago. It is politically more liberal, and far more racially diverse. Yet one aspect has barely changed: The city’s public schools remain among the most segregated in the nation. 

The deep racial divide was highlighted last week, when eighth graders who had taken the specialized high school admission test received offers to attend New York’s highly selective public high schools. The statistics were striking: out of 895 slots in Stuyvesant High School’s freshman class, only seven were offered to black students. 

Racial and socio-economic segregation is even more pronounced in some parts of the city now than it was a five decades ago, though research released in the intervening years has shown that integration benefits all children. . . .

Stuyvesant High School's Talented .00878 Percent

A hundred years ago W.E.B. Dubois advocated for selecting that most "Talented Tenth" of African Americans to receive the best education available and, thus, become the leaders for efforts to integrate a virulently-racist American society. 

Today black youngsters seeking to attend New York City's best high schools must view Dubois's goal as purely aspirational.

Like thousands of other school systems in America, New York City's public school system is using the same standardized testing techniques that public and private schools (and colleges) have been using for over hundred years to keep back the black, put down the brown, and detour the poor. 

The students pictured above (from the New York Times) are some of the 29 black students of the 3,300 students of Stuyvesant High School.  Story here.

NYC Keeps Access to Top High Schools Away from Black Kids

Ten years ago Catherine Rampell published a piece in the NYTimes that showed ever so clearly how standardized tests continue to protect the privileged and to punish the poor.  This chart sums up the connection between standardized test scores and family income.  The same correlations will be found, regardless of the standardized test used:

In 2019, the same standardized exclusion instruments are still used, even as the use of a single high stakes test to seat students in the best public high schools of New York is getting new scrutiny.  Politicians of all stripes continue their silence on the issue:

. . . Mr. de Blasio’s proposal to scrap the entrance exam for the schools and overhaul the admissions process has proved so divisive that the state’s most prominent politicians, from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have mostly avoided taking a definitive position — even as black and Hispanic students are grappling with increasingly steep odds of admission into the city’s eight most selective public schools.

Meanwhile, 7 out of 895 students at Stuyvesant High School are black.

Students gain entry into the specialized schools by acing a single high-stakes exam that tests their mastery of math and English. Some students spend months or even years preparing for the exam. Stuyvesant, the most selective of the schools, has the highest cutoff score for admission, and now has the lowest percentage of black and Hispanic students of any of New York City’s roughly 600 public high schools.

New York City Drops Loser School Strategy

In a clear repudiation of everything that Gates, Broad, and the Waltons stand for, New York City officials have returned to some semblance of sanity after a long reign of educational terrorism.  

May the contagion spread.  From the NYTimes:

New York City Channels $210 Million in Corporate Charter Giveaways to Pre-K

From the Gothamist:

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña made the announcement yesterday, noting that the diversion of funds "will help us create high-quality, full-day pre-Kindergarten seats citywide that will deliver strong instruction"; the DOE also hopes to reduce class sizes citywide.

The move is a big one one for the de Blasio administration, as the mayor has been openly critical of charter schools, which notably expanded under Mayor Bloomberg. While campaigning this summer he announced plans to place a moratorium on the schools. The slashed funds will only affect schools that need the funding in the 2015-2019 fiscal year, and will not impact current charter school projects. "These are important steps that will dramatically improve educational outcomes for our students," Fariña said yesterday.

New York City Council Declares Opposition to the Majority of Murders

FromEd Week, followed by my comment:

The New York City Council has passed a resolution asking state officials to replace high-stakes standardized tests with multiple measures that collectively gauge student achievement.

The city council's education committee approved Resolution 1394 on Monday, and the full council approved it Tuesday by a vote of 49-0, according to a staff member in Councilmember Robert Jackson's office.

The resolution was written by a group of national organizations last year and has been circulated since then as a model piece of legislation to revamp current testing regimens.

Posted on the websites of such groups as Time Out From Testing and the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, the resolution has been endorsed by more than 18,000 individuals and 570 organizations, including the National Education Association and local school boards (you can see who signed it here).

New York City activists are hoping that the testing skepticism expressed by incoming Mayor Bill DeBlasio gives them reason for hope that the city's current testing program will be overhauled.

You can see the language of the entire resolution online, with its list of "whereas" statements that lay out the reasons for the action. But the action paragraph reads like this:

"The Council of the City of New York calls upon the New York State Education Department, the New York State Legislature, and the Governor to reexamine public school accountability systems and to develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment which do not require extensive standardized testing."

Comments:

Jim Horn

11:57 AM on December 11, 2013 

I think the Council's actions represent the moral equivalent of declaring that most murder should be outlawed or that we should have a limited amount of legalized slavery. Until high stakes testing, which is both racist and classist in its historical origins and current practice, is eradicated, sane and humane schools remain an entirely unrealized ethical imperative.

New York's 7 Million Dollar Teacher Observation Coaches

When Tennessee became the first state to implement a teacher evaluation system based on a Rube Goldberg designed observation rubric and invalid, unreliable, and unfair testing methodology, the State became a laughingstock.  

Now that same crackpot scheme has come to New York and most likely to a school near you, if your state or locality is accepting Race to the Top bribe money.

A clip from DNAinfo New York:

. . . .Across the city, the Department of Education has hired approximately 70 talent coaches like Barros — at a starting salary of $97,199, according to a job posting — to teach principals about the city's controversial new teacher evaluation system. The salaries are being paid using a federal Race to the Top grant, DOE officials said. 

Coaches like Barros — a former teacher and principal herself — visit two schools a day to provide professional development for principals and help hone their observational skills.“This is what I see Rex Ryan doing with the Jets," David Weiner, a deputy schools chancellor, said in a phone interview, noting the "granular level of information" they discuss when working with principals. “The talent coaches really are rock stars."  

The DOE first introduced talent coaches two years ago, starting with 20 schools and three talent coaches. There were 50 coaches at 300 schools last year, and the DOE took the program citywide this year, Weiner said. 

The talent coaches help ensure there’s consistency across the school system on how teachers are being graded, he said, noting that some of the high-poverty schools in the pilot saw “far more growth” in their teacher performance than others.. . 

It should be noted that Rex Ryan has never had a team in the Super Bowl, despite his promises last year.

Time for Moratorium on High Stakes Testing

My ed professor in graduate school used to say, "let the text speak for itself."

Sometimes, that is all you need in a moment like this.

However, I do have one "lingering" question.

Can we finally demand a moratorium on all high stakes testing?
 Or will we see NJ and NY go the way of NOLA
as we sit by why the profiteers continue to call the shots in education.

From the NYT

November 4, 2012

Back to School, Bundled Up, but With Lingering Questions

By CARA BUCKLEY

Cots lined the hallways, and toilets were limited or clogged, so some evacuees went to the bathroom on the floor. Volunteers, gagging at air made more fetid by unwashed bodies, took to wearing masks. “We gave them wipes,” a volunteer said, “but there’s only so much you can do with wipes.”

Custodians spent Sunday scrubbing and mopping, preparing this makeshift storm shelter in Hell’s Kitchen, which at one point housed some 1,000 displaced men, women and children, for the return to its day job — as the High School of Graphic Communication Arts.

The rush to sanitize the school was just one piece of the sprawling, shifting logistical puzzle, some would say nightmare, as the city’s 1.1 million public school students faced an educational landscape drastically altered by Hurricane Sandy. The city said that 57 schools were too damaged to reopen, which meant the city had to find new places for their 34,000 students. Eight buildings that normally house 24,000 students currently serve as shelters, and are set to reopen on Wednesday, a target several educators believed unfeasible. It was still unclear on Sunday whether students and teachers would be sharing their buildings with people now using them for shelter. (Graphic Communication Arts housed people evacuated from Bellevue Hospital Center.)

As of Sunday afternoon, 29 schools remained without power, with parents, teachers and students — many of them storm victims themselves — unsure when classes might resume, though the Department of Education said they were hoping to open Wednesday. Some of those that will reopen Monday might not have heat; the mayor advised that students wear extra sweaters.

The city Education Department was updating its schools Web site Sunday with the latest information and placing full-page advertisements in some newspapers. The mayor said the city made 1.1 million robocalls to parents over the weekend, telling them the status of their schools, though many families received follow-up calls with different information as situations changed by the hour.

“It is complex and people are going to make mistakes, and people are going to get misinformed,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference Sunday. Noting that schools would be closed, as planned, for Election Day, he added: “We know that, but it’s better to have another day of school, get most kids to school, find out where we need more resources, and then we’ll have Tuesday to try to adjust.”

Around 300 of New Jersey’s 589 school districts were to remain closed on Monday, said Barbara Morgan, a spokeswoman for the state Education Department. In a message Friday, John Bulina, president of the New Jersey School Boards Association, said it was possible some schools would “be unusable as educational facilities for quite some time.”

Some officials said they hoped to open schools by Wednesday, but cautioned against too much optimism. “Not all roads are safe for travel, student walkers, pickups and buses,” said an online note from Anthony Cacciola, the superintendent of the West Babylon school district, one of several on Long Island that were to be closed Monday. “The gas crisis,” he said, “has added another layer of great concern for staff travel and bus fuel.”

Students at the 57 New York City schools that cannot reopen will not relocate to their new schools until Wednesday. Sixteen schools in the eight buildings that have doubled as shelters were supposed to reopen Monday, but that date got bumped back two days after Department of Education officials toured the sites.

At Susan E. Wagner High School on Staten Island on Sunday, row upon row of cots made the gym look more like a Civil War field hospital than a high school. Piles of clothes and canned goods competed for space in the cafeteria with evacuees eating and milling about. Several dozen dogs, cats and birds — evacuees themselves — had taken up residence in the basement.

Because Staten Island was so brutally hit by Hurricane Sandy, it was not clear where all of the people housed in Wagner High School, which has 3,400 students, would go: many no longer had homes to return to.

Dennis M. Walcott, the New York City schools chancellor, said the city was working with the Department of Homeless Services to ensure safe reopenings on Wednesday. But some staff members at schools being used as shelters were skeptical.

“Everyone was kind of shocked to think they’d go through with this,” said Serge Avery, a social science teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the eight buildings. “It just did not seem feasible logistically.”

Ahmed Abdelqader, Brooklyn Tech’s senior class president, said many students were eager to return to class, especially seniors preparing for college admission, but, he said, “A lot of people were questioning whether they’d be safe at school.”

One teacher visiting Graphic Communications Arts, on West 49th Street, said it would be impossible for the site to be cleaned up in time. Evacuees and homeless men filled six floors, the teacher said and, unlike students, entered the building without being searched. “It had become a homeless shelter,” the teacher said. “The custodial staff would need an entire week.”

Some schools too damaged to open to students continued to serve multiple purposes. On Sunday, donations of clothes, shoes, nonperishable food, blankets and toys piled up at George L. Egbert Intermediate School, in Midland Beach on Staten Island. Adrienne Stallone, the principal, said floodwaters had bent the school’s doors, eaten away some walls and pushed others into different rooms. On Sunday, the school’s boiler was still under five feet of salt water in the basement.

The school has 1,000 students in grades six through eight who, starting Wednesday, will be taken to New Dorp High School for at least a week. Meanwhile, in Egbert’s gymnasium, gray voting machines lined one wall, draped with clear plastic tarps — the school was still scheduled to serve as a voting site on Tuesday, with the help of a generator, lights and heating tents.

“The transformer across the street is still underwater, and Con Ed says they can’t think of turning the power on until that’s dry,” Ms. Stallone said.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, estimated that 40 to 45 schools were most likely too damaged to reopen by the end of the school year, most of them in the hardest hit neighborhoods — Coney Island, the Rockaways and Midland Beach. “It’s going to be somewhat chaotic in these hard hit areas,” he said, “There are families and children who haven’t had heat or hot food for days. There are going to be problems.”

Chiara Coletti, a spokeswoman for the principals’ union, said principals were “very sympathetic” and committed to streamlining the integration of dislocated schools. And Marina Vinitskaya, the principal of the It Takes a Village Academy, which shares the old Samuel J. Tilden High School building in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, with two other schools, is expecting some 750 middle school students on Wednesday. The four principals would meet Monday, she said, to discuss the details. “We will be using every space that will be available and put our schools on a different schedule to make this happen.”

Guidance staff members at many schools were preparing counseling centers to tend to the psychological needs of students who might have been living without power or heat, or who had lost their homes.

The last time the city’s school system was so broadly disrupted was after the Sept. 11 attack. But Harold O. Levy, who led the Education Department then, said the terrorist attack left a broader psychological wound on students, with the logistics of finding classrooms for dislocated students being a secondary concern. “It’s unfortunate, it’s disruptive, and it’s particularly a concern within the context of our really awful truancy problems in this country,” Mr. Levy said, of the effects of school days lost to Hurricane Sandy, “But seen in this perspective it’s manageable.”

M. Carole Schafenberg, the principal at Public School 76 in Queens, is expecting up to 200 students from Public School 78, which cannot reopen because of water damage. Ms. Schafenberg said her school was underutilized anyway, and that now every empty classroom would be filled. She was most concerned however with busing problems — she heard that much of the bus company’s fleet that served her school was ruined, and worried about the lack of gas. She also wondered how to reach displaced children who might have moved in with other family members — should they instead enroll in the nearest school? “I don’t think anybody has found that out,” she said.

Guest Post: Tough Educational Challenges Make for Bad 'Reforms'

By John Thompson

There is an old saying that, "Tough cases make bad law." Similarly, the New York Department of Education, due to its size, is a tough educational challenge. Ordinarily, Eric Nadelstern's "The Evolution of School Support Networks in New York City" would primarily interest policy wonks, but since the architects of New York City's "reforms" have tried to impose them on the rest of the country, this acronym-packed account of governance squabbles holds lessons for all educators. It also helps explain why so many bad educational policies are being imposed on our nation's schools.

According to Nadelstern, the bad old "status quo," which dominated the NYC schools from 1968 to 2003, was a bunch of "fiefdoms," that rewarded loyal constituencies and perpetuated a culture of compliance. Nadelstern sought to replace those bad fiefdoms with good "networks" (as in Networks for School Renewal) and good "zones" (as in the Learning Zone.) But, Chancellor Rudy Crew co-opted the idea of devolution and supposedly created a bad "district" (as in the Chancellor's District) that micromanaged.

Then, Crew's bad version of decentralization was replaced by the Mayor Mike Bloomberg's good form of centralization, known as "mayoral control." The good Bloomberg dissolved the Board of Education, and created the Education Priorities Panel. Concurrently, the bad Bloomberg "ran roughshod over" the panel and imposed good policies (such as ending social promotion) and bad micromanaging (such as mandating 150 minutes of tutoring a week.)

Nadelstern's describes a Manichean division between righteous crusaders for "Children First," as opposed to "vested interest groups" who "preyed on the school system." The battle between good and evil became even sharper when Joel Klein became the chancellor. Klein, a litigator not an educator, came to the rescue not by addressing educational substance but by creating ten regional superintendents. To keep his people from becoming an "imperial superintendency," he stripped them of financial power. Klein gave the power of the purse to six regional operations centers (ROCs). But, the ROCs recreated the same "dysfunctional, top-down culture," and became "districts on steroids." So, Klein created an Office of New Schools. Klein used that office to staff schools with principals who had been trained in his philosophy. By the way, Klein had a "genius" for defeating the bad micromanagers. For instance, he defeated some of them by micromanaging the number of boxes (two) they could move from their old offices to their new ones.

If this narrative sounds arcane, please be patient because the really good stuff begins in 2004 when Nadelstern was promoted. Unfortunately, his boss had a different priority, the stress of the political conflict took its toll, and Nadelstern underwent two back surgeries. Then, the Autonomy Zone was created as "an antidote to regional mismanagement." The Zone was rebranded as Empowerment Schools and "we created the first integrated service center (ISC)." But Klein had a couple of different priorities, and he created the learning support centers (LSCs) and the partnership school organizations (PSOs). The presumably bad side of Klein mistakenly allowed the Division of Instruction to become "a safe haven" for dissenters. The good Klein later authorized Nadelstern to dismantle the bad division. But, the good PSOs created a balance between supporting schools and creating a "culture of accountability," while the bad PSOs made excuses. Also, the ISC "foundered," and the ROCs were reorganized along the lines of school support organizations (SSOs).

Nadelstern writes with unmistakable pride that his Empowerment Zone grew to 535 schools and 22 networks as he became "completely responsible" for the "day-to-day operations" of 1,700 schools. Because he met weekly with subordinates who made weekly visits to those schools, presumably Nadelstern could always divine who was using and who was misusing their power. On the other hand, the SSOs were not as prescient, and their "diffused reporting structure" was "problematic" when resolving problems.

Getting back the alphabet soup of "reform," the ISCs were aligned into clusters, but it took a high-profile battle with a deputy chancellor before it was determined that the right way to organize clusters was around function, not geography. Seven members of the chancellor's cabinet had worked for Nadelstern, but "in retrospect, it is easy to see that our work began to unravel the summer before Joel Klein's departure and my retirement." So, once again, the district is squandering millions of dollars by micromanaging schools.

For some reason, Nadelstern does not take the story full circle and he does not mention the emails that the Klein administration was forced to release due to the Freedom of Information Act. He did not ask whether the old de facto "office of constituent service" has been reconstituted for the benefit of charter schools and Klein's other allies (such as his new boss Rupert Murdoch.)

Instead, Nadelstern outlines recommendations for the top down destruction of top down governance. Centralized power should "nurture successful networks" while protecting them from the networks that would destroy them. That way, the opponents of the superintendents' opponents would be empowered, as their enemies are driven out of the system. Then, good principals would reign supreme, unfettered by teachers' representatives or, for that matter, the administrators with the best knowledge of how schools actually operate - assistant principals. The good superintendents, using aggregate student data, would reward and punish principals and networks. And, none of the palace intrigue would influence the objective evaluations of principals or teachers...

Seriously, why is Nadelstern so confident that he can tell the difference between the top down, centralized punishment of adults (in service to children,) as opposed the micromanaging that damages students? Given the time that Nadelstern and Klein devoted to the DOE's battles over ROCs, ISCs, LSCs, PSOs, and SSOs, how could they had time to figure out whether their data had a connection to the realities inside schools? How could they ensure that their good principals and superintendents, when unchecked by other peoples' power, conveyed reliable information to the righteous few who held them accountable? And, even if Nadelstern could staff every school with administrators with the sterling moral character required to report the whole truth, given the damage done by the stress of the political combat that felled him, why would he think that school leaders could survive the unrelenting pressure that was imposed on them?

Nadelstern worked for a tough litigator whose policies damaged some students in order to help others, in the belief that a final victory over the forces of darkness would liberate them all. Since Klein created a system where it was unlikely that accurate information would be conveyed up the chain of command, it would have been nice if his deputy had cited research on how their reforms were actually implemented or journalism documenting the damage that was done to schools that they left behind. It would have also been refreshing for a person in Nadelstern's position to balance his reports of big increases in the graduation rate with an acknowledgement that "credit recovery" programs jacked up those numbers.

Given the enormous challenge of reforming central offices, should he have not urged novices like Klein to stick with the big enough task of reforming the district's administration? Why would they have possibly thought that they could train an entire system to think the way that they think? Why were they so confident in their ability to identify which schools deserved to be rewarded and punished?

Nadelstern is so convinced that a "culture of accountability" produced the improvements that occurred in his school, he ignores the damage that it did to other schools. He seems obsessed with the political combat that it took before he was "permitted to commander the chancellor's conference room at Tweed" so that he could enact the constructive part of his agenda. I have no doubt that Nadelstern benefitted some students when he worked with 14 network leaders to develop a "strong common culture of service to schools." But, his own words seem to indicate that his boss' "reforms" did more harm than good, and that their accomplishments are transitory. And, why did he adopt a risky bank shot of engaging in brutal bureaucratic combat in order to achieve the opposite - a culture where only some favored schools could treat educators and students with respect?

The answer, I bet, is linked to the enormity of the challenge of gaining control, in order to relinquish control. My theory was that the obsession with fighting New York-sized political battles blinded people to the opportunities to draw upon the Big Apple's strengths. Rather than rooting out all dissent, they could have better served students by making compromises and building on the city's diversity. And the same applies to Klein's and Nadelstern's acolytes who feel so entitled to use the tough and unique case of New York City in order to micromanage the way that districts across our diverse nation run their own classrooms.

Dr. John Thompson was an award-winning historian, lobbyist, and guerilla-gardener who became an award-winning inner city teacher after crack and gangs hit his neighborhood. He blogs at thisweekineducation.com, and huffingtonpost.com, and is writing a book on 18 years of idealistic politics in the classroom and realistic politics outside.

When Bribes Don't Buy Buy-In, New York Ed Commish Tries the Extortion Route

From the NY Times, by Fernanda Santos:

New York State’s education commissioner threatened on Tuesday to withhold tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to struggling schools in New York City and nine other districts statewide if they do not prove by Saturday that they will carry out new evaluation systems for teachers and principals.

Officials and union leaders in each district must first agree on the details of the evaluation systems, like how much weight students’ standardized test scores will have on the annual ratings that teachers and principals receive. Compromise has thus far proved elusive.

Of the 10 districts, which are the only recipients of the federal grants in New York, only Rochester and Syracuse as of Tuesday had submitted proposals for the state’s review, the commissioner, John B. King Jr., said in a statement. “When the ball drops at midnight on New Year’s Eve,” he said, “the money drops off the table, and it will be difficult to get it back.”

For New York City, it would mean losing roughly $60 million for 33 schools whose graduation rates and test scores put them among the state’s worst.

The money, known as school improvement grants, is supposed to help the schools lift their results through a series of changes, like replacing principals and at least half the staff members; giving teachers extra time for training and preparation; and extending the school day. In New York City, it offers, in essence, an alternative to the most common approach to dealing with failing schools, which has been to close them.

And there might be more at stake. Dr. King said Tuesday that the 10 districts could also lose their shares of the $700 million in federal financing that New York State won through the Race to the Top competition, because carrying out an evaluation system in struggling schools is among its requirements.

The Race to the Top program requires a new statewide teacher-evaluation system, and the methods used in the struggling schools could shape it, because districts are unlikely to want competing processes.

The State Legislature passed a bill last year calling for new evaluation systems, but the unions and the Board of Regents have been battling in court over the role of standardized test scores.

In response to Dr. King’s threat on Tuesday, New York City’s schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, released a statement saying that city and teachers’ union officials had been in discussions for months and were all “cognizant of the deadline.”

The two sides are scheduled to meet on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss the evaluation system, and the union’s president, Michael Mulgrew, said Tuesday that there was still hope for a deal.

The school improvement grants have been the subject of increased scrutiny in recent weeks, after Dr. King and the chancellor of the Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, visited several of the beneficiary schools and then expressed their frustrations over the way the money was being used.

In biting remarks, Dr. Tisch called the schools “warehouses” for struggling students, who were pushed there after the city shut the schools they used to attend.