School Information System

New York's "Pseudo Charters"

Caroline Hendrie:

How much slack should a big-city district cut its schools to maximize student performance? That’s the question that New York City school leaders want to explore with an experimental governance model they are calling the "autonomy zone."

Started this month with 30 secondary schools, the pilot project sets specific performance targets for schools to meet in exchange for removing them from the bureaucratic hierarchy governing most of the city’s 1,300 public schools.

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For his part, Louis Delgado hopes that the autonomy zone might help his 400- student Manhattan high school gain greater independence in hiring decisions. The 11-year-old Vanguard High School uses the district’s "school based" option for hiring teachers, which allows a committee of teachers and administrators at the school to screen candidates and offer them jobs. But those candidates can be bumped by more senior teachers who are laid off elsewhere in the system, the principal said, a situation he hopes the zone can help change.