Delaware A Finalist in Race to Top Grant Process
The Secretary of Education announced the first round of finalists for the Race to the Top Grants:
Out of 41 applications, 15 states and the District of Columbia have made the cut so far. They’ve been invited to Washington to make the case that they will be the best trailblazers for innovation and reform in K-12 public schools.
The competition has been a catalyst “to dramatically reshape America’s educational system … prompting states to think deeply about how to improve the way we prepare our students for success in a competitive 21st century economy,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in announcing the first round of finalists.
The finalists are: Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
To be fair, here, I haven’t followed the Race to the Top effort here very closely, but the entire application is up at the Governor’s website. This summary of what is proposed to accomplish with Race to the Top funds is from the Governor’s Press release:
Delaware’s application focuses on four assurances: strong standards and assessment, quality educators, robust data systems, and improving the low performing schools in the state. Last year, the Governor signed into law bills to give districts greater flexibility in funding and providing increased accountability for results. The State Board of Education passed regulations this year that improve assistance and support for schools that are persistently low performing and that reform educator evaluations by focusing on student improvement as a required element for an educator to be rated as “Effective.”
There’s clearly alot more meat to this as the narrative portion of this application is more than 200 pages long.
According to the NYT,
Delaware, the District of Columbia and Rhode Island might win $20 million to $75 million.
Definitely a good job by the State getting to the finalist list. Awards will be announced around 1 April.
(h/t to PBaumbach for passing along this tip)
Don’t tell Kilroy. He thinks race to the top is some kind of fascist plot to kill the children, or something.
HoHum. Old news. We were practically assured first round because of our state’s track record of ability to implement quickly, mandates and programs handed down. Our computer systems run across district/school/state boundaries, making data acquisition more obtainable. The MOU signed by all stakeholders strengthened the position. Other states didn’t even begin to write the application, because their ed system is so disjointed. And still many states who did apply, did so for practice (like your first SATs)…to see what it’s really like to play this way. Oh, and did I mention the VP is from this state? And that Red Clay essentially had Teach For America “assigned” to them? You better believe we made first round, and DOE and our governor is building a budget on the premise of making it all the way–whether we like it or not–kinda like being “assigned TFA”–and paying for it too!!
But here’s the real funny in this–that for some of you who may not follow education can derive like some of us who get nuts about this stuff—-MASSACHUSETTS!!! How about that? The very state Vision 2015, and program model after program model, and specialist/guru/field expert and site inspection our state wants to latch onto and mirror, needs some help to get to the top. Whadya think gang? Keep our own counsel? Or chase these few sheckels in the big picture that will drive the entire focus, and expenditure of a budget. RACE to the FLOP is on.
And no DelDem…Kilroy doesn’t think it will kill the children–it will be much crueler–deprivation for YEARS of what could and can be a free and appropriate public education, without these hoops, pacts, and snakeoil salesmen in the way.
How will the children suffer? I am asking seriously here. I have not been following it. What mandated criteria in Race to the Top harms the children? See, for me it is all about funding, which RTTP provides if you are selected. But what “horrible” things do we have to do to our curriculum to get selected?
Now, if you hate RTTP because you prefer local school boards to make all curriculum decisions, that is fine, but they should then be required to find all funding decisions too. You see, that is what we hated about NCLB, in that it mandated curriculum with no funding. RTTP provides funding if you follow a certain curriculum, I imagine, and if that is the case I have no problem with it.
But I want to hear your take.
But here’s the real funny in this–that for some of you who may not follow education can derive like some of us who get nuts about this stuff—-MASSACHUSETTS!!! How about that? The very state Vision 2015, and program model after program model, and specialist/guru/field expert and site inspection our state wants to latch onto and mirror, needs some help to get to the top.
This doesn’t make much sense. Massachsetts’ public ed system is known for being pretty functional at its core mission. Why should the fact that they applied for money to improve themselves be a reason to impeach that system? It isn’t as though there are very many school systems out there with enough funds to do everything they want.
DelDem, at this point no definitive funds to curriculum have been established–for that matter not even a curriculum has been established (unless you mean core standards). I am not worried about curriculum. Delaware and Delaware teachers have always come through with curriculum. It is this “nebulus” treaty Delaware signed onto for dollars that should already be theirs–but now have to agree to abide by some unidentified rule book–to be later revealed. It’s just crazy. And NO opportunity for money could happen unless you signed.
I think another problem with NCLB is the high-stakes testing requirements. It creates a perverse incentive to either 1) cheat or 2)dilute the standards. NCLB has a lot of punishment and very little reward, if I understand it correctly.
Exactly cass–No school district, no matter how functional can do as much as they want–but once again–our very poorest, and struggling states are once again left out of very important first round infusion of dollars–to defer to “have our act together and doing well, thank you Massachusetts and Delaware”? Why not acknowledge these lesser performing states, who by every rubric DON’T KNOW WHAT or HOW to perform, and go in there and give them some shoring up? I’d gladly defer my mandates and allotted sheckels to their behalf. It would do good there. Here, we just got another tote bag. Because we already heard that round of experts.
Now who’s the liberal progressive here???????? Aw c’mon you two….Mississippians, and Arkansasians want to read too.
NCLB was not all bad. It did force education to become accountable, and to measure progress. The glitch was “every” child on grade level. We did not in it’s infancy have the capability to show progress within grade levels–or any movement at all. it could be a harsh rubric that districts/teachers bore black eyes over for years–on perhaps 2 students in a very difficult rubric “throwing” data of entire school, when in fact progress was made…just not a full, age appropriate grade level. A whole testing industry has been born out of this to properly address “each and every” child to a more real-time of testing, assessment and evaluation to reflect more excellent data. I am encouraged–but we do have NCLB to thank for that introduction to accountability–as painful as it was.
who by every rubric DON’T KNOW WHAT or HOW to perform, and go in there and give them some shoring up
These are competitive grants, with some requirements that you have to do some work to get stakeholders to come together around a vision and a plan before you get a hearing on your plan. It isn’t meant to shovel money at people. While it may seem that handing funds over to lesser performing states may have some utility, this program in particular wants to see specific changes or movement towards specific changes — and it seems smarter to hold out the carrot of implementation funds for those who wish to make those changes, rather than just mandate and fund a one size fits all approach.
Well said…but concurrently, funds should be going to these states in the form of proven success plans elsewhere (w/ personnel, facilitators etc.), to get them to the track of implementation. Do you realize some states don’t even have the tech capability to have all their districts interfacing w/ their state system? Seriously, each district could be a separate system, from their respective DOE, and there is no crossover access. We just assume this here in De., because we have it–that puts us light years above some others–and just that ONE missing piece could be the catalyst in a state. Now you know I’m not looking to shovel money to anyone, but why can’t we bring a hoe? This is my point cass–it’s all or NOTHING baby w/ this initiative–at all levels.
This is an important thread. Look: NCLB, Race to the Top, Vision 2015 are out of the same Billionaire’s Club nostrums that are destroying public education in the USA. Please check out Amy Goodman’s interview with former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch. She was a Democrat in Bush the elder’s administration and was once an advocate of these programs. Now she has had a change of heart. She has just published The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Ravitch says, “The evidence says No Child Left Behind was a failure, and charter schools aren’t going to be any better.”
Or you can read my 2008 CAB column in the News Journal, Vision 2015: So Called School Reform Serves Corporate Ends, at
http://www.phillipbannowsky.com/So%20Called%20School%20Reform%20Serves%20Corporate%20Ends.pdf
It amazes me that something so important isn’t getting more press both locally and nationally. This should be a debate right along side healthcare, though admittedly education is usually the domain of state governments. That line has already been crossed. Indeed, it does seem that this again seems to “help” the states that are already the most together. Markell intends to reform Delaware schools with or without this money. The money would just make it easier. In the meantime, schools, particularly in the poorer deep south, continue to need more help and not recieve it because they didn’t do the application properly. It is easy enough to say “tough sh!t,” but these are students and our future that we are talking about here. Bravo for this debate and people being informed about it.
Guess what? Children don’t vote, so of course the big news is all over everything else. And guess what else? It’s easy and LUCRATIVE to align yourself w/ a state or a district that was going to be a high-flier anyway, and then proclaim yourself the “change agent”. Route 1 may as well build an access ramp to DOE doors to accomodate the educational gurus looking for work, and needing Delaware on their resume….and why am I hearing Elvis singing “In the Ghetto” in my head right now? Darn those feds…er I mean meds…..
One of the things that is difficult about this kind of funding is that there really is no way to do it that doesn’t come in for some criticism. You send a block of money to needier systems and schools and you have folks screaming about sending good money after bad. Or they challenge what is “needy”. You send a block of money with conditions or handholding and you have the Federal government can’t know what is better for us locals screaming. This grant asked not just for a plan to meet the stated goals, but it also asked you to demonstrate that all of the usual bumps in the road — exec branch, legislative branch, teacher’s unions and so on were on board with this thing. I imagine the theory is that the changes this is supposed to spark need to have some chance at success, so demonstrating that you’ve done the heavy lifting to get to implementation here doesn’t seem too far off of the mark. The DOE provided tools to help and I imagine all of the schools not shortlisted this week are getting detailed debriefings of their submissions to know how to be more successful next round.
This does seem important and when I was researching this last night, there were alot of news stories online about this already. Don’t think that I heard NPR do anything on this and I have no idea if the TV is covering it.
And as for charter schools — I think that I will live long enough to see this entire experiment judged as this century’s Tuskegee experiments. Except except this time people are conducting their experiments on kids.
RT3 has been and will be a major distraction for school personnel. There are so many balls in the air right now, it will be hard to keep them all going. School districts are trying to run the schools, which is hard enough on a good day. Then they have the upcoming DSTP–last year but still an important project for which we have taken years to prepare. The new DCAS testing program–kids across the state from grades 2-8, plus some in 9 and 10, will be locked into weeks of field testing–a test of the test. Now, layer on the 90-day “y’all work it out” part of the RT3 memorandum of agreement where all of the parties try to come to consensus about how to spend the money fand stay within the feds’ strict guidelines–cause you know that Delaware is going to win this award–forced collaboration, the likes of which we have never seen. Could get interesting. And, teachers will be still trying to teach classes and finish out the year.
We voted for the MOU. Felt we had to. Could not see how the teacher union could be the party standing in the way of this kind of progress. Wonder what we will be left with when the money runs out.
Except except this time people are conducting their experiments on kids.
*
The ‘partner’ Mass Insight is using us as guinea pigs….replacing the low-performing school with charters is one of their four imagined models for successful turnaround.
This entire bargain is an experiment, Cass. With our kids. John Young caught a blog post on Rodel’s sight that was an admission that there is nothing about the RTTT or Mass Insight that was proven. It is all Ivy Leaguers speculating.
I was talking to Darlene Battle earlier who was in Philly when they had turned their schools over to Edison. Edison and the great Chris Whittle. It wasn’t too long before they ran Edison out of town because they were sucking up 20% of the public dollars and weren’t showing one iota of improvement.
There is a good chance that the Delaware EXPERIMENT will also fail. Every honest person will tell you that this is an experiment and Delaware kids are the guinea pigs.
What will happen when the stimulus dollars are gone?
What can we expect with models as unimaginary as replacing 50% of teachers with untested Teachers For America or completely close schools and turn the keys over to someone who will start a charter (no doubt they are panting at the thought of taking over Moyer Academy).
Where is the reasoning for not just putting the money into PROVEN success of smaller classes – smaller teacher to student ratios? Throwing a bunch of dollars at Ivy League consultants is what the billionaires love and the corporates support but is that what is good for the kids?
Low-performing schools so far are all identified in the inner city. These kids, the one model suggests, can just go to better schools….as in where? In Delaware there isn’t room for these kids in the ‘better’ schools. The kids in these neighborhoods are in financially depressed households with plenty of other problems to deal with. The way forward for these communities really cant’ be expected to be big Ivy Leaguers driving their Benz and kicking their Italian loafers up on the desk. How much public money is going into these pockets and how much will be going to the care and nurturing of impoverished kids….?????
Education has been been one ongoing experiment with our kids for the past 40 years or so. One “revolutonary thing that will fix our schools” after another, here one year and gone the next. Every teacher who has been in the business for more than 2-3 years has seen it. Thankfully, most teachers are good people who do their jobs effecively regardless of the bullshit coming down from administrators, state governments, or national governments. We show up everyday, teach, care (which is an umbrella term for the thousands of other things that we do), and go home to grade papers and plan for several hours. TEACHERS are the only reason the whole system hasn’t crashed and burned years ago.
Funny how the News Journal, Rodel, and all the rest of the corporate crowd never bring up the excellent proposals of Rethinking Schools:
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/
And right on Nancy.
I’m with Nancy and anonthisone on this issue.
Most teachers know how to teach and what to do under trying circumstances. However, they desperately need smaller class sizes and alternative schools for the seriously troubled kids. They also need parents to be involved with the schools in the education of their children, including those parents from disadvantaged circumstances.
With all the school districts we have in DE, we are overloaded with administrators and underloaded with sufficient numbers of teachers. Moreover, we are faced with a plethora of private schools who skim off the best students (and best athletes). In other words, it is Delaware culture that has produced a two tier educational system, one for the more privileged, another for the rest.
The only solution I see is to consolidate the public school systems so that they can be competitive with the private schools. To do so is worth trying, while understanding that it is going to be a long, long, hard slog. I’m not very optimistic about changing a culture.