Last Friday the United States Department of Education released details of proposed guidelines and selection criteria for the Race to the Top grant program. Included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the federal stimulus bill) signed into law this past February, the Race to the Top program would distribute more than $4 billion to states via a competitive grant process.It sounds great --- billions of dollars pumped into cash strapped states and schools to leverage needed education reforms, but how easy will it be for states to access these funds? USA Today reports that Race to the Top is a package deal with more than a few strings attached.
In detailed draft guidelines being released today in Washington, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan lay out their most forceful proposals on public schools. States won't be eligible for the money unless they get rid of legal barriers that prohibit tying teacher pay to test scores — a bid aimed directly at California. Duncan says the state has erected a legal "firewall" that keeps schools from paying educators more for improved performance.
To qualify, states must commit to 19 detailed criteria in four areas:
• Academic standards.
• Long-term data systems that track kids over several years.
• Turning around struggling schools and increasing the supply of charter schools.
• Alternative pathways for aspiring educators and performance-based pay.
Sounds okay so far. What's the catch?
"You can't pick or choose here," Duncan said.
Performance pay is contentious for many union officials, who say test scores don't always yield fair teacher evaluations.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the union reserves judgment on the proposal until the final regulations emerge.
"A lot will depend on the details that come out after the comment period," she said.
Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute, a Washington think tank, says the plan is "every dream of every education reformer … put into one package. They've gone for the whole enchilada."
But he worries that being so prescriptive could eliminate states "that do a lot of great things but don't fit into this framework."
He called the proposal "the 'carrot' version of No Child Left Behind," the 2002 law some educators have criticized as inflexible.
Ohio may fall short on grant criteria in several areas including:- disparate treatment of charter schools in funding and facilities assistance
- existing cap on charter school expansion
- failure to utilize student achievement data in teacher and principal evaluations, licensure, compensation, tenure and dismissal,
- P-20 coordination in light of the recent elimination of the Partnership for Continued Learning
- more alternative licensure pathways including options that do not involve institutions of higher education, and
- rigorous evaluation of teacher and administrator preparation programs.
The draft guidelines are available here. Comments may be made through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov.
4 comments:
Doesn't the "firewall" refer to prohibitions that could link student data to teachers? My understanding was that Ohio had moved, or was moving, in a direction that would allow for such tracking. Certainly one barrier to building such data systems is the fear (on the part of teachers/unions) that such a linkage could enable performance-based pay or evaluation, with student test scores constituting a portion of the performance assessment. However, it is important to maintain rationality and minimize hysteria. The "single test score" mantra is simply not a rational fear. No school, district, or even student experiences catastrophic consequences as the result of "a single test score." It is really important, I believe, to focus discussion not so much on test scores as an element in performance evaluations (which they assuredly should be), but rather on the importance of having evaluations for the purpose of supporting improvement, fostering dialogue or, when necessary, laying the groundwork for dismissal. I don't know anyone inside or outside of education who seriously believes that there is an adequate structure for teacher evaluation in existence today.
You can pick apart Race to the Top all you want about what's right or wrong with individual pieces, and critique why certain pieces are not appropriate. Doing that is irrelevant and a waste of valuable time and energy. The time wasted hurts only one constituent - one that is absent from most commentary - our kids. They don't give two hoots about our crazy behavior on how this should be done - they just want someone to take care of them and help them prepare for a positive future. The point of the Fed's competitive award is that any state that wins has to get its collective act together and prepare a comprehensive commitment to change, and to make the individual pieces work together. If any state-wide team is able to really do that with the full bipartisan backing of state and regional leaders, districts, and teacher associations, the approach doesn't matter because all will share the same end goal and adjust accordingly. I'm not naive enough to believe that this could actually be achieved in one step, but the RTTT funds eclipse what a state can do on its own. It's a brass ring that will be worth it to the winner. Those who believe that Ohio can mobilize to win RTTT through the same political debates should already begin their press statements about why Ohio lost to some other state. The Fed's selection of the name "Race" is well-chosen and implies speed and preparation for a continued sprint ahead of the pack. Is Ohio ready to do that? I hope so, and hope that our political leaders won't compromise. Or did we really assume that the competition was really labeled as "Race to Just Above the Middle?"
Ohio will not win this and I'm not sure we should even try. Arne Duncan listed "policy makers" as one of the barriers to reform. I did not know how many "policy makers" we had in this state until going through ODE's Office of Professional Conduct's disciplinary process.
During the excruciatingly slow process, I read the State Board minutes every month trying to figure out who was being disciplined and for what. I soon realized the OPC and the State Board members were out to prove themselves to The Columbus Dispatch. That's when I realized how politics affect education: a paper prints sensationalist articles trying to increase its readership, politicians scream "reform," and classroom teachers have to handle the insane mandates months later. I'm not saying we shouldn't have newspapers. In reality, I think the "rap back" system and the BCII checks are good. I also support the Licensure Code of Conduct, for the most part.The problem is when agencies overreact to such stories, as I believe the OPC has done.
The most important thing I learned during my time under the OPC, was the sheer number of people in charge at the state level. It's crazy! There's the entire Department of Education (who knows how many people/attorneys are employed there), the State Board of Education (not made entirely of teachers), the Education Standards Board (the Board that should be handling licensing), the Board of Regents, and the Education Section of the Ohio Attorney General's Office. If Strickland wants Duncan's money, he is going to have to dissolve the majority of these groups. If he doesn't, the "policy makers" will continue to bicker and nothing will be accomplished. Seriously, why do we have a State Board of Education on top of a Standards Board? I'm sure it had something to do with politics.
Arne Duncan has it wrong. Tying teacher evaluations to test scores is not the answer (at least not at the high school level). Try dissolving the "powers that be" and letting teachers do what they are trained to do. Geez, if you'd dissolve ODE and put the money into one large urban district in the form of police protection,psychologists, family counselors/drug therapists, etc., you'd see a turnaround almost immediately. The large, urban high school teachers aren't going to be able to teach engineering to students who are living with the lowest end of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's the most basic education concept out there and all of you are ignoring it.
Anonymous--clearly you have been through a painful experience. I have no idea what led to your recent experience with the disciplinary process of the Office of Professional Conduct. I don't have a personal stake, or opinion, regarding whether such decisions are made by the Educator Standards Board or the State Board, but as a parent, I certainly do want such decision to be made with care.
But, I am very cautious of mixing apples with oranges, as you seem to be doing in bringing your experience with a disciplinary decision to bear on the overall question of evaluation of teacher quality. Teachers do not face disciplinary actions for poor teaching. They face disciplinary actions for such things as breaking the law. Recently implemented policies and practices have resulted in a somewhat wider pool of teachers facing such discipline--people who previously sailed under the radar, falling between the cracks of separate agencies.
I cannot speak to whether any members of the State Board have taken a harsher stand on such discipline since the Dispatch series. But, this still has nothing to do with the methods by which teachers are or (more often) are not evaluated. Employee evaluation is an important part of modern management systems--benefitting both the employee and the employer. It provides the opportunity and the structure for improvement. I am personally not opposed to providing a linkage between student scores and teachers to facilitate such evaluation. But this should never be confused with the teacher discipline system.
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