BREAKING NOW: Delaware Awarded Race To The Top Funding
It’s just been announced – Delaware and Tennessee are the first awardees of the Department of Education’s “Race To The Top” Grant.
Update: The New York Times has a story up now. There’s not much more detail on how much the grant is and what it’s going to be used for.
Delaware and Tennessee beat out 13 other finalist states and the District of Columbia to win a share of $4 billion in federal Race to the Top education grant money, convincing the Obama Administration that they have bold plans for overhauling their public school systems, an Obama Administration official said on Monday.
The Department of Education did not immediately announce the size of the awards. But Delaware had asked for $107 million, and Tennessee for $502 million.
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The president’s goals include expanding the number and quality of charter schools, reworking outdated teacher evaluation systems, improving the sophistication of states’ student data tracking systems, and turning around thousands of the lowest-performing schools.
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Delaware already has a statewide annual teacher evaluation system, and has recently adopted regulations requiring that those evaluations be based on growth in student achievement, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, which rated the finalists’ proposals.
Tags: Delaware, Education, Race To The Top
Let the dismantling begin!
I would love to say that Delaware now can now start to make some changes to the school system, but then again, we don’t have a clue about what this entails.
But keep your eyes peeled for Rodel and Broad suits at the meetings.
A rose by any other name….
With lots of thorns, and gardeners to be paid…
Delaware is #1. Money to follow–but remember folks–50% to stay at DOE. How’s that for job security?
I have some sympathy for the GOP complaint that Delaware already spends too much per student for not enough results. I don’t care much for any of their solutions, but is there something to the complaint? Or is there some logical explanation they are deliberately ignoring, like the high rate of private school enrollment, or something else?
As a dedicated teacher, all I can say is: god help us. They dangled a carrot in front of us and we bit without checking to see what it tasted like. I guess we’re about to find out….
Yup, carrot may end up tasting like crow.
Delaware is an attractive site for such merriment. It’s small, Governor Markell has demonstrated a willingness to put together plans & packages quickly (see Fisker, et al) and it’s a short commute from DC for photo ops.
Let’s hope the impact on children, families, and communities is positive, with this. There’s certainly room for improvement.
To some extent, we are victims of our own success. Delaware has a number of schools for the disabled that are so good that they attract parents that are looking to relocate.
Exclude the deaf and autistic students from the accounting, and subtract out the cost of transportation for desegregation and let me know where we rank then.
So, is the cost of transportation for desegregation subtractable? Do we have a solution that might reduce that? Because the environmental, time, impact of that is huge, I’d say.
Transportation costs? Hold on a minute. This year, our governor’s budget looks to the districts to absorb that monumental cost. You know–one of those moves not to raise taxes in his column. So essentially, IF you pay to get your kids here, we have some RTTT money to spend on ya!!
If we get RTTT $$ then why do we need a referendum?????
Do you not still need your operating funds?
Highly debateable.
Not sure where you are, but in Seaford we need a referendum because we’re running out of money for buckets to catch the water for our leaky roofs and our elevator at the middle school is like a thrill ride with no safety equipment. Why do we still have an inequitable referendum system might be a better question…..
RTTT is HIGHLY designated to whatever boondoggle initiatives the feds and state decide. It is not to backfill any district’s budget–unless it is an approved, aligned inplementation of the state/federal boondoggle er initiative. It’s only supposed to backfill the state budget at DOE :)–and that doesn’t include transportation :(. Hence referendums move forward……
move forward, but very much clouded by this massive capital infusion as one of the RTTT initiative is a Partnership Zone in which schools can be excised into a special operating arrangement. Run by a lead partner and under the control of the DOE in Dover…..would Christina still need operating funds in the amount put forth on a referendum if we no longer ran 3-7 of our current schools?
Questions that need answers before a referendum….
Well I found a little light reading:
http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/index.html
I think it will be interesting to read the details of our application and what they (DOE) found most notable.
And the carpet baggers begin to pack.