U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has released the final application for more than $4 billion from the Race to the Top Fund, which will reward states that have raised student performance in the past and have the capacity to accelerate achievement gains with innovative reforms.
The U.S. Department of Education is asking states to build comprehensive and coherent plans built around the four areas of reform outlined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The application requires states to document their past success and outline their plans to extend their reforms by using college- and career-ready standards and assessments, building a workforce of highly effective educators, creating educational data systems to support student achievement, and turning around their lowest-performing schools.
Duncan will reserve up to $350 million to help states create assessments aligned to common sets of standards. The remaining $4 billion will be awarded in a national competition.
To qualify, states must have no legal barriers to linking student growth and achievement data to teachers and principals for the purposes of evaluation. They also must have the department’s approval for their plans for both phases of the Recovery Act’s State Fiscal Stabilization Fund prior to being awarded a grant.
The final application also clarifies that states should use multiple measures to evaluate teachers and principals, including a strong emphasis on the growth in achievement of their students. But it also reinforces that successful applicants will need to have rigorous teacher and principal evaluation programs and use the results of teacher evaluations to inform what happens in the schools.
The 500-point Race to the Top application will allot 40 points for developing and adopting common standards, in which Texas does not participate, and another 40 points for ensuring conditions that encourage the use of innovative campuses and charter schools, where Texas has a cap on charter schools. Texas has established the innovative T-STEM, as reported in a recent HillCo Client Advisory, and has also established its own college and career readiness standards. At this point, it is not clear yet how Texas’ approach will impact its ability to be awarded funding.
In Race to the Top, the department will hold two rounds of competition for the grants. For the first round, it will accept states’ applications until the middle of January, 2010. Peer reviewers will evaluate the applications and the department will announce the winners of the first round of funding next spring.
Applications for the second round will be due June 1, 2010, with the announcement of all the winners by Sept. 30, 2010.