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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Districts across State sign onto Race to the Top

As of noon today, 84 school districts and charter schools had signed on to Connecticut's Race to the Top Application.  The deadline was yesterday.

Race to the Top Funding is the Obama Admistration's $4.35 billion investment in school reform that requires states to compete for grants.  The grants place a strong emphasis on effective teachers and principals and data systems to track student performance.

According to Thomas Murphy, a spokesman for the State Department of Education,   several more districts including Waterbury, New Haven, Hamden and Danbury will be signing the Memorandum of Understanding in the next day.  Several districts asked for extensions on the deadline because school board meetings were scheduled early in the week.

Stamford has already signed on with the cooperation of its teacher's union.  In addition, Bridgeport is participating without the teacher's union.  Fairfield has decided not to sign on.  In total, Mr. Murphy expects 90-100 participants.

"We have really met our goal as a state," said Mr. Murphy.  In all, there are 166 school districts in the state, 16 charter schools and half-dozen regional service centers that provide special education and teacher-training services.

Mr. Murphy said many of the districts that did not sign up are small, affluent districts that do not have a Title 1 allotment and stand to gain only a few thousand dollars.

Norwalk has decided to not sign onto the State's application in this phase since there is a possibility that the cost of implementing the required programs may outweigh the funding.  If Connecticut is awarded the grant,  Norwalk would have been eligible for at least $1.4 million (and possibly more) over 4 years.   The district will revisit its decision if the State applies for Phase II of the program in June.  

Regarding Norwalk's decision to not participate in Phase 1 of Race to the Top, Mr.  Murphy said: "It's a local decision."

Mr. Murphy also confirmed there is a cost to implement some reforms and that many districts are already moving in the direction specified by the State's application.

Lea Mou Sign on Comp as of 12pm 1/12/10
Posted by Moina Noor

4 comments:

  1. I too had heard from central office staff that to implement the changes (esp. in High School) would cost more than the grant. Having said that, why won't someone from central office explain this (in detail) to you or the Norwalk Hour?
    ReplyDelete
  2. Why does Stamford and Bridgeport have the ability to implement these plans and Norwalk does not?
    ReplyDelete
  3. People are asking the wrong questions. Rather than asking whether the amount of funding Norwalk can get is sufficient or why Norwalk hasn't signed the MOU, they should be asking the following:

    1. Are the changes required for the MOU changes that would benefit the education of Norwalk's students? If they are, Norwalk should be making the changes regardless of Race to the Top funding.
    2. Does Norwalk have central office leadership with the vision, intelligence and determination to lead the schools to a much better place than the place where they have led it so far?
    3. Does the Norwalk BoE have the leadership, vision and intelligence to do what is best for the students it represents?
    4. Do the Norwalk schools have administrative leadership with the vision, intelligence and determination to do their part in improving educational opportunities for the students?
    5. Are Norwalk's teachers committed to ongoing self-improvement, and are they prepared to redouble their efforts to address the instructional needs of Norwalk's students?
    6. Are Norwalk's parents paying close enough attention to all of this that they will demand that significant changes be made?

    If the answers are "yes," then the money shouldn't be the issue; these are changes that the district should be making anyway, and the leadership needs to make a convincing argument to the taxpayers. If the answer to any question is "no," then there will be no hope until the answer to that question becomes "yes."
    ReplyDelete
  4. 3:39 AM: This is your wake-up call:

    67% of the tax revenue is already squandered on too many administrators as it is.
    ReplyDelete

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