Race To The Top Puts Teachers On The Bottom

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 final application forms, rules and explanations have just been released for states to qualify for a share of $4.35 billion in the "Race to the Top" Fund.

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.

The $4.35 billion for the Race to the Top Fund is an unprecedented federal investment in reform. 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.

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.

Teacher effectiveness gets the most weight (28 percent) in the scoring process for the race to the top.

And a "significant" part of teacher effectiveness is improvement in test scores.

As Stephen Sawchuk writes in his Teacher Beat blog

Teacher Elements of Final Race to the Top Guidelines

...The definition for "effective teachers" has changed, and as Teacher Beat predicted not long ago, the guidelines now explicitly state that teacher evaluations must include "multiple measures" in addition to basing a "significant part" of the evaluation on test scores or other measures of student growth.

The supplemental measures the guidelines recommend include observation-based assessments of performance and evidence of leadership roles, such as serving as a mentor or the leader of a professional-learning community.

But the notice still does not define what a "significant part" means with respect to test scores. That could, potentially, be problematic. (Is 10 percent significant? 50 percent?)

The teacher-quality criteria that will by far garner the most points for a state is by putting into place systems to tie the results of teacher and principal evaluations to decisions involving professional development, compensation, promotion, tenure-granting, and dismissal.

In a new element that is almost sure to upset folks at teachers' colleges, the scoring criteria direct reviewers to give more points to a state that permits alternative routes to operate outside of schools of education than those that restrict such routes to schools of education.

Teachers and teacher unions are quite upset about this focus on teachers and test scores. They feel it is unfair to evaluate teachers this way, when they have so little control over curriculum, resources and parental support. Basically their whole future must be tied to results that are influenced as much by outside factors as by what they do in the classroom.

Here's what Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers, has to say on the subject:

Teachers and principals are central to any effort to improve schools, but they can’t do it alone. The best Race to the Top grants will develop specific supports for students and staff, such as early childhood education, professional development, and community schools that provide wraparound services for students and their families.

and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel:

We are disappointed that the administration continues to focus so heavily on tying students’ test scores to individual teachers. The continuing eligibility requirement that states must not have any barriers to linking data on student achievement or growth to teachers and principals for evaluation purposes misses the mark.

One other element of Race to the Top is a strong suggestion that teacher unions be involved in states' proposals.

Here's what Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers, has to say on that:

We know that many states have begun the application process, but that not all are involving teachers and their unions in a meaningful way. We take Education Department officials at their word when they say they will look for meaningful collaboration in the state Race to the Top applications.

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel:

Educators are willing to accept responsibility for student learning and for being evaluated based on criteria they help develop, and we look forward to working with the administration to ensure that its goal of true multiple measures in teacher evaluation systems is realized.

Willingness to encourage charter schools are a big part of the picture as well, but that is a subject for a whole new post.

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