Teaching America and the constitution for one week a year does not fulfill this charge.
President George Washington
ANYONE STILL BELIEVE THIS IS NOT A WELL LAID OUT PLAN?
INCREASED FEDERAL INTRUSION
As part of Race to the Top and the Stimulus bill, the Obama Administration required states to build massive databases on public-school students.
The Administration “encourages” the states to maintain hundreds of data points in these databases, including health histories, family income status, disciplinary histories, and many more.
The Administration increasingly is demanding access to this data in exchange for federal grants (such as Title I grants for low-income schools). It seeks this data not only for accountability purposes, but also for use in future research projects.
In December 2011, the Administration eviscerated federal educational-privacy law so that governments can now share this data with any entity, public or private, as long as they describe the sharing as necessary to an audit or evaluation of an educational program.
The Administration succeeds in coercing the states to turn over personally identifiable data on students, the new federal regulations will allow the sharing of this data -- without the consent, or even the knowledge, of the students’ parents – with other government agencies and even private entities.
The Administration is particularly eager to share data with other government departments, such as the Department of Labor, so that children can be tracked from preschool through their advancement through the work force.
If South Carolina participates in Common Core, SC students’ personally identifiable data will be vulnerable to sharing with any entity that audits or evaluates a Common Core program anywhere in the country. The greatest danger comes through the new federally funded assessment schemes. The assessment consortium of which SC is a member has specifically agreed in its contract with the Department of Education to provide the Department with student-level data. This contract gives the Department the right to demand students’ personal information – for “research” as well as accountability.
This data-sharing plan, and its links to Common Core, are an example of the “lab rat” view of the citizenry – the view that we exist to be studied by bureaucrats so that they can better direct our lives. South Carolinian's are likely to disagree with this approach.
The Administration “encourages” the states to maintain hundreds of data points in these databases, including health histories, family income status, disciplinary histories, and many more.
The Administration increasingly is demanding access to this data in exchange for federal grants (such as Title I grants for low-income schools). It seeks this data not only for accountability purposes, but also for use in future research projects.
In December 2011, the Administration eviscerated federal educational-privacy law so that governments can now share this data with any entity, public or private, as long as they describe the sharing as necessary to an audit or evaluation of an educational program.
The Administration succeeds in coercing the states to turn over personally identifiable data on students, the new federal regulations will allow the sharing of this data -- without the consent, or even the knowledge, of the students’ parents – with other government agencies and even private entities.
The Administration is particularly eager to share data with other government departments, such as the Department of Labor, so that children can be tracked from preschool through their advancement through the work force.
If South Carolina participates in Common Core, SC students’ personally identifiable data will be vulnerable to sharing with any entity that audits or evaluates a Common Core program anywhere in the country. The greatest danger comes through the new federally funded assessment schemes. The assessment consortium of which SC is a member has specifically agreed in its contract with the Department of Education to provide the Department with student-level data. This contract gives the Department the right to demand students’ personal information – for “research” as well as accountability.
This data-sharing plan, and its links to Common Core, are an example of the “lab rat” view of the citizenry – the view that we exist to be studied by bureaucrats so that they can better direct our lives. South Carolinian's are likely to disagree with this approach.
Come To Me Litttle Pretty's! You're Kidding, Right?
EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN?
Race To The Top (RTTT) is the new grant program created in conjunction with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Secretary Duncan released draft guidelines for RTTT in 2009 and with more than 650 comments submitted so far, he is getting plenty of feedback on his vision.
Race to the Top gives the Secretary unprecedented discretion to dole out $4.3 billion in grants to states over the next year. But the money doesn't come free. States have to be looking pretty good in Duncan's eyes even before they apply for the money. What's more, if they want their applications to have any shot of being competitive, they will have to show that they are already making progress on many fronts, including working toward Common Core Standards (CCS), allowing for the creation of more charter schools and using longitudinal data systems to track students' performance from PreK-12.
The stipulations and criteria have caused a lot of consternation among state education leaders over the past few weeks, partly because the guidelines for participating are so tightly defined. Only two states appear to meet each one of the DOE's expectations. Five states -- California, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania -- do not even meet the basic eligibility requirements, according to TNTP.
Race To The Top (RTTT) is the new grant program created in conjunction with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Secretary Duncan released draft guidelines for RTTT in 2009 and with more than 650 comments submitted so far, he is getting plenty of feedback on his vision.
Race to the Top gives the Secretary unprecedented discretion to dole out $4.3 billion in grants to states over the next year. But the money doesn't come free. States have to be looking pretty good in Duncan's eyes even before they apply for the money. What's more, if they want their applications to have any shot of being competitive, they will have to show that they are already making progress on many fronts, including working toward Common Core Standards (CCS), allowing for the creation of more charter schools and using longitudinal data systems to track students' performance from PreK-12.
The stipulations and criteria have caused a lot of consternation among state education leaders over the past few weeks, partly because the guidelines for participating are so tightly defined. Only two states appear to meet each one of the DOE's expectations. Five states -- California, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania -- do not even meet the basic eligibility requirements, according to TNTP.
Hello Congress: Is Anyone Home?
The
money you are giving out (which we don't have in case you forgot) is
for the indoctrination of the children under the UN and Global
Government. Just another unread, unproven, illegal supreme waste of
taxpayers money on a program designed to nationalize education using a
COMMUNIST curriculum that teaches the GOOD OF THE COLLECTIVE and Dumb's
down American students.
The curriculum is ANTI-AMERICAN. Is anybody paying attention? Do you care? What happened to de-fund the Federal DOE? Once this is implemented you have four years before American children are indoctrinated into communism and you will never see a conservative in office again. MONEY is not the problem with education. The curriculum is. Did you even look at the ANTI-AMERICAN curriculum? I hope you don't have children. By the way in case you are interested, RTTT violates the education code. Education code - RTTT is without significant funding since this was and will force schools into a national data base (at some unknown cost). Why does the federal gov't need a national data base of student progress? Who manages it? Where does it go? This action is illegal according to Department of Education, Public Law -- 2/01/10 20 U.S.C. 3403 (Pub. L. 96-88, Title I, 103, Oct. 17, 1979, 93 Stat. 670). United States Code. Title 20. Education. Chapter 48. The Federal Gov't is not to get involved in a national data base or curriculum. Denis and Lydia chat about the federal 'Race to the Top' education grants program with Ann Marie Banfield, from Cornerstone Action. www.nhcaptv.com |
Nine Finalist States Eligible For Grants!
Nine Finalist States Are Eligible to Compete for Grants as of May 2011
The U.S. Department of Education announced today that nine finalist states that did not win grants in the first two rounds of Race to the Top (RTTT) will be eligible to compete for $200 million in additional funds this year. Applications will be available in the early fall. The nine states, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and South Carolina, can seek grants ranging from $10 million to $50 million, depending on state size and the final number of grants. Given that these grants are smaller than the ones originally applied for, states will work with the U.S. Department of Education to update their RTTT plans to reflect a more limited scope of work. "Every state that applied for Race to the Top funds now has a blueprint for raising educational quality across America," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "These funds will encourage states to continue their courageous work to challenge the status quo and build on the momentum for education reform happening in our classrooms, schools and communities." The Department chose to make the $200 million available in a competition among Race to the Top finalists in order to support states that have demonstrated capacity and commitment around bold reform plans that address the Obama Administration's four core reforms: raising academic standards, building cradle to career data systems, investing in great teachers and leaders, and turning around persistently low-performing schools. Race to the Top applications were scored on a 500-point scale across a broad set of criteria. While the 12 original winners of RTTT scored 440 or above all of the finalists scored above 412. The non-finalists scored more than 20 points lower. "In phase 2, we had many more competitive applications than we had funds to award," said Duncan. "We're committed to working with the states that are the most serious about education reform." In the fiscal year 2011 appropriations bill passed in April, Congress provided the U.S. Department of Education with $700 million for the Race to the Top initiative, including an authorization to fund an early learning competition within Race to the Top. $500 million of these funds will support the new Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge, announced by Secretary Duncan and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius earlier today. In his remarks today, Duncan thanked Congress for supporting Race to the Top saying, "We are deeply grateful to Congress for supporting these programs. Congress understands the value of investing in education reform, particularly early learning, even in these economic times." The Obama Administration has also proposed to continue Race to the Top in fiscal year 2012 and is seeking authority to develop a district-level competition. http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html |
WAKE UP AMERICA!
When will people wake up and do a little research? Coverage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (which is funding RTTT) is supported in part by a grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, at www.mott.org. Check out the Mott Foundation – they have given to the Open Society Foundation – Soros $ 18,000.00 – including 200K to the Tides Foundation, $11,500,00 to Detroit’s Proverty and 450K to the Open Society in the Ukraine! If you think this whole program of RTTT is not about the process of “dumbing down our kids” I have some of that famous swamp land in So. Florida I would like to sell you!
Florida has set a goal of a graduation rate of 75% - why so low? Why are we not there already? No one can answer that question and more money is not the answer. Do they really believe that putting thousands of dollars in their faces is going to make the education any better. I cannot speak for the other states participating, but in Florida it seems the District DOE only are looking at cement, mortar and bricks. The State DOE is passing laws they have no idea what is in them and they are not about educating our children or they would not be allowing Gulen Charter schools and International Baccalaureate for millions of extra dollars to be here teaching United Nations socialism to our children without even overseeing the textbooks that are being used. Just what is the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Board of Education all about anyway? Florida is not 4th in the country in Education – they are 48th and for a reason! Just what are our tax dollars being spent on? From 2001-2010 Florida’s own FCAT reports show the Reading levels for 10th grade to have never been any higher than 39% at the Achievement Level of 3 – why is that?
My question is – all these states are talking about setting new goals to obtain the money – why are they not doing it without the money? The money is not being used to create but to offset current budgets. I wonder why in the whole article Florida is not mentioned? FLORIDA give the money BACK!
Bill Comes Due on Race to Top's Varied Goals
By Michele McNeil Education Week
Winners of the $4 billion Race to the Top jackpot committed to grand goals in using the federal grants to raise student achievement, as measured by higher test scores, narrowed achievement gaps, and increased graduation and college-going rates—all in four years.
Now comes the hard part: With the money in hand, the 11 states and the District of Columbia must deliver on those goals, which often involve making leaps in student achievement at a record-setting pace. For most states, that amounts to a long shot. From the U.S. Department of Education’s perspective, that may not be a bad thing.
“Interestingly, when you look at some of those states with the most ambitious goals, these are the same states that are some of the best actors. They are tenacious and aggressive and really trying hard to meet those goals,” said Joanne Weiss, the former director of the Race to the Top and now the chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The winners’ success in meeting their goals—which earned them a certain number of points in the hard-fought grant competition last year—will offer a report card, of sorts, on the aggressive, multistate education improvement initiative launched as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Most of the winners aimed high as they sought to woo the competition’s judges, even though the goals they set to improve student achievement carried limited weight in the scoring system. For example:
• The District of Columbia intends to lift its college-going rate by 20 percentage points, from 39 percent, the most of any Race to the Top winner.
• Rhode Island aspires to increase its proficiency rates in math on the 8th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, by 27 percentage points over the five-year period, from 28 percent, something no other state has accomplished in so little time.
• And Maryland wants to eliminate achievement gaps among all student subgroups, including minority students and English-language learners, on state tests by 2014.
Those goals may be out of reach, many observers say. “Nothing involving achievement changes fast in a great big country like this. Most of the time, things don’t change at all. Moving a state is a lot harder than moving an aircraft carrier,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who led the Education Department’s research and improvement branch during the Reagan administration. But at the same time, Mr. Finn said, “something has to happen to the kids for this to be worth doing. We cannot just be rearranging the adult deck chairs.”
If states don’t meet their goals, nothing happens from the department’s perspective—since those are goals set for the end of the four-year grant period.
That’s not to say the department won’t be monitoring the goals, such as by taking note of 2011 NAEP scores among Race to the Top states. The federal agency already is monitoring a slew of performance measures to make sure states live up to their end of the bargain.
What’s more, said Ann Whalen, a top aide to Secretary Duncan, keeping tabs on states’ student-achievement levels is part of the department’s ongoing process to hold them accountable for their Race to the Top proposals. (Teachers and administrators are going to spend more time doing additional reports than teaching)
“It really keeps a laser-like focus on improving achievement and closing gaps,” said Ms. Whalen, the director of the Education Department’s implementation and support unit.
Judging the Goals
Policy advocates, politicians, and the media have chronicled what Race to the Top applicants did to win the grants, such as changing teacher-evaluation policies and opening the way to an expansion of charter schools. And they’ve examined what the winners plan to do with their money, such as hiring “data coaches” and rebuilding education data systems.
Down the road, there will be some official assessment by the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, which is undertaking two studies.
The first is part of a broader study of the $100 billion in education spending from the ARRA, the 2009 federal economic-stimulus package. That four-year, $10 million study will look at how ARRA-related programs, including the Race to the Top, were implemented, and whether student outcomes improved.
The second is a five-year, $13 million study of the Race to the Top and the federal School Improvement Grant program. Researchers will examine how well those two programs were implemented, and whether they improved student outcomes in low-performing schools.
But little attention has been paid in the meantime to the Race to the Top endgame: the student-achievement gains each state is shooting for.
For what would seem to be an important marker, the goals were worth few points in a competition judged on a 500-point grading scale. Indeed, Education Department officials debated the role goals should play in the competition.
When the Race to the Top was being crafted, they discussed requiring states to meet annual student-achievement goals (rather than four- or five-year ones), but eventually rejected that path because year-to-year ups and downs can occur even as states make steady progress. Also, the department decided against setting minimum goals for the states because the student-achievement picture was so different across the country.
And finally, department officials debated how much weight the goals would receive in the scoring system. By making states’ goals worth few points, the department hoped to head off sky-high, unrealistic targets.
When it came time to judge the Race to the Top applications, the outside peer reviewers were told to grade states on whether their goals were “ambitious yet achievable.”
As was the case with the other scoring categories, the judges took widely varied approaches in their grading. Several didn’t even acknowledge the goals, some repeated them and awarded points because they were included, and only a few offered commentary on just how achievable and ambitious the goals actually were.
Delaware was cited by one judge as not being “ambitious” enough for aspiring to a 55 percent proficiency rate on NAEP, which, for 8th grade math, would be a 23-percentage-point increase—still far better than what any other state has accomplished in just a few years. But no judge criticized Tennessee for aiming for a 37 percent proficiency rate on the same test, a 14-percentage-point increase.
Some of New York’s judges were particularly hard on the state for not aiming for higher gains for minority and high-needs students. The state wants to narrow achievement gaps on NAEP by just a few percentage points for groups such as minority students and English-language learners within four years. Nationally, those same gaps have barely budged in years. Still, one judge saw New York’s target as too low, calling it “disturbing.”
But Maryland’s far more ambitious goal of completely eliminating achievement gaps earned criticism, too. “The extent to which [the goals] are achievable, especially for different subgroups, is questionable, as are the goals themselves,” one judge wrote.
Scattered Targets
An Education Week examination of the winners’ Race to the Top applications shows a wide range of aspirations for what they hope to achieve with their share of the $4 billion.
Hawaii, for example, set of goal of being at the national median on all NAEP tests by 2018.
Ohio wants to boost its 8th grade math proficiency rate on NAEP by 6 percentage points, and its graduation rate by 2 percentage points, to 88 percent.
The District of Columbia wants to increase graduation and college-going rates at a faster pace than any other Race to the Top grantee—goals that left one judge asking whether that was a “moonshot,” referring to the term Mr. Duncan has often used to describe the Race to the Top.
Rhode Island is aiming for one of the steepest trajectories, especially on NAEP. In 8th grade math, for example, the state wants to increase its proficiency rate 27 percentage points.
No state has come close to that rate of improvement, including Massachusetts, which has seen some of the biggest growth in NAEP scores in the country. During Massachusetts’ best six years, from 2000 to 2005, that state’s scores in 8th grade math grew 13 percentage points.
“We do believe it’s possible to meet these goals,” said Rhode Island Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist. “If you set a goal you know you can meet, you’re just not stretching yourself as far as you could.”
According to Rhode Island’s plan, the state set its goal by studying schools that had made rapid student-achievement gains of 10 to 20 percentage points on various metrics—with the idea that the state, through the Race to the Top, could replicate that improvement statewide.
One goal which Ms. Gist thinks could be especially challenging: math proficiency in high school. In the 2010-11 school year, only 33 percent of 11th graders were proficient in math on the state test. The state’s goal? Seventy-five percent proficiency.
“Our current proficiency level is just so unacceptable. Any other goal just felt unsatisfying,” Ms. Gist said. She noted that the state’s plan calls for directing more Race to Top resources into high school math.
Achievement Gap Focus
Massachusetts, which often boasts the highest achievement in the country, also has some of the largest achievement gaps between black and white students, and low-income and wealthier students. “What we’re looking at is continuing improvement but picking up the pace, and at the same time accelerating the improvement for those furthest behind,” said Mitchell D. Chester, the state commissioner of education. To set the state’s goals, Mr. Chester said, Massachusetts officials looked at the rate of improvement over the last several years, and bumped it up a notch. One of the state’s core objectives is reducing achievement gaps by 25 percent on NAEP and 15 percent in high school graduation rates.
“I do believe in four years’ time it is possible and important to demonstrate some tangible, measurable, substantial improvements in student outcomes,” Mr. Chester said. “That’s the bottom line here. We can’t wait 10 years.” Massachusetts officials will watch some midpoint indicators to see if the state is on the right track, including reading in the early elementary grades, middle school math, and overall achievement in the lowest-performing schools.
“I think there’s tension about how we judge that success in looking for short-term numbers. There’s important table-setting going on,” Mr. Chester said. Speaking of other Race to the Top winners, he said that some states may not hit their goals, but may have put landmark policies in place that will pave the way for long-term improvement.
“We have to be more nuanced in judging this,” he said.
Weighing Success
Experts in education research agree it will take time to judge the ultimate success, or failure, of the Race to the Top, given how long it can take for policy changes to translate into test-score gains. And it will be difficult to figure out whether it was the Race to the Top, and not some other education improvement effort or even a change in demographics, that caused any improvement.
“It’s important to differentiate between aspiration and tangible goals to set for a system,” said James W. Kohlmoos, the president and chief executive officer of the Washington-based Knowledge Alliance, which represents such research groups as the federal regional education laboratories.
“We’re going to get a lot of anecdotal evidence, and may see correlation over time,” he said. “But maybe the question to ask is, how much has Race to the Top changed actual policy?”
In most winning states, the achievement targets aren’t just Race to the Top goals, they’re also state education goals.
Take Tennessee, for example. Its goals, which include halving achievement gaps on NAEP and boosting college-going rates by 9 percentage points by 2014, are embedded in its request to obtain a waiver from certain provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The Obama administration last week released details of its plan to provide regulatory relief from many key parts of the NCLB law, including the goal that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Several states, including Tennessee, submitted requests before the final rules were even announced.
“All of these [Race to the Top] reforms are predicated on a commitment to setting ambitious but realistic goals,” Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman wrote in a July 29 letter to Mr. Duncan, asking for flexibility under NCLB. “To be clear, if we are able to achieve the ... top-line goals, Tennessee’s public education system will be on a completely different trajectory.”
For education policy advocates, who are watching the progress in Race to the Top states, setting goals—even high ones—is the easy part.
Florida has set a goal of a graduation rate of 75% - why so low? Why are we not there already? No one can answer that question and more money is not the answer. Do they really believe that putting thousands of dollars in their faces is going to make the education any better. I cannot speak for the other states participating, but in Florida it seems the District DOE only are looking at cement, mortar and bricks. The State DOE is passing laws they have no idea what is in them and they are not about educating our children or they would not be allowing Gulen Charter schools and International Baccalaureate for millions of extra dollars to be here teaching United Nations socialism to our children without even overseeing the textbooks that are being used. Just what is the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Board of Education all about anyway? Florida is not 4th in the country in Education – they are 48th and for a reason! Just what are our tax dollars being spent on? From 2001-2010 Florida’s own FCAT reports show the Reading levels for 10th grade to have never been any higher than 39% at the Achievement Level of 3 – why is that?
My question is – all these states are talking about setting new goals to obtain the money – why are they not doing it without the money? The money is not being used to create but to offset current budgets. I wonder why in the whole article Florida is not mentioned? FLORIDA give the money BACK!
Bill Comes Due on Race to Top's Varied Goals
By Michele McNeil Education Week
Winners of the $4 billion Race to the Top jackpot committed to grand goals in using the federal grants to raise student achievement, as measured by higher test scores, narrowed achievement gaps, and increased graduation and college-going rates—all in four years.
Now comes the hard part: With the money in hand, the 11 states and the District of Columbia must deliver on those goals, which often involve making leaps in student achievement at a record-setting pace. For most states, that amounts to a long shot. From the U.S. Department of Education’s perspective, that may not be a bad thing.
“Interestingly, when you look at some of those states with the most ambitious goals, these are the same states that are some of the best actors. They are tenacious and aggressive and really trying hard to meet those goals,” said Joanne Weiss, the former director of the Race to the Top and now the chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The winners’ success in meeting their goals—which earned them a certain number of points in the hard-fought grant competition last year—will offer a report card, of sorts, on the aggressive, multistate education improvement initiative launched as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Most of the winners aimed high as they sought to woo the competition’s judges, even though the goals they set to improve student achievement carried limited weight in the scoring system. For example:
• The District of Columbia intends to lift its college-going rate by 20 percentage points, from 39 percent, the most of any Race to the Top winner.
• Rhode Island aspires to increase its proficiency rates in math on the 8th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, by 27 percentage points over the five-year period, from 28 percent, something no other state has accomplished in so little time.
• And Maryland wants to eliminate achievement gaps among all student subgroups, including minority students and English-language learners, on state tests by 2014.
Those goals may be out of reach, many observers say. “Nothing involving achievement changes fast in a great big country like this. Most of the time, things don’t change at all. Moving a state is a lot harder than moving an aircraft carrier,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who led the Education Department’s research and improvement branch during the Reagan administration. But at the same time, Mr. Finn said, “something has to happen to the kids for this to be worth doing. We cannot just be rearranging the adult deck chairs.”
If states don’t meet their goals, nothing happens from the department’s perspective—since those are goals set for the end of the four-year grant period.
That’s not to say the department won’t be monitoring the goals, such as by taking note of 2011 NAEP scores among Race to the Top states. The federal agency already is monitoring a slew of performance measures to make sure states live up to their end of the bargain.
What’s more, said Ann Whalen, a top aide to Secretary Duncan, keeping tabs on states’ student-achievement levels is part of the department’s ongoing process to hold them accountable for their Race to the Top proposals. (Teachers and administrators are going to spend more time doing additional reports than teaching)
“It really keeps a laser-like focus on improving achievement and closing gaps,” said Ms. Whalen, the director of the Education Department’s implementation and support unit.
Judging the Goals
Policy advocates, politicians, and the media have chronicled what Race to the Top applicants did to win the grants, such as changing teacher-evaluation policies and opening the way to an expansion of charter schools. And they’ve examined what the winners plan to do with their money, such as hiring “data coaches” and rebuilding education data systems.
Down the road, there will be some official assessment by the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, which is undertaking two studies.
The first is part of a broader study of the $100 billion in education spending from the ARRA, the 2009 federal economic-stimulus package. That four-year, $10 million study will look at how ARRA-related programs, including the Race to the Top, were implemented, and whether student outcomes improved.
The second is a five-year, $13 million study of the Race to the Top and the federal School Improvement Grant program. Researchers will examine how well those two programs were implemented, and whether they improved student outcomes in low-performing schools.
But little attention has been paid in the meantime to the Race to the Top endgame: the student-achievement gains each state is shooting for.
For what would seem to be an important marker, the goals were worth few points in a competition judged on a 500-point grading scale. Indeed, Education Department officials debated the role goals should play in the competition.
When the Race to the Top was being crafted, they discussed requiring states to meet annual student-achievement goals (rather than four- or five-year ones), but eventually rejected that path because year-to-year ups and downs can occur even as states make steady progress. Also, the department decided against setting minimum goals for the states because the student-achievement picture was so different across the country.
And finally, department officials debated how much weight the goals would receive in the scoring system. By making states’ goals worth few points, the department hoped to head off sky-high, unrealistic targets.
When it came time to judge the Race to the Top applications, the outside peer reviewers were told to grade states on whether their goals were “ambitious yet achievable.”
As was the case with the other scoring categories, the judges took widely varied approaches in their grading. Several didn’t even acknowledge the goals, some repeated them and awarded points because they were included, and only a few offered commentary on just how achievable and ambitious the goals actually were.
Delaware was cited by one judge as not being “ambitious” enough for aspiring to a 55 percent proficiency rate on NAEP, which, for 8th grade math, would be a 23-percentage-point increase—still far better than what any other state has accomplished in just a few years. But no judge criticized Tennessee for aiming for a 37 percent proficiency rate on the same test, a 14-percentage-point increase.
Some of New York’s judges were particularly hard on the state for not aiming for higher gains for minority and high-needs students. The state wants to narrow achievement gaps on NAEP by just a few percentage points for groups such as minority students and English-language learners within four years. Nationally, those same gaps have barely budged in years. Still, one judge saw New York’s target as too low, calling it “disturbing.”
But Maryland’s far more ambitious goal of completely eliminating achievement gaps earned criticism, too. “The extent to which [the goals] are achievable, especially for different subgroups, is questionable, as are the goals themselves,” one judge wrote.
Scattered Targets
An Education Week examination of the winners’ Race to the Top applications shows a wide range of aspirations for what they hope to achieve with their share of the $4 billion.
Hawaii, for example, set of goal of being at the national median on all NAEP tests by 2018.
Ohio wants to boost its 8th grade math proficiency rate on NAEP by 6 percentage points, and its graduation rate by 2 percentage points, to 88 percent.
The District of Columbia wants to increase graduation and college-going rates at a faster pace than any other Race to the Top grantee—goals that left one judge asking whether that was a “moonshot,” referring to the term Mr. Duncan has often used to describe the Race to the Top.
Rhode Island is aiming for one of the steepest trajectories, especially on NAEP. In 8th grade math, for example, the state wants to increase its proficiency rate 27 percentage points.
No state has come close to that rate of improvement, including Massachusetts, which has seen some of the biggest growth in NAEP scores in the country. During Massachusetts’ best six years, from 2000 to 2005, that state’s scores in 8th grade math grew 13 percentage points.
“We do believe it’s possible to meet these goals,” said Rhode Island Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist. “If you set a goal you know you can meet, you’re just not stretching yourself as far as you could.”
According to Rhode Island’s plan, the state set its goal by studying schools that had made rapid student-achievement gains of 10 to 20 percentage points on various metrics—with the idea that the state, through the Race to the Top, could replicate that improvement statewide.
One goal which Ms. Gist thinks could be especially challenging: math proficiency in high school. In the 2010-11 school year, only 33 percent of 11th graders were proficient in math on the state test. The state’s goal? Seventy-five percent proficiency.
“Our current proficiency level is just so unacceptable. Any other goal just felt unsatisfying,” Ms. Gist said. She noted that the state’s plan calls for directing more Race to Top resources into high school math.
Achievement Gap Focus
Massachusetts, which often boasts the highest achievement in the country, also has some of the largest achievement gaps between black and white students, and low-income and wealthier students. “What we’re looking at is continuing improvement but picking up the pace, and at the same time accelerating the improvement for those furthest behind,” said Mitchell D. Chester, the state commissioner of education. To set the state’s goals, Mr. Chester said, Massachusetts officials looked at the rate of improvement over the last several years, and bumped it up a notch. One of the state’s core objectives is reducing achievement gaps by 25 percent on NAEP and 15 percent in high school graduation rates.
“I do believe in four years’ time it is possible and important to demonstrate some tangible, measurable, substantial improvements in student outcomes,” Mr. Chester said. “That’s the bottom line here. We can’t wait 10 years.” Massachusetts officials will watch some midpoint indicators to see if the state is on the right track, including reading in the early elementary grades, middle school math, and overall achievement in the lowest-performing schools.
“I think there’s tension about how we judge that success in looking for short-term numbers. There’s important table-setting going on,” Mr. Chester said. Speaking of other Race to the Top winners, he said that some states may not hit their goals, but may have put landmark policies in place that will pave the way for long-term improvement.
“We have to be more nuanced in judging this,” he said.
Weighing Success
Experts in education research agree it will take time to judge the ultimate success, or failure, of the Race to the Top, given how long it can take for policy changes to translate into test-score gains. And it will be difficult to figure out whether it was the Race to the Top, and not some other education improvement effort or even a change in demographics, that caused any improvement.
“It’s important to differentiate between aspiration and tangible goals to set for a system,” said James W. Kohlmoos, the president and chief executive officer of the Washington-based Knowledge Alliance, which represents such research groups as the federal regional education laboratories.
“We’re going to get a lot of anecdotal evidence, and may see correlation over time,” he said. “But maybe the question to ask is, how much has Race to the Top changed actual policy?”
In most winning states, the achievement targets aren’t just Race to the Top goals, they’re also state education goals.
Take Tennessee, for example. Its goals, which include halving achievement gaps on NAEP and boosting college-going rates by 9 percentage points by 2014, are embedded in its request to obtain a waiver from certain provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The Obama administration last week released details of its plan to provide regulatory relief from many key parts of the NCLB law, including the goal that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Several states, including Tennessee, submitted requests before the final rules were even announced.
“All of these [Race to the Top] reforms are predicated on a commitment to setting ambitious but realistic goals,” Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman wrote in a July 29 letter to Mr. Duncan, asking for flexibility under NCLB. “To be clear, if we are able to achieve the ... top-line goals, Tennessee’s public education system will be on a completely different trajectory.”
For education policy advocates, who are watching the progress in Race to the Top states, setting goals—even high ones—is the easy part.
