Race to the Top: New Mexico Heads Back to the Drawing Board

New Mexico was not one of 15 states and the District of Columbia the Obama administration picked today as finalists to win billions in federal education funding through the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program.

The states named as finalists today and move onto the next level are: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

The number of finalists is much higher than foreseen by outside experts.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the states announced today could win as much as $900 million each, depending on their size, at a time when many local education budgets face deep funding shortfalls. The number of actual winners, set to be announced in April, is expected to be far smaller – possibly as few as five.

Applications of a second round of Race to the Top funding is set for June. President Barack Obama also is pushing for a third round, according to wire reports.

In January, New Mexico and 39 other states and Washington, D.C. applied to Race to the Top, the largest pool of federal discretionary education money in U.S. history. The grants reward school systems for finding ways to strengthen academic standards, recruit better teachers, collect data on student performance and turn around failing schools that can be replicated across the country.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his team have worked to keep the selection process as free of politics as possible. Congress, the states, and even the White House were not told who made the cut until Thursday morning.

The U.S. Department of Education turned to a panel of 58 outside judges to pick the finalists and winners according to 19 criteria, including the state’s track record, openness to charter schools, and systems to judge teacher performance. Independent evaluators have given especially high markets to Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana for their accountability standards and for implementing systems to track student performance.

Experts screened the bids on a 500-point system that reflects President Obama’s agenda.

For example, the scoring rubric awards up to 10 points for making education funding a priority and up to 30 for demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps. Three areas of reform are worth up to 40 points each: developing and adopting common academic standards; turning around the lowest-achieving schools; and ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter or other autonomous public schools. Proposals to improve teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance are worth as many as 58 points, signaling Obama’s willingness to challenge unions to accept merit pay.

Secretary Duncan has the final call on who wins, but aides say he will lay out in detail his justification if he departs from the expert rankings. Experts and former U.S. education officials say Duncan is the first education secretary to have control over so much money to drive school reform.

Congress authorized the funding through the 2001 economic stimulus law but set few conditions on how to spend it.

Race to the Top Phase I Finalists to be Announced Today

U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that Race to the Top (RttT) Phase I finalists will be announced today (Thursday, March 4).

Each state will receive notification via email around 11:30 a.m. EST of the selected finalists. This email will be sent to the State Chief, the Governor and the RTTT contact listed on the state application. A press release will go out to national press at 12:00 p.m. EST.

Forty states and Washington, D.C. applied to the Race to the Top fund, the largest pool of federal discretionary education money in U.S. history. The grants, to be announced today, reward school systems for finding ways to strengthen academic standards, recruit better teachers, collect data on student performance and turn around failing schools that can be replicated across the country.

According to wire reports, most states won’t get any money today because their proposals aren’t tough enough, Grover J. Whitehurst, who served in the Education Department under former President George W. Bush, said in an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday. Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee may prevail because of their use of technology to track student achievement over time, he added.

“Underlying the Obama administration’s specific proposals is an agenda for dramatic change of the public schools,” said Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, which analyzes U.S. public policy. “The reviewers will have been asking: ‘Is the state willing and able to change the status quo?’”

There will be “a lot more losers than winners,” Duncan said in testimony yesterday before the House Education and Labor Committee.

We will monitor this announcement throughout the day and post the “winning” states when they become available.

Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge

The White House and the U.S. Department of Education have announced a new Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge and are inviting public schools across the country to compete to have President Obama speak at their graduation.

At the beginning of the school year, the president encouraged students all across the country to take responsibility for their education, study hard, and graduate from high school. The Race to the Top High School Commencement challenge encourages schools to show how they are making great strides on personal responsibility, academic excellence and college readiness.

Applications must be completed by students and submitted by a high school principal using the Commencement Challenge Application Form no later than Monday, March 15th at 11:59 p.m.

Each school may submit only one application and high schools must be public to apply.

Following the application deadline, six finalists will be selected by the White House and U.S. Department of Education. These schools will then be featured on the White House website and the public will have an opportunity to vote for the three schools they think best meet the president’s goal. The president will select a national winner from these three finalists and visit the winning high school to deliver the commencement address to the class of 2010.

The application’s four essay questions focus on demonstrating how the school is helping prepare students to meet the president’s 2020 goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Applications will be judged based on the school’s performance and dedication to providing students an excellent education that will prepare them to graduate ready for college and career choices. Each question must be answered in full to qualify and data that substantiates each answer is strongly encouraged.

In addition to the required essay responses, applicants are invited to submit the following optional supplemental materials:

• Video – no more than 2 minutes in length – showing the school’s culture and character and highlighting how it is a model of educational success for other high schools around the country.
• Supplemental data on key indicators such as attendance, student achievement, graduation rates and where available, college enrollment rates. This data may be presented in the form of tables, graphs or spreadsheets and should be used to help the school make the most compelling arguments possible.

Please use the Commencement Challenge Application Form to apply.

Race to the Top: What does it all mean?

As of this writing, there are approximately 50,800,000 results that appear on Google for the Race to the Top Program. This $4.35 billion stimulus package announced last spring created the largest “buzz” in history for education. Now, the race is on as 40 States and the District of Columbia have submitted Race to the Top applications to the Department of Education, all competing for the funds that can help with the dismal education budgets that states are facing across the country in 2010 and beyond.

The Details
The U.S. Department of Education trained 53 reviewers in D.C. at an all-day training session on Jan. 23. There are 20 different components of the award system, which totals 500 points. In many cases, there is little discretion involved in deciding how many points to award for a particular component. For example, reviewers award two points for each of 12 required elements in a statewide data system for a total of 24 points. However, some components require a more critical eye. For example, the 35 points associated with turning around schools requires an expert reviewer to assess strategies and plans and determine their potential impact on these schools.  Reviewers decide how many of the 35 points that a particular applicant’s turnaround plans merit. Upon leaving the training, each reviewer left with five applications in hand (of course, they weren’t allowed to review their own state). Top contenders will be invited back to D.C. in mid-March for presentations for final selections to be announced in April.

All proposals are posted here on the U.S. Department of Education website.  I believe that all states are “winners” for spending the December holiday season behind closed doors working fervently and feverishly to address the critical situations we face in education across our country.  It took hundreds of hours of work and partnerships for states to get the proposals submitted, bringing together industry, education and government to help look at the necessary steps for their states’ futures in education, and in turn, economic development.

In New Mexico, we believe we have a plan that can address the critical situation we face in educational attainment: dropouts and success of the teacher/student.  It was like piecing together a giant jigsaw puzzle as teams of teachers and leaders from across the state worked together to address the application and its requirements.

We now hold our breath along with the other 39 contenders. For the future of our state, our students, our economic development and all teachers across the state, winning Race to the Top could be a game-changer.

Years from now it will be fascinating to see what the Race to the Top and the controversial stimulus dollars have done for the states.  But for now, I know that this application made states think long and hard on what must happen to address drop-outs, failing schools, STEM education and partnerships for the long-haul. The Race to the Top process – win or lose – created a blueprint for states to move forward with a vision for education reform.

Obama Urges States to Raise Academic Standards

President Barack Obama says America’s “primacy in the world” is at stake in the quest to substantially improve educational quality and global competitiveness, according to reports filed Monday by the Associated Press.

Speaking to governors gathered at the White House on Monday, Obama said he won’t “accept second place for the United States of America.” He noted that the United States continues to lag behind other nations in critical areas, including high school math and science skills.

Obama applauded governors for developing “common academic standards” but said more can be done. For one thing, he said, states will be asked to adopt new standards to better prepare the young for college-level math and science – and will make that a condition for receiving certain federal assistance. Obama said the effort also will require better teaching and better curricula.

Obama told governors he wants a change in law that would allow states to receive federal aid for poor students only if they adopt academic standards that are deemed to truly prepare children for college or careers out of high school. The move would require a change in the nation’s main elementary and secondary education law, which became known as the No Child Left Behind Act during the presidency of George W. Bush.

Traditionally, the federal government is a marginal player in the financing and control of education, but its role has expanded as educators and lawmakers at all levels worry about slipping U.S. competitiveness.

In a statement issued Sunday, the White House said the initiative will develop and implement new reading and math standards that prepare high school students for college and careers. “Because too many students are not learning the basic skills needed to succeed in college or work while they are in high school,” the White House said in the statement, “the nation sacrifices more than $3.7 billion a year in lost productivity and remedial education costs.”

The White House said the governors have been working on the president’s Race to the Top program, which rewards school systems that raise standards and demonstrate that through tougher student assessments.

In addition to supporting ongoing state efforts, the White House said the president will commit an additional $350 million to the Race to the Top challenge to back “state-led partnerships to develop new, state-of-the art assessments aligned to college and career-ready standards.”

According to the White House, the president’s 2011 budget will call for the reauthorization of the 1994 version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which would require states to meet six tough standards to help high school graduates prepare for college or jobs. The White House said schools need to focus on better teacher preparation, improved teaching, and tougher student assessments.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was first passed in 1965 and has been routinely reauthorized every five years.

Obama’s proposed reauthorization would:

• Require the states to “adopt and certify that they have college- and career-ready standards in reading and mathematics” to be eligible for the federal money.
• Establish a $405 million outlay to help states “align teacher preparation practices and programs to teaching of college- and career-ready standards.”
• Provide grants totaling $400 million to states that adopt tougher student assessment programs.
• Dedicate $1.35 billion to the Race to the Top program in addition to stimulus money for the program.
• Allot $2.5 billion in the 2011 budget to a state grant program to support better teaching and leadership in the schools.

U.S. DoE Releases Race to the Top Applications

The U.S. Department of Education is providing the public with the applications it received from states applying to the Race to the Top program, according to information provided Wednesday on www.ed.gov.

In order to make the information available to the public as quickly as possible, while fulfilling legal obligations to protect certain information, including personal information that may have been included, the Department will be posting the applications in two stages.

At this time, only the states’ narrative responses to the application criteria are available, but because each state had some flexibility in determining the placement of the information provided in its application, the narrative statements for some states include information that other states determined were best included in the appendices.

• Click Here to view all the state applications
• Click Here to view New Mexico’s application (large file – 39.1 M)

U.S. DoE notes on their Web site that the documents provided online are partial applications; they include only the application narratives and not the appendices, and as such do not constitute the entire application submitted.

The Department of Education currently is reviewing the remaining portions of the applications — the appendices — and intends to post them in the coming weeks.

President’s 2011 Budget Aims to Boost STEM Investments in New Mexico, nationwide

The prosperity of future generations depends on what we do now to educate our students. President Barack Obama unveiled the FY-2011 Budget on Monday demonstrating a strong commitment to education in STEM fields nationwide, with an unprecedented set of investments particularly in K-12 STEM education.

The 2011 Budget would increase total education spending nationwide by about 6 percent. The proposal currently would invest a total of $3.7 billion in STEM education programs across the federal government, including an historic $1 billion commitment to improve math/science achievement among K-12 students – an increase of over 40 percent.

Under the President’s proposed budget, New Mexico may see tax cuts for 700,000 families; $262.1 million for schools, students, and teachers; $871 million in new funding for Pell Grants to help families pay for college; and a pay raise for the 14,400 men and women in New Mexico serving in our Armed Forces. According to White House calculations, the proposal contains at least $437.6 million for New Mexico’s elementary and secondary schools, students, and teachers.  It also proposes $245.8 million in Pell Grants to help more than 61,500 New Mexican students afford college.

The president also stressed that every child deserves a world-class education in New Mexico.

Here are the highlights:

• The president’s budget makes college more affordable for an estimated 77,000 New Mexico residents by increasing the maximum Pell Grant for college students for the next school year to $5,550.
• The president also wants to eliminate middlemen in student loans, bypassing banks and putting the funds directly in the hands of students. This would save an estimated $5 billion next year in subsidies for the banks, and $48 billion during the next decade. The savings would be invested in our students, increasing Pell awards across the country.  In New Mexico, the President’s plan would boost Pell funding by $871 million between now and 2019.
• The budget makes permanent the $2,500 American Opportunity Tax Credit for people attending college while also proposing to cut the red tape on financial aid, making it easier for students and their parents to apply for assistance.
• The budget invests $123.1 million for state and local educational initiatives throughout New Mexico which strengthen student achievement in low-income areas. These funds would provide additional assistance to teachers and schools as they implement innovative approaches to raising student performance.
• The budget provides New Mexico $23.1 million to help increase students’ academic achievement by boosting teacher training efforts and expanding recruitment efforts for teachers and principals in “high-need” school districts.
• The budget provides $12.4 million for the School Breakfast program and $55 million for the School Lunch program.

These proposed investments within the president’s budget support the next generation of learners by helping states develop and implement math and science instructional practices that are aligned to rigorous college-and career-ready standards and by supporting districts and non-profit organizations that develop, implement, and evaluate promising and effective programs. It also aims to increase STEM literacy so that students learn deeply and think critically by strengthening STEM education opportunities for all students.

This boost in investments towards STEM outcomes will help drive economic growth in the coming decades. The proposed budget provides $300 million in new grants to states to develop and implement instructional practices and improve teaching and learning in science and math aligned to new high standards. The budget also dedicates $150 million within the Investing in Innovation Fund to competitive grants for school districts, non-profits, and other organizations to test, validate, and scale promising strategies to improve teaching and accelerate student learning in STEM subjects.

The president’s budget proposes a bold strategy to foster educational excellence, advance equity and opportunity, improve student achievement, reward successful outcomes, invest in innovation, and prepare our nation’s children for global competitiveness. If approved as presented, it will have a substantial impact on the lives of our students.

But, there is a need for urgent action.

Our nation’s eighth graders are scoring below their peers from many Asian and European countries in math and science, and we are neither adequately closing the achievement gaps in math and science nor providing adequate opportunities for many students from diverse backgrounds.

Among the many challenges the U.S. faces today, few are as important as finding, encouraging and training more students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. If we are to stem the flow of jobs and foster innovation in our state and throughout the nation, STEM education simply must be a higher priority.