State readies ‘Race to the Top’ application as deadline draws near
Published: December 15, 2009
With a Jan. 19 deadline approaching, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state Legislature and the Department of Education are scrambling to make California’s “Race to the Top” federal grant application as competitive as possible. If successful, California could receive a grant of from $350 million to $700 million, officials estimate.
The $4.35 billion RTTT competitive grant program, part of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package, focuses on four education reform goals that will likely shape the next reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. States must demonstrate how they will further the administration’s reform goals, which are: enhancing academic standards and assessments, improving the collection and use of education data, improving teacher effectiveness and achieving equity in teacher distribution, and turning around struggling schools. State applications will be scored on a 500-point scale assessing their commitment to the four reform goals.
MOUs
California must have buy-in from as many local educational agencies as possible to gain maximum points on its RTTT application. By signing a memorandum of understanding with the state, LEAs agree to support the state’s plan for addressing the four reform goals, although their own activities will vary according to local priorities, state officials explained.
The state Department of Education wants to receive the signed MOUs by Jan. 8, which may require interested LEAs to hold a special board meeting to consider the agreement. Board members should work with their superintendents to review the MOU and decide whether they want to participate, keeping in mind the one-time nature of the funds and the work required, CSBA Principal Legislative Advocate Erika Hoffman advised.
If California does not receive RTTT funds, LEAs will not have to comply with the provisions of the MOU. CDE and CSBA have posted further guidance for LEAs considering the MOU on their Web sites (see links below).
Competing legislation
Special-session bills to create the necessary framework for the state’s application have come from both houses of the state Legislature. Senate Bill X5 1, introduced last August by state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, has Schwarzenegger’s backing. The bill lacks the support of most of the education community, however, because it proposes reforms that go beyond the requirements of RTTT, such as allowing parents to move their children from a low-performing school to any public school of their choice.
Meanwhile, Assembly Education Committee chair Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, introduced a bill earlier this month that also addressed RTTT requirements but which was developed with greater input and consensus from school board members, administrators and teachers. That bill, supported by CSBA, includes components not in the Senate bill such as stronger accountability for charter schools, as well as a requirement that 80 percent of grant funds go directly to schools versus 50 percent in the Romero bill. AB X5 8 also lays out clear processes for identifying and turning around persistently low-performing schools, evaluating administrators, and ensuring equitable distribution of teachers and administrators in needy schools, among other components.
Neither bill has yet survived a floor vote in the other house.
Because the Assembly bill requires charter schools to meet the same fiscal and academic performance standards as non-charter public schools, the governor and other proponents of the Senate bill have claimed that it favors the status quo in education by adding another layer of bureaucracy–a charge CSBA President Frank Pugh rejects.
“It is discouraging and puzzling that the governor believes that his own principles of transparency, accountability and high standards for all students should not be applied to charter schools,” Pugh said.
Grant raises issues
The RTTT application contains several areas of concern for LEAs and governance teams. First, the program requires states to agree to adopt common core standards, presumably those being developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The deadline for states to adopt the standards is Aug. 2, although the CCSSI will not issue final K-12 standards before February, leaving little time for states to consider them. States that adopt common standards later in the year will receive fewer points on their RTTT application.
In California’s MOU that state officials released Monday, the state agrees to adopt the standards by Aug. 2 “in such a manner as to not lower our rigorous expectations for students.” According to the MOU, the state will revise its curriculum frameworks in math and English during 2011 and align instructional materials, assessments and the state accountability system with the common core standards by 2015.
“The issue for California will be: What are those standards, how well do they match up with our standards?” CSBA’s Hoffman said. “Will this lower our standards?”
RTTT also requires states to identify the lowest 5 percent of persistently low-achieving schools and to specify how they will intervene and turn them around. The basis for identifying the schools and how they will exit intervention raise many questions that have not been resolved.
Furthermore, although the prospect of receiving up to $700 million is tempting, the funds—no more than 1 percent or so of the state’s total education budget—will be gone within four years, while the structural changes being made to the educational system may be here to stay.
“The implications of this go on long past the grant period,” Hoffman said.
A second phase of RTTT grants will be awarded in September, with applications due June 1. So California could wait to apply until the details of the program are fleshed out, or try again if the application fails.
“There are just a lot of unknowns right now,” Hoffman said.
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