The Shadow
RICHMOND (AP) – The U.S. Department of Education says Virginia should better demonstrate its efforts to boost teacher quality and adopt common standards and assessments to improve the state’s chances of receiving Race to the Top funding to improve public schools.
Those were among areas where Virginia fell short in its application for the first round of federal funding, according to score sheets and reviewers’ comments.
Tennessee and Delaware were chosen over 14 other finalists to receive $600 million in federal stimulus money for innovative education programs. Virginia learned earlier this month that it didn’t make the first cut.
State education officials said they’ve started reviewing the feedback it received Monday and will weigh how to proceed. The application deadline for Race to the Top’s second and final round, worth about $3.4 billion, is June 1 and the winners will be announced in the fall.
One area in which Virginia didn’t fare well in the first round evaluated Virginia’s efforts to adopt a proposed national common core of education standards in reading and mathematics, one of President Barack Obama’s key education priorities. Virginia is part of a group of states working on the development of such standards, but it hasn’t committed to adopting the standards.
Virginia already has had its Standards of Learning structure in place for more than a decade, and state education department spokesman Charles Pyle said Tuesday that the state wouldn’t want to completely replace its existing standards with the federal framework.
Under Race to the Top, the federal education department asked states to highlight their efforts in four areas: adopting standards and assessments to better prepare students for careers and college; attracting effective teachers and principals and improving their performance; turning around low-performing schools; and creating data systems to improve instruction and track student performance.
Virginia scored low in the teacher-quality section, and reviewers noted that the state doesn’t require school divisions to tie teacher evaluations, compensation and promotions to student achievement, which is another reform supported by the Obama administration.
Pyle noted that the Race to the Top grants might not be won by states that already have achieved some success in improving their education frameworks, and that Virginia is “in a much different place than a state still trying to put together a credible reform program.”
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On the Net:
U.S. Department of Education: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/index.html
