- Romney Campaign Focuses on Education Policy, from Grantmakers in the Arts
- Rules Proposed for District Race to Top Contest, from Education Week
- District Grant Contest Unveiled by Department of Education, from The New York Times
- Rod Paige, other Bush administration appointees named to Mitt Romney’s education advisory group, from The Washington Post
The US Department of Education has released proposed Race to the Top requirements and timeline for implementation. This program is proposed for local districts or a consortium of districts. It is currently in public comment phase. The is a summary of the DOE district level RTTT program being proposed.
FROM: Penn Hill Group
DATE: May 22, 2012
SUBJECT: District Race to the Top
This memo provides a short summary of the recently proposed District Race to the Top (District RTTT) requirements and the timeline for implementation.
Summary of District RTTT
Mon May 22nd, the Department of Education released its proposed requirements for District RTTT. This program is intended to mirror the State RTTT program, but in many ways diverges from this initiative. The Department is expecting to make 15 to 20 awards ranging from $15 to $25 million each.
Eligible applicants are school districts or consortia of school districts. Applying school districts need to propose to serve at least 2,500 students, 40% of which have to be low-income. School districts are able to propose to serve only certain grades or schools and don’t have to serve the entire district. Applications must be signed off on by the superintendent, the school board, AND (if applicable) the local union.
In order to be eligible, school districts must commit to design and implement (by the 2014 – 2015 school year) teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board evaluation systems. School districts also must have data systems that match teachers to individual students and match student level P-12 data with higher education data. School districts would have to meet one absolute priority and one of four other absolute priorities. The absolute priority all school districts must meet pertains to “personalized learning environments.” The other priorities relate to whether a school district (or consortia of school districts) proposes to serve students from State RTTT states and whether such school districts are rural. These priorities have the effect of separating school districts in states which have won State RTTT grants from those that have not.
In order to be awarded funds, a school district would be evaluated on a number of selection criteria:
- Vision - the likelihood the application will result in increased student achievement.
- District Capacity and Success - past track record, increased transparency around salaries at the school level for various education personnel, meaningful stakeholder engagement, and capacity of the district to support the application’s plan for reform.
- Preparing Students for College and Careers – the quality of plans for personalizing the learning environment, strategies for tracking learning, mechanisms to provide training to use resources to track learning, support for teachers in implementing personalized learning plans, policies and infrastructure for learning that enable students and educators to accelerate their academic progress and how well these policies and infrastructure support personalized learning, and measuring the performance of the effectiveness of the applicants plan.
- Transition and Continuous Improvement – the quality of the plan to transition to personalized learning environments and continuous improvement in the implementation of the plan in the application.
- Budget and Sustainability – whether the budget of the applicant can support the proposal and the quality of the plan for sustainability of the goals of the grant after the initial funding is expended.
The Department will also award a competitive priority to school districts based on the extent that public and private resources are integrated to augment core school resources. The particular focus on this aspect is addressing the social-emotional, behavioral, and other needs of students.
Implementation Timeline of District RTTT
- May 22- June 8, 2012: Draft criteria available for public comment
- Late June/Early July 2012: Application available
- October 2012: Applications due
- November 2012: Peer Review
- December 2012: Awards announced