Education Week - November 14, 2012 - 17

EDUCATION WEEK

NOVEMBER 14, 2012

www.edweek.org

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

POLICY BRIEF

Disputes Derail Districts’ RTT Applications
In Los Angeles, Superintendent John Deasy submitted the district’s application without the union’s support, to make the case that, “after months of trying repeatedly to form a partnership for By Jaclyn Zubrzycki youth and faculty on this issue, Disagreement over teacher-evalour students should not be penaluation methods and the sustainized due to the absence of a utla ability and desirability of the prosignature,” he wrote in a stategrams to be financed by the latest ment. Race to the Top competition has Michael Casserly, the executive come to a head in several promidirector of the Washington-based nent districts, scuttling some plans Council of the Great City Schools, to apply for the grant and delaying said Mr. Deasy had done “what he the applications of others. should have. ... They at least are The $400 million Race to the making every attempt to pursue Top district competition is offerreforms and seek the resources to ing grants of up to $40 million Sticking Points do so.” But the utla ’s Mr. Fletcher for school systems to undertake The department estimates that called the submission a stunt. improvements aimed at personalizing learning for students and 15 to 25 districts will receive four“It sent the inaccurate message adding technology. To be eligible year awards. The final applicato the voting public that we were for grants, though, districts fighting over money as opposed must, by the 2014-15 school to all working together to get a year, have evaluations in funding lifeline [through PropApplication Submitted With Union Signature RACE TO THE TOP osition 30, a tax measure],” he place for teachers, princiFresno Unified, Calif. RUN-UP pals, and superintendents— said. Clark County, Nev. often a point of contention Richard M. Sheehan, the suSanger Unified, Calif. Tensions between perintendent of the 26,300-stufor teachers. The grant apdent Glendale district, also plications, which were due districts and teachers’ this month, required sign-off chose to submit his district’s unions played out in No Agreement Reached from teachers’ unions by the grant proposal without the union’s different ways among San Francisco Unified signature. Neither district has application date. a sampling of districts Oakland Unified, Calif. Disputes between districts heard back from the federal decompeting for a grant Palm Beach County, Fla. and unions over the plans partment on whether the grants Portland, Ore. for those applications caused would be considered. in the federal Race school systems in San FranThe disputes over the to the Top district cisco; Oakland, Calif.; Palm applications received competition. Beach County, Fla., and Portnews media and public Application Submitted Without Union Signature land, Ore., to forgo submitattention, much of it Glendale Unified, Calif. critical of the unions. ting them. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Unified “With the lure of Los Angeles and Glendale school districts, in California, money [from the grants] both sought to submit their in a time of tremendous SOURCE: Education Week applications without union fiscal constraint, you had a lot of approval. The Clark County, Nev., tion date was Nov. 8 for districts ing to be budgetarily responsible press attention that was focused and Fresno, Calif., districts and affected by Hurricane Sandy and [by not signing the grant], and on these conflicts,” said Ms. Wetheir unions reached agreements Nov. 2 for all others; the federal we were vilified for doing so,” said ingarten. “But sometimes, it just during an extension granted to department was set to announce Warren Fletcher, the utla presi- wasn’t the appropriate grant.” all school systems because of the the number of applications later dent. impact of Hurricane Sandy on the this week. However, Rick Miller, the ex- Down to the Wire East Coast. The grant’s requirement that ecutive director of the California The unions involved in these teacher evaluations be tied to Office to Reform Education, or Both Clark County and Fresno conflicts were all National Educa- student-test-score growth was a core, a coalition of eight districts applied for the grant only after tion Association affiliates. (United sticking point in some districts formed during the second Race to public officials coaxed unions into Teachers Los Angeles is an affili- where those scores are not cur- the Top application process, said negotiation just before the exate of both the American Federa- rently factored in. The president he believed the grants were sus- tended application deadline. tion of Teachers and the nea.) of the Oakland Education Asso- tainable. “These grants would be Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval ciation, Trish Gorham, said one additional dollars [for districts] to facilitated a discussion between of her concerns was that shifts in do work they want to do anyway,” the Clark County Education AsLessons Learned evaluation systems “should not be he said. sociation and district officials. “Reforms work only if there is part of the grant-writing process.” And in Fresno, the city’s mayor, Troy Flint, a spokesman for the Costs of Applying Ashley Swearengin, and a broad genuine labor-management colcoalition of community members laboration and a sharing of re- 37,000-student Oakland district, sponsibility,” said Randi Weingar- said test scores would have been In California, the grants sub- all jumped into the fray, encouragten, the aft’s national president. only one of several measures used mitted by Fresno, Sanger, and ing the union to get on board with “Never before Race to the Top to evaluate teachers. Clovis—which have 73,000 stu- the grant. The union eventually was there so much conflict over a Union leaders in the 311,000-stu- dents, 10,900 students, and 38,900 signed off at 2 a.m. Nov. 2—the grant process, where people were dent Clark County district, students, respectively—cost more day the application was due. blamed if you didn’t submit an ap- which includes Las Vegas, the than $500,000 to put together and Fresno Superintendent Michael plication.” 177,000-student Palm Beach hundreds of hours in district staff Hanson said that part of his disMs. Weingarten submitted a let- County schools, and elsewhere also time, Mr. Miller said. That money trict’s success could be attributed ter to U.S. Secretary of Education said they had not had time to re- came from private foundations to the fact that the grant aligned Arne Duncan late last month de- view the proposals: Districts had that donate to the core. But he with the cash-strapped commutailing instances in which aft af- less than three months to draft ap- said that the groups were working nity’s focus on early-childhood filiates alleged that districts had plication plans. with the consulting firm Parthe- education and emphasized suptried to circumvent the grant reBut other complaints about non Group of San Francisco to en- porting teachers’ “heartbreaking, quirement for a union signature. the Race to the Top program sure that some of the plans could bone-crushing” work. “If we were Grants developed through col- ran deeper and came both from be carried out even if the districts union bashing, we wouldn’t have laboration between districts and within and outside of unions. “I’m don’t win federal funding. gotten there.”

Latest ‘i3’ Winners Split $150 Million
Twenty winners are slated to share $150 million in prize money from the third round of the federal Investing in Innovation competition, the U.S. Department of Education announced last week. Eight won “validation” awards of up to $15 million each, and the remaining 12 won “development” awards of up to $3 million. The department chose not to award any grants in the largest “scale up” category, where the grants were each worth up to $25 million. Department officials said in a frequently-asked-questions document about the awards that they wanted a larger portfolio of grantees, and awarding a large $25 million grant would have eaten up a big portion of the award money. The i3 contest, which was born out of the 2009 economicstimulus package passed by Congress, aims to find innovative ideas and bring them to scale. School districts, groups of schools, and their nonprofit partners competed in the three categories, which varied based on how much evidence of past success an idea had. The scale-up category requires the strongest track record of success; the development category requires less evidence but a lot of promise.
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Union sign-off proved difficult

union affiliates are more likely to be implemented as planned said Donna M. Harris-Aikens, the director of the nea’s education policy and practice department. Requiring a union representative’s signature may have been a response to previous Race to the Top competitions, said Timothy Daly, the president of the New York City-based nonprofit tntp, formerly the New Teacher Project. “In the state competition, some promises written into applications weren’t followed through on because the union wasn’t actually on board in the first place,” he said.

frustrated, quite frankly, that the federal government would put these kinds of carrots out there for districts but give them such a narrow range of time to write and come up with the ideas,” said Ms. Gorham. Jonathan P. Raymond, the superintendent of the Sacramento, Calif., district, which has 47,900 students, issued a public letter to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman lambasting the program. “Forcing school districts to compete for badly needed resources is like offering a starving man food but only if he agrees to whatever strings may be attached,” Mr. Raymond wrote. In the 664,000-student Los Angeles district, union officials were worried that the program had a $43.3 million budget but only a $40 million grant. “We were try-

Now the only thing standing between the winners and their money is securing matching funds from the private sector. Development award winners must secure a 15 percent match, and validation winners a 20 percent match. In the past, securing matching grants— and keeping that money—has proved quite challenging for some i3 winners. Applicants have until Dec. 7 to secure their matching funds. The validation winners are: Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, Jobs for the Future, leed Sacramento, National Writing Project, New Leaders Inc., New Teacher Center, Texas a&m University, and WestEd. WestEd also won a development grant, along with avid Center, California Association for Bilingual Education, California League of Middle Schools, Central Falls (R.I.) School District, Citizen Schools Inc., Clark County (Nev.) School District, Columbia College Chicago, Intercultural Development Research Association, International Network for Public Schools, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and Virginia Advanced Study Strategies Inc.
—MICHELE MCNEIL

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Education Week - November 14, 2012

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