District Administration - October 2010 - (Page 36)

Conversations Joanne Weiss On Top of the Race, but Under the Radar As chief-of-stAff to secretAry of educAtion Arne duncAn And director of the rAce to the top fund, Joanne Weiss has seen the praise, criticism and speculation surrounding the obama administration’s federal high-stakes competition. the remaining $3.4 billion in race to the top funds was allotted to 10 states in August, with winning proposals promising improvements in teacher performance, data management, and student achievement. despite concerns that the competition was pressuring cash-strapped states to adopt new policies with a multimilliondollar carrot, Weiss stands by the program, saying that in her 20 years in the public, private and philanthropic sectors of education, she has seen success and knows what it looks like. dA Associate editor Marion herbert recently spoke with the influential woman behind the scenes of race to the top. Weiss: The states that competed did a few things that are pretty extraordinary and will help them as they move toward trying to develop a comprehensive education reform agenda in their states, whether they won or lost the competition. The first thing is, just putting together the proposal for Race to the Top was really creating a blueprint for reform for their state. And in most states, there wasn’t a comprehensive education plan in place. Some districts had their own plans, although not all of them did. Race to the Top gave states the opportunity to work collaboratively across the business sector, the foundation-philanthropic sector, with the community, the nonprofits and all of the different parts of the school community that must work together to design plans that work. These plans are rooted in the comprehensive assets of those states and the needs of those states. I think that’s a huge win for states. The second thing is that it really gave states the opportunity to look comprehensively at their laws and legal infrastructure and see whether they were really doing the most that they could for education reform and whether or not this infrastructure was really conducive to doing education reform the right way in the state. As a result, 32 states changed their laws in ways that I think will have lasting impact in those states. 36 October 2010 Q: How has the competition positively impacted those states that lost out on the money? Some state leaders are compromising their education doctrines for reforms they don’t believe in because they need the grant money. At a time when states are struggling for public education funding, is a federal high-stakes competition the best way to demand change? excuses like the economy to put off doing what’s right for kids. These kids have one shot at second grade. They’re not going to be there again, and if we say, “Sorry, we didn’t have time to pay attention to you until you were out of college,” then we have done a tremendous disservice to these kids. So I think it’s a false dichotomy. I absolutely think we have serious issues with the economy that we have to take care of and that there are ramifications on education budgets because of it. That doesn’t mean, though, that we get a pass on doing right by kids and trying to put in place the reforms that are going to help them. I think you can hold both things in your head at the same time and manage them, and that’s what we asked states to do. A tremendous amount of them did that beautifully. Since the release of the second round of Race to the Top winners, there has been some buzz as to why some states won and others did not. Can you share with us why for instance, Colorado and Louisiana did not win, given that they have been known leaders in areas such as teacher policy, data systems and charter schools? Weiss: I think that you can’t use other prehensive look at education, and we had peer reviewers read through the applications in detail to review them, discuss them, participate in presentations with the states, ask clarifying questions, and get more information. In the end, all of the reviewers’ comments and scores— which is the way the states were judged in this competition—have been posted online, and people can look at them for themselves. But is it taken into account the level of sincerity of the proposals by the states, and would renowned educational leaders’ plans be more promising? Weiss: One of the things the peer reviewers were looking at was the credibility of the reform plans and whether they felt that the state was actually going to be able to execute on the plans that they submitted. That’s one of the reasons we had the presentation component, so that the people who were actually going to lead the reforms in the states could come and meet and talk to the peer reviewers about what they were planning. So yes, there were a number of ways in the competition that the credibility of the plan was taken into account. Knowing the power of the teachers unions, is it fair to place such an emphasis of the RTTT application on reforming them? Weiss: Yes, they have, and they’ve both done extraordinary work in education. The competition was, as I’ve said, a com- education if they’re not happening all the way down at the classroom level where kids are really impacted by what happens. So the challenge of all of these reforms is District Administration Weiss: Certainly no reforms happen in

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - October 2010

District Administration - October 2010
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Curriculum Update
Facilities Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Conversations
The Price of a Good Education
Dividing Arizona
Making Your School Future-Proof
Connecting Curriculum with Community
A Small District’s Big Innovator
New Books
New Products
Product Focus
Tech Disruptions
Superintendent’s Insights
Online Edge
Professional Opinion

District Administration - October 2010