The U.S Department of Education’s is offering its latest evaluation of Delaware’s use of its nearly $120 million Race to the Top grant.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan highlighted some of the First State’s successes in its education reform work.
“Delaware took action to improvement teacher recruitment and retention,” Duncan said while talking about what was accomplished in 2012-2013 – the third year of funding. “And now Delaware is beginning to identify teachers to work and stay in their most challenging schools.”
But those efforts are still works in progress. A report on Year Three of Race to the Top grant implementation noted the incentive program to entice top teachers and administrators to high-needs schools that’s part of the Delaware Talent Cooperative had low participation.
Chris Ruszkowski, chief officer of the Teacher and Leader Effectiveness Unit for the Delaware Department of Education, said the greatest stumbling block for Delaware Talent Cooperative is awareness.
Last summer the department conducted a survey about the program and found 70 percent of teachers in the state didn’t even know the co-op existed.
“There are two pieces to this,” Ruszkowski said. “There’s the talent retention piece, keeping teachers in place because we know that students improve over time. Then there’s the talent attraction piece, allow those school to recruit (top teachers from other schools).
“The talent retention piece has been on track and the talent attraction piece has been off track.”
Ruszkowski said if the 18 co-op schools use all of the resources at their disposal, the schools will attract the high-performing teachers they need for the high-needs schools. He said officials are working to be sure the right working conditions, the right school leaders and the right incentives are all in place to entice some to move to the most challenged buildings.
“After 18, 24 months, we’re still building awareness around what the initiative actually means,” he said. He used Kuumba Academy Charter School in Wilmington as an example.
“The school leadership and the culture is there. I think some of these (ideas about high-needs schools) are misconceptions and some of them are realities and its about awareness.
The report, released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Education, takes stock of the third year of RTT programs and looks to the fourth and final year of funding to set goals for Delaware school officials.
Another challenged program singled out in the report is the state’s Partnership Zone program. Ten of the state’s lowest-performing schools were identified in 2011 and 2012 and administrators were given options on how to turn their schools around. While some have improved significantly, most have not made significant strides, according to the USDOE report.
“As we noted, we have seen mixed results with some of our partnership zone schools and one of the core pillars of this work is that none of our students are attending schools that are significantly underperforming,” Murphy said. He didn’t outline any specific plans, but said the state would continue to work with Partnership Zone schools and is taking steps to extend the program.
Race to the Top is a voluntary federal grant program that awarded $5 billion across the country, with Delaware winning $119 million in the first funding cycle in 2010. The four-year program was slated to end after the 2013-2014 school year. Delaware’s funding ends June 13.
But the fourth year may not be the end for RTT implementation in Delaware. In fact, federal officials said 11 of the 12 RTT states have applied for “no-cost” extensions to a fifth year. No decision has been made on Delaware’s application, but reviews are completed on a rolling basis, so the decision could be made at any time.
“What’s most important is that we have a set of goals for our children that our schools and districts are working on right now and we would commit to continuing that work,” Murphy said. “We really see ourselves in the middle of implementation.”
In addition to about 40 statewide RTT initiatives, officials said local districts and schools have implemented additional programs. Ruszkowski said $70 million of the state’s grant went to local plans. They said thoughtful implementation calls for an additional year to finish the job.
In addition to the fifth year extension, federal officials said they requested $300 million in the 2015 USDOE budget for a new round of RTT grants.
“I can’t find a single district out of 15,000 (districts) that systemically identifies their hardest working and most successful teachers and principals and moves them to the communities and to children’s schools that have been historically underserved,” Duncan said. “So we just think we have a chance to play in that space and help districts and states really take on that challenge.
“And quite honestly we talk about the achievement gap in this country, I’m much more focused on what I call ‘the opportunity gap’ and I don’t think as a nation, while we wring our hands, we are not serious about closing the achievement gap because we have not been serious about closing the opportunity gap and that is the hope of the Race to the Top plan going forward.”
Duncan said any state that would want a piece of the $300 million (theoretical funds at this point, it has not been approved by Congress yet) would have to reapply to the program. He said, however, that the department may decide to work with an entirely new set of states.
Murphy said since a new round of funding has not yet been finalized, state officials haven’t made any plans or decisions on any possible application.
Regardless, administrators said state schools will be ready to sustain the RTT reform program even in the absence of grant funding.
“Districts have begun to insert some of those programmatic improvements they made under Race to the Top into their yearly budgets and we’re watching our superintendents lead great work in that area,” Murphy said.
“There are so many districts that have, over the last 18 months, had the careful leadership to look through their existing funds and the school-based funds and think about their options and what’s the most impactful for our students,” Ruszkowski added.
The report released Wednesday, which covers the 2012-2013 academic year is slightly outdated, Murphy noted, adding that some challenges have already been addressed including additional preparation for administrators who are implementing the teacher evaluation DPAS II and the launch of projects including the teacher recruitment web portal joindelawareschools.org.
Duncan said USDOE wanted to “change the culture from compliance and bureaucracy” to work more in partnership with state and local education officials.
Murphy said USDOE has been a strong partner to the state and in turn, Delaware DOE has extended a hand in partnership to local leaders in support of not only state initiatives but those on the district and school level as well.