Check out this morning's story from Inside Higher Ed for more information and questions. I'm told we can expect details from UW System soon, and I know many of us eagerly await them.
By placing a Teach for America hobbyist on the state board of education, Rick Scott thumbed his nose at all the hard working men and women who sacrifice so much for the state’s children. Teach for America in case you have been living under a rock takes non education majors, puts them through a five week access course and then puts them in our neediest classrooms or the exact opposite of what people call best practices. In case you were wavering because of the pennies he recently threw the states teachers please also remember that under his watch the state stole 3 percent of teacher’s pay to balance the books, and a draconian and nonsensical teacher evaluation system was enacted. This also continues the state's policy of not putting educators or experienced applicants in charge of education and then we wonder why we are in trouble. Shameful.
Today is the deadline for state applications in the first round of the Race to the Top grant competition. The easy prognostication to make is that the vast majority of the 39 states (and DC) that apply will have their initial applications rejected and all will reapply in round two, due in June. Most will fail then, too. Despite the publicly released application scoring rubric , it is difficult to know exactly how the application scoring will play out, based upon who the reviewers are, whether Gates Foundation consultant funding helped certain states frame more compelling applications, stated or implicit pressures to fund only a certain number of applications (especially in round one), the importance lent to district and union buy-in from an implementation and sustainability perspective, and the strength of big-state applications versus small-state applications. To the latter point, there's ONLY $4 billion to be spread around, and the largest states could suck up as much as $700 mi...
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