President Barack Obama, delivering a schoolhouse pitch Tuesday for a $1.35-billion expansion of his signature educational plan, promised to “raise the bar” for what public schools expect of students and teachers.
“Nothing will make as much of a difference as the way we educate our sons and daughters,” Obama said, after meeting with schoolchildren at an elementary school in Falls Church, Va. “The countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, and I refuse to let that happen on my watch.”
Under the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” program, states are competing for a share of $4.35 billion in federal funding aimed at spurring public schools to make student achievement the core of their programs. That includes potentially evaluating, and paying, teachers according to how well their students perform.
The initial funding was included in the economic stimulus act that the president signed into law in February, with the deadline for states to apply for that money arriving today. There is not enough money to go around for the states that are interested in it, the White House says.
Obama plans to include a bid for another $1.35 billion for the program in the 2011 budget that he proposes next month. That will enable not only more states, but also individual school districts to apply for some of the money, according to the White House.
Obama said today that the apparent popularity of the “national competition” is “a sign of how much states and schools believe this nation will benefit them.”
By expanding the program, the president said, “we’re going to raise the bar for all our students and take bigger steps toward closing the achievement gap that denies so many students, especially black and Latinos, a fair shot at their dreams.”
The first winners of the first Race to the Top awards will be announced in April, with a second round of applications from states be due in June and those grants to be awarded in September.
As a stage for the promotion of expansion of the program, the White House chose Graham Road Elementary School, one of the lowest-income yet highest-achieving schools in Fairfax County, Va. Nearly 80 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price meals and 95 percent are African American or Latino. In 2008, the White House says, all of the school’s sixth-graders met Virginia’s reading standards, and 96 percent met math standards.
Five years ago, Graham Road started a program of tougher standards, testing, teacher evaluation and professional development aimed at boosting achievement.
The federal program encourages the design and implementation of “rigorous standards and high-quality assessments, by encouraging states to work jointly toward a system of common academic standards that builds toward college and career readiness,” the White House says.
It also is intended to attract and retain “great teachers and leaders in America’s classrooms” with expanded support for teachers and principals, and new methods of teacher evaluation and pay.
The Department of Education says the program focuses on boosting academic standards, recruiting and keeping effective teachers, tracking student performance and turning around the lowest performing schools.
This entry was posted on January 19, 2010 at 4:21 pm and is filed under News, Political News, Social News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.