Baton Rouge, La – Today the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) made it official and released the final version of the competitive $4.35 billion Race to the Top (R2T) grant application. The grant application is due January 19, 2010. The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) is wasting no time reaching out to stakeholders with the latest version. In fact, the agency has created a mini-website to provide information on R2T, which can be accessed through LDOE’s main web address, www.louisianaschools.net. The deadline announced today gives the agency a little more than two months to prepare Louisiana’s R2T application.

“Fortunately, we have been preparing for this release over the last several months, recognizing we would only have 60 days to develop our application when it was released,” State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek said. “Our collaboration with education groups, local districts and policy-makers over the last several months has provided us with a thorough understanding of their priorities and concerns. The focus for us over the next several weeks will be centered on matching our state initiatives to those released today by USDOE and securing partnerships to participate in Louisiana’s application.”

The USDOE reported it received comments from more than 1,100 individuals and organizations. Based upon those comments, federal officials said the regulations released today vary from the preliminary draft released in July 2009. State officials say they will closely examine the federal document, analyzing the requirements in order to inform the state’s application, local districts and other prospective partners.

“The Department’s R2T team will spend the next few days scrutinizing the federal grant proposal so that we can ensure our application is designed to be highly competitive and so that we can clearly articulate the benefits, requirements and terms of the grant to those school districts, communities and organizations who are interested in taking part in the program,” said Pastorek.

Among the most significant changes in the draft released today is related to the use of test scores to evaluate teachers and principals. “The Department concurs with the many commentators who cautioned that teacher and principal ‘effectiveness’ should not be based solely on student test scores,” USDOE wrote in a Summary of Major Changes published today. The grant application now states that student growth – not raw student achievement or proficiency levels– is the significant factor to be considered in evaluating effectiveness and that teacher and principal effectiveness should be gauged by multiple measures, provided that growth is a significant factor.

In addition, USDOE said today that there was confusion about the role of charter schools in the Department’s agenda for reform. To clarify, the USDOE stated in its Summary, “While the Department believes that charter schools can be strong partners in school turnaround work, it does not believe that charter schools are the only or preferred solution to turning around struggling schools…As a consequence, the selection criterion pertaining to charter schools…has been shifted from the Turning Around the Lowest-Achieving Schools section to the General section, where it more appropriately reflects charter schools’ broader role as a tool for school innovation and reform.”

The final USDOE application also adds a category, State Success Factors, which places an emphasis on the sustainability of the state’s plan and the participation and support of local school districts.

Districts have the option of whether to participate in the state application, and participating districts are not required to volunteer all of their schools. Districts with struggling schools will have the opportunity to implement comprehensive turnaround strategies and have access of up to $2 million per school.

Only a handful of states are expected to win a portion of the four-year grant, and Louisiana has been named as a front-runner by several national groups for its effective and innovative reform models.

Louisiana in the Top of the Class in U.S. Chamber of Commerce Leaders and Laggards Report

In fact, just this week, Louisiana earned some of the highest marks in the country from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in its report, Leaders and Laggards: a State by State Report on Educational Innovation.

The national report, which was released Monday, utilizes state data and original and existing research from National Center for Education Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Survey, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center to assign letter grades to states, based on seven indicators of innovation: School Management; Finance; Staffing: Hiring and Evaluation of Teachers; Staffing: Removal of Ineffective Teachers; Data; Technology; and Pipeline to Postsecondary.

Though the report does not give states overall grades, an unofficial average of state grades in the seven categories puts only four other states, Georgia (2.9), Texas (2.8) and Virginia (2.8) and Oklahoma (2.8), ahead of Louisiana’s combined 2.7 average. New York’s combined grades also tied Louisiana’s average.

Louisiana earned two A’s in the categories Data and Technology. And for participating in national programs to certify nontraditional administrators, the report awarded Louisiana a B and a gold star for its achievements in the category of Staffing: Hiring and Evaluation. Louisiana also earned a B for Staffing: Hiring and Evaluation of Teachers.

In the areas of Management and Finance, the state earned C’s. And although Louisiana earned no failing grades, its lowest score, a D, was in the category of Pipeline to Postsecondary, which aims to measure the efforts of states to prepare students for college and careers. However, this report did note that Louisiana factors a reliable graduation rate into its accountability system, and also supports common academic standards. No grades were given to states on their overall reform environment due to the lack of high quality data.

“This report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one more example of how Louisiana’s educational progress is being recognized across the country,” Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Keith Guice said. “At the same time, it points to areas where we are deficient, and largely parallels the state’s focused initiatives.”

Descriptors and Louisiana’s grades in the Leaders and Laggards report are listed below:

• School Management (including the strength of charter school laws and the percentage of teachers who like the way their schools are run) - C
• Finance (including the accessibility of state financial data) - C
• Staffing: Hiring & Evaluation (including alternative certification for teachers) - B
• Staffing: Removing Ineffective Teachers (including the percentage of principals who report barriers to the removal of poor-performing teachers) - B
• Data (including such measures as state-collected college student remediation data) - A
• Technology (including students per Internet-connected computer) - A
• Pipeline to Postsecondary (including the percentage of schools reporting dual-enrollment programs) - D
• State Reform Environment (an ungraded category that includes data on the presence of reform groups and participation in international assessments) – No states were assigned grades.

“Louisiana’s strong showing in this report, which measures innovation in public education and closely corresponds to the reforms outlined in Race to the Top, reaffirms the state’s competitiveness and supports many of the reform efforts and initiatives that we are promoting,” Pastorek concluded. “Louisiana is strongly positioned for this grant, and our intent is to support local districts and schools so that they can take advantage of this opportunity to benefit our children.”

To access LDOE’s mini-website on R2T, please go to the following link: www.louisianaschools.net/lde/r2t/index.html

To access the final R2T regulations released by the U.S. Department of Education today, please click the following link: www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop.

A complete copy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Leaders and Laggards Report can be viewed at: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/11/LeadersandLaggards.html.

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