U.S. Department of Education Opens Race to the Top Competition

U.S. Department of Education —Thursday, November 12, 2009

U.S. Department of Education Opens Race to the Top Competition

Washington, DC -- U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today released the final application for more than $4 billion from the Race to the Top Fund, which will reward states that have raised student performance in the past and have the capacity to accelerate achievement gains with innovative reforms.

"The president said last week that Race to the Top will require states to take an all-hands-on-deck approach," Duncan said. "We will award grants to the states that have led the way in reform and will show the way for the rest of the country to follow."

The U.S. Department of Education is asking states to build comprehensive and coherent plans built around the four areas of reform outlined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The application requires states to document their past success and outline their plans to extend their reforms by using college- and career-ready standards and assessments, building a workforce of highly effective educators, creating educational data systems to support student achievement, and turning around their lowest-performing schools.

The $4.35 billion for the Race to the Top Fund is an unprecedented federal investment in reform. Duncan will reserve up to $350 million to help states create assessments aligned to common sets of standards. The remaining $4 billion will be awarded in a national competition.

To qualify, states must have no legal barriers to linking student growth and achievement data to teachers and principals for the purposes of evaluation. They also must have the department's approval for their plans for both phases of the Recovery Act's State Fiscal Stabilization Fund prior to being awarded a grant.

The final application released today includes significant changes to the proposal released by the U.S. Department of Education in July. After reviewing responses to the draft proposals from 1,161 people, who submitted thousands of unique comments, ranging from one paragraph to 67 pages, the U.S. Department of Education restructured the application and changed it to reflect the ideas of the public.

"The public's input on this application was invaluable to us," Duncan said. "The comments helped us clarify that we want states to think through how they will create a comprehensive agenda to drive reform forward."

The final application also clarifies that states should use multiple measures to evaluate teachers and principals, including a strong emphasis on the growth in achievement of their students. But it also reinforces that successful applicants will need to have rigorous teacher and principal evaluation programs and use the results of teacher evaluations to inform what happens in the schools.

In Race to the Top, the department will hold two rounds of competition for the grants. For the first round, it will accept states' applications until the middle of January, 2010. Peer reviewers will evaluate the applications and the department will announce the winners of the first round of funding next spring.

Applications for the second round will be due June 1, 2010, with the announcement of all the winners by Sept. 30, 2010.

Contact: Justin Hamilton, (202) 401-1576

National Academy of Education Releases White Paper on Teacher Quality

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Academy of Education (NAEd) has released a new white paper on teacher quality calling for improvements in teacher recruitment, preparation, and ongoing professional development.

"It's clear that good teaching matters and that poor teaching harms students academically," states Susan Fuhrman, current President of NAEd, and member of the project Steering Committee. "We must," she adds, "take steps to improve the quality of teaching in the United States by providing teachers with the preparation and professional development that they need to succeed. It's critical that we recruit the most talented people to the profession and figure out the best ways to retain them."

Based on current research evidence, the paper outlines several recommendations for improving teacher quality. According to the paper, the quality of teaching is not simply determined by an individual's knowledge or ability, but also by the preparation teachers receive and the environments in which teachers work. Improving teacher quality thus entails policies concerning recruitment, early preparation, and retention (including attention to working conditions), as well as professional development.

The paper calls for school districts, states, and the federal government to continue to experiment with various approaches to teacher recruitment, while collecting data that can be used to improve approaches that are promising and end those that are not. Tools should be developed that can reliably establish that new recruits to teaching have the skills they need to be successful from the start.

States, school districts, and the federal government should also support research on a variety of approaches to teacher preparation. Investments should be made in research and development on the core practices and skills that early career teachers require, and preparation programs should then focus on these skills.

The paper states that although teacher recruitment is important, retention is of even greater concern. Thus, states and the federal government should encourage and fund experimentation with a wide range of teacher retention strategies. This should include strategies that target individual teachers, such as financial incentives, as well as strategies that target schools and districts through initiatives to improve school leadership, mentoring, and the provision of high-quality opportunities for professional growth. The federal government should also support the development of robust and valid measures of teacher quality that can be used in identifying which teachers are effective and should be retained.

Finally, the paper recommends that districts, states, and the federal government take steps to improve teachers' access to high-quality professional development that is appropriate to the grades, subjects, and students they are teaching. In particular, the federal government should invest in research and development to strengthen professional development strategies.

Additional detail about the recommendations is included in the white paper (available on the NAEd website at www.naeducation.org).

The paper is one of a series of white papers produced by working groups of the nation's top education scholars assembled by NAEd to connect policymakers in the Administration and Congress with the best available evidence on selected education policy issues. The Teacher Quality white paper reflects the careful deliberations of the expert members of the working group, and has been subjected to outside peer review.

The Teacher Quality working group was chaired by Suzanne Wilson, College of Education, Michigan State University. Also serving on the working group were: Deborah Loewenberg Ball, School of Education, University of Michigan; Anthony Bryk, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; David Figlio, Department of Economics, University of Florida; Pamela Grossman, School of Education, Stanford University; Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Division of Educational Studies, Emory University; Judith Warren Little, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley; Susanna Loeb, School of Education, Stanford University; and Andrew Porter, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania.

The National Academy of Education advances the highest quality education research and its use in policy formation and practice. Founded in 1965, the NAEd consists of U.S. members and foreign associates who are elected on the basis of outstanding scholarship or contributions to education. Since its establishment, the academy has undertaken numerous commissions and study panels, which typically include both NAEd members and other scholars with expertise in a particular area of inquiry.

SOURCE National Academy of Education

iNACOL Releases First K-12 National Standards for Quality Online Programs

International Association for K-12 Online Learning —Tuesday, October 06, 2009

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2009/via PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) announces the release of ground-breaking quality standards for K-12 online learning titled, National Standards for Quality Online Programs. This publication is designed to provide states, districts, online programs, accreditation agencies and other organizations with a set of over-arching quality guidelines for online programs in several categories: leadership, instruction, content, support services and evaluation.

This document completes the triad of iNACOL's online education quality standards, including the National Standards of Quality for Online Courses and National Standards for Quality Online Teaching. These standards provide the encompassing and broad set of standards program leaders need to assure quality.

"Our overall goal is to ensure that every student has access to the highest quality education available today. This is the first publication of K-12 online learning program quality standards to help evaluate and ensure effective oversight. Online program quality standards will help underscore how important effective management, administration, quality content and instruction, student and faculty support, and academic rigor are for K-12 online education," says Susan Patrick, President and CEO of iNACOL.

K-12 online learning is growing at 30% annually. Thirty-four states have state-led virtual school programs, eighteen states offer full-time online learning programs, while 70% of school districts offer at least one online course to students. Online learning is expanding access to high quality educational opportunities for students, leveling the playing field for accessing highly-qualified teachers and helping to keep students on track for graduating on-time and college-ready.

The National Standards for Quality Online Programs are available on iNACOL's website: http://www.inacol.org/research/nationalstandards/index.php.

About iNACOL
iNACOL is the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a non-profit 501(c)(3) membership association based in the Washington, DC area with more than 2,500 members. iNACOL is unique in that its members represent a diverse cross-section of K-12 education from school districts, charter schools, state education agencies, non-profit organizations, colleges, universities and research institutions, corporate entities and other content and technology providers (www.inacol.org). iNACOL hosts the annual Virtual School Symposium (VSS). VSS 2009 will be held Nov. 15-17, 2009 in Austin, TX (www.virtualschoolsymposium.org).

CONTACT: Wendy Fleming, iNACOL Assoc. Dir. of Communications, +1-703-752-6216, wfleming@inacol.org

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FY 2009 Discretionary Grant Application Packages
http://www.ed.gov/fund/grant/apply/grantapps/index.html?src=rt

The following application packages are available for grant competitions that are currently open. Applicants may wish to request an official copy of the package as important information may be scrambled when downloading the electronic version, and so that we may have a record of how to contact you in case there is a change in the competition. Instructions for obtaining a free printed copy are specified in the detailed information below about each open competition.

NOTE: Some ED competitions require applications to be submitted electronically through Grants.gov.

CFDA -- Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance
Closing Date -- date by which applications must be postmarked to be accepted for review (unless otherwise noted)

What grants can I apply for from the U.S. Department of Education?
more...http://www.ed.gov/fund/grants-apply.html?src=rt

The Department offers several kinds of grants:

• grants to help students attend college. Students can use the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to apply for Pell Grants and other aid for college.
• formula grants to agencies using formulas determined by Congress. There is no application process.
• discretionary grants to organizations, agencies, and individuals. These are awarded using a competitive process. Anyone who meets the eligibility requirements can apply.

Discretionary grants are what people usually have in mind when thinking about applying for a grant from the Department. The remainder of this page is devoted to discretionary grants and the questions people often ask.

What discretionary grants am I eligible for?

Use the Guide to Education Programs to identify programs you are eligible to apply for.

Which grant competitions are accepting applications now?

Discretionary grant application packages lists most ED competitions that are currently open, with links to application information for each competition.

Most ED competitions are announced in Federal Register Notices, which provide information on rules, deadlines, and how to apply.

IES funding opportunities provides information on research funding opportunities run by the Institute for Education Sciences, including funding for unsolicited grants.

Grants.gov lists discretionary grant competitions from across the federal government, including many ED competitions.

When will the discretionary grant competition that I'm interested in begin accepting applications?

The ED grants forecast can help you identify competitions that may open soon.

What are the application procedures for discretionary grants?

Different competitions have different application procedures. Each competition's application package tells you what to do. If you found a grant announcement using one of the links above, the announcement should include a link to the application package or application instructions. You can find information about application procedures also from two additional sources:

• E-grants.ed.gov is ED's online application system. It provides application packages for the competitions that it hosts.
• EDPubs has a list of downloadable application packages for a number of ED grant competitions.

Additional information about the application process is available in Grantmaking at ED.

What forms do I need?

You should be able to find all of the forms you'll need in the application package of the grant for which you're applying and in the online application system. If you discover that you are missing forms or that you need to see other forms, grant application and other forms provides a list of grant-related forms.