On May 3, the U.S. Department of Education announced the start of the second part of the competition for the Scale-up and Validation categories. This follows the pre-application process for the Development grants which closed April 26.

The goal is to have an impact on:

• Improving student achievement or student growth;
• Closing achievement gaps;
• Decreasing dropout rates;
• Increasing high school graduation rates; or
• Increasing college enrollment and completion rates

The details are as follows:

1. Validation Grants – The awards for these grants can be up to $12 million. This year the estimate is to award 4-8 Validation grants.  The requirement is that proposals must show moderate evidence of effectiveness.  That means this innovation must have been tried and evidence collected that proves this is worthy of scaling it to the regional or state level. All eligible applicants must implement practices, strategies, or programs for high-need students.
2. Scale-up Grants – These are the biggest grants – up to $20 million.  The estimate is that most likely there will only be 1 or 2 awards or none if there isn’t STRONG evidence of effectiveness for the project that is proposed. These projects must be able to be scaled to the national level. All eligible applicants must implement practices, strategies, or programs for high-need students.

 For Validation grants, here are the priorities they must choose from:

• Teacher and principal effectiveness
• Improving STEM education
• English learners
• Improving rural achievement
• Effective use of technology – projects that use technology to meet students’ diverse learning needs and for teaching and learning concepts that are difficult to teach using traditional approaches

For Scale-up grants, these are the priorities to choose from:

• Teacher and principal effectiveness
• Low performing schools
• Improving STEM education
• College and career ready standards
• Improving rural achievement
• Effective use of technology

One of the changes since the 2012 round is in the private-sector match. Validation grants must secure 10% of the award amount and Scale-up 5%.  The good news is that they only need 50% in place prior to the award and evidence of the other 50% no later than six months after starting the project.

Remember, if you are asked about participating in the private-sector match, you may offer a discount, extra professional development, in-kind services, funds, etc.  Usually there are several entities that contribute so it is not all on you and your company.

The deadline for filing the intent to apply is May 23, 2013. The deadline for applications is Tuesday, July 2^nd at 4:30PM in Washington D.C.

Your call to action is to communicate with your key customers to see if they are applying for an i3 grant.  If they are, see how your solution might be able to be included or at least the category so you have an opportunity to sell into the award. If they don’t know about it, send them to http://www2.ed.gov/programs/innovation/index.html.

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For all the latest resources surrounding Hurricane Sandy, visit http://www.ed.gov/sandy

The Department has established a toll-free Hurricane Sandy Hotline (1-855-385-9985) and Hurricane Sandy email address(EdSchoolInfo@ed.gov).

The purposes of the hotline and email address are to provide answers to questions, make references to helpful resources, and share information.

ED is working closely with other federal agencies, such as FEMA, HHS, and USDA, to ensure continuation of critical services to students, families, and educators and the restoration of the learning environment.

To volunteer:

1. Leaders should be responsible for setting a shared vision of learning and developing a school culture and instructional program that promotes student learning and staff professional growth.
2. Leaders establish the climate of the school and district.
3. They must make sure that the management of the district and school including the organization, operation, and resources necessary for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment.
4. The effective leader must collaborate with the faculty and community members to respond to their interests and needs.
5. The effective leader acts with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner.
6. Finally the leader must understand, respond, and influence the political, social, legal, and cultural arenas.

The National Association of Elementary Principals (NAESP), the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), Johns Hopkins University, and the American Institutes for Research released a collaborative framework and guide for policymakers and practitioners on effective principal evaluation titled: Rethinking Principal Evaluation. Their criteria include:

• professional growth and learning
• student growth and achievement
• school planning and progress
• school culture
• professional qualities
• instructional leadership
• stakeholder support and engagement

This group also recommends procedures for an effective evaluation system, which include the school, student and community context, standards that can improve practice, building capacity through evaluation and focus on multiple measures.
It is likely that the NAESP, NASSP, and CCSSO will become more involved as the requirements for principal evaluation spread to more programs and to the requirements of districts themselves. Your district should look to them for continued clarification of criteria of competence.
So what does this mean for your district?
You need to be prepared for a greater emphasis on the evaluation of your principals and superintendent. It is important to begin to examine your process now as it is likely that there will be more requirements for these evaluations under federal and state funding in the future. Begin with the recommendations of the professional organizations, but customize the criteria to your district’s needs and context.
Remember that multiple measures will provide you with a more inclusive picture of your principal’s effectiveness. Work with principals to develop teacher, parent, and student surveys. Examine things like the climate of the school. Is it inclusive? Does it reflect the concerns of the various constituencies? Include organizational effectiveness and faculty and parent support. Do the teachers feel that their principal understands the conditions in the classroom and the need for resources? Do parents?
How will you conduct principal and superintendent observations? Be sure that your observer(s) receives training in observational evaluation. Provide observation forms with specified parameters and specific functions for principal effectiveness.

Federal funding programs are now beginning to require the evaluation of school leaders as well as teachers to examine the overall success of schools. The newest Race to the Top competition for Districts is requiring that winners provide for the annual evaluation of both your Principals and Superintendent. Proposed legislation for the 2013 budget is set to revise the Teacher Quality funding to include leadership evaluation as well. We can expect to see leadership evaluation continue to become part of any new school improvement legislation.
These evaluations are important. The nation’s 95,000 Principals have a great influence on our 3 million teachers and 55 million students. Yet they and the Superintendents in charge of local school districts have not been uniformly evaluated in the past.
Principals have a direct influence on the quality of instruction and school climate through their evaluation of instruction and establishment of school-based policy. Principals have influence over curriculum and teaching strategies. And they are responsible for teacher evaluation which touches every student’s school experience. Principal performance is a crucial part of a school’s success. Adding a Principal evaluation to the overall examination of your schools’ programs will be an important element in providing a fair and complete evaluation of a student’s educational opportunities.
The evaluation of Superintendents is new and not required in other than the Race to the Top-District regulations. Superintendents set overall policy and strategy for the district as a whole, affecting every school. They are instrumental in selecting programs and instructional strategies. Superintendents have authority over Principals and are responsible for their evaluations. The Superintendent is the instructional leader for the District and as such is a key in both a positive school environment and in raising student achievement.
What are the consequences to districts of this new focus? The major feature is that there is real money being attached to these evaluations. The Race to the Top-District program will grant between 20 and 25 awards of between $5 million and $40 million to winners over a 4 year grant period. The original grant guidelines included the annual evaluations of Principals, Superintendents, and School Boards. School Boards were dropped before the final regulations were published based on public comments received during the comment period. These applications are due by October 30th and awards are expected to be made in December.
In addition to Race to the Top, the current FY12 budget includes Effective Teacher and Leader State Grants that will distribute $2.5 billion. The Teacher and Leader Innovation Fund has $500 million to distribute. For the FY13 budget, the Title II Teacher Quality grants are proposed to be changed to three separate programs, all of which would include Principal evaluation. These include Effective teachers and leaders for a well-rounded education (proposed legislation) $90 million; Effective teachers and leaders: Literacy (proposed legislation) $187 million; and Effective teachers and leaders: STEM (proposed legislation) $150 million. There is real money tied to leader evaluation in these programs. Your district must be prepared to add leader evaluation to your systematic review of school progress. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

The Alliance for Excellent Education sponsored a webinar on sequestration last week featuring Joel Packer, from the Committee for Education Funding and Tom Shelton, Superintendent of Fayette County Public Schools in Kentucky. They offered a pretty clear picture of sequestration and its effect on the Department of Education and local school district budgets.
Normally we are guided by the budget process and Congressional appropriations. This year is more complicated. The budget deficit is 1.1 trillion dollars. In August, the Congress could not reach an agreement to deal with the deficit in the context of raising the debt ceiling leading to the Budget Control Act (BCA) which created the cliff we are facing. The BCA included provisions for a bipartisan committee charged with finding a solution to the deficit and bringing down the total deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next decade. The Super Committee did not meet its goals leading to the threat of sequestration which would require across the board cuts for both domestic and defense spending.
No one wants this to take place; it is an incentive for a solution.
Mr. Packer noted that education has already absorbed substantial cuts in the 2011 and 2012 budgets. Congress cut discretionary programs in 2011 with the Department of Education being cut by $1.2 billion.
In FY12, another there was another cut of $430 million. The only program that was saved in some measure was the Pell student aid program which has been reduced through changes in guidelines by $4.6 billion elimination some 145,000 students from the program. The Recession has contributed to an increase in the number of applications and the program is facing a $7.8 billion budget shortfall in FY 2014.
The Budget Control Act essentially limited the amount of money available overall to be appropriated to the various governmental programs. As it stands now there will be a cut of 50% from defense and 50% from nondefense programs. It is designed to make equal across the board cuts to all programs.
The cut to the Department of Education will be 8.4% which is equal to $4.1 billion in all programs but the Pell grants. Because the Department “forward funds” most of its programs, the cuts would not be seen until the fall of 2013. Impact Aid, however, will be cut in January. This is a program that provides federal funding on a per pupil basis for federally-connected children such as those with parents in the military or living on Indian Reservations.

Joel Packer, Committee for Education Funding
Congress can undo these cuts. The republican position includes no new revenue and no cuts to defense programs. There is also a House-passed budget that would be more than double sequestration and would limit Pell grants which would lead to the lowest education funding since 2002.

Joel Packer, Committee for Education Funding
The administration’s FY13 budged would increase overall discretionary Department of Education budget by $1.72 billion. The increases would come in Pell grant maximum awards, Race to the Top: College Affordability and Completion, Federal work study, Promise Neighborhoods and Race to the Top: general. All other programs would be frozen at their FY12 levels.
Congress will have a lame duck session after the election during which they should address sequestration among other fiscal matters including the “Bush” tax cuts which expire at the end of December.

Tom Shelton, Superintendent of Fayette County Schools in Kentucky, talked about how sequestration will affect school systems using Fayette County as an example. The county gets $22 million dollars in federal aid which i, 5% of budget. They would absorb $ 1.6 million in cuts if sequestration takes place. They are also facing state cuts as are many other districts nationwide. Fayette County has held back some funds in anticipation of sequestration.
Looking at real impact in classroom, the fastest growing population is English Language Learners who will be 18% of the student population. Under sequestration, Fayette Schools won’t be able to meet the needs of those students.
Fayette is looking for more flexibility in state and local funding to offset cuts at federal level.
Phillip Lovell of the Alliance for Excellent Education sums up the issue with three messages for members of congress:

1. Federal investments in education matter. They have direct impact on students.
2. We can’t solve the federal budget problems on the backs of our children.
3. Education spending is an investment and ultimately we need to have a focus on revenue as well as spending. We need to educate our way to fiscal health.

When the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became law in 2002, it provided large sums of money to states for education. The program included very strict performance requirements, including a 2014 deadline for all students to be proficient in mathematics and reading. During the past 10years concerns about NCLB requirements have mounted. In the absence of Congressional action to reauthorize and revise NCLB, the Obama administration has offered states the opportunity to apply for waivers to some of the provisions. The program is called ESEA Flexibility, but most refer to it as NCLB waivers or just waivers.

As of August 2012, 33 states and the District of Columbia had applied for and been granted waivers. More states are waiting to have their applications approved. What is being waived? Specifically, states are getting relief from the requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014 school year. This provision has resulted in an increasing number of “failing” schools as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measures leading to 2014 have not been met. NCLB requires that all subgroups of students make AYP including special education and minority students and English language learners.

In addition, the increasing consequences for not making Adequate Yearly Progress are also waived including required school turnaround models, supplemental education services, and offering parents in persistently failing schools the choice to move their children into better performing schools.

Waivers are important because each state has created its own plan for student achievement goals and closing the achievement gap among subgroups of students, e.g. minority, special education, English language learners. States will have the freedom to set their own student-achievement goals and design their own definitions of, and interventions for, failing schools. The waivers also allow states to redirect some of their federal funding.

In exchange for this flexibility, the administration requires rigorous state-developed plans that include adopting college-and career-ready standards, a strong focus on the most troubled schools, and the creation of guidelines for teacher evaluations based in part on student performance. Changes related to the implementation of the new plans will be seen in the 2012–13 school year. For more information or a personalized waiver report customized for your products, feel free to contact us.

Race to the Top District Application Released

The final application for the $400 million Race to the Top District (RTT-D) has been released today. Districts or groups of districts proposing to serve at least 2,000 students with 40 percent or more qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch are invited to apply for a 4-year award to “support reform at the local level.” Districts will enter in different categories and they will choose to apply for funding to support learning strategies that personalize education in all or a set of schools, within specific grade levels, or select subjects. Applicant districts must also demonstrate a commitment to Race to the Top’s four core reform areas.
Important Dates

Intent to Apply Due: August 30, 2012
Application Due: October 30, 2012 (Note: a 10-day review period by states and mayors must be built in to the timeline)
Grant Award Announcements: December 2012

Key Program Components

• 15-25 awards are expected to be made in amounts starting at $5 million for the smallest districts and capping at $40 million for the largest districts
• Districts will enter in categories depending to whether they are in a Race to the Top state or not and whether they are a rural district or not
• A minimum of 2,000 students must be served by an applicant district; however, a group of 10 districts may apply regardless of the number of students
• Applicants must have a track record of success
• Applicants must implement evaluation systems for teachers, principals, and superintendents by the 2014-15 school year

Here’s what you can do to take advantage of this opportunity:

• Scan your districts to determine who is applying or who should apply
• Identify where your products fit in and how you’ll communicate this to potential grant applicants
• Determine whether you have the research and any information about your company that may be required
• Work with your customers to get your product or product category included in their RTT-D applications

Check out the Department of Education’s website for application PDFs and details here.