Deadlines loom this week for Race to the Top
Published: May 18, 2010
The Race to the Top is back on in earnest in California, with local educational agencies given just days to decide whether to commit to major changes in teacher and administrator assignments, evaluation, compensation—and, ultimately, retention or dismissal—along with other requirements, all in exchange for an unknown level of funding if the state is selected in the second round of competition for the federal grant program.
“If the state does get funded, LEAs that sign onto the MOU will have to abide by the provisions of the state application,” cautioned Erika Hoffman, CSBA’s principal legislative advocate on the federal level.
Hoffman advises LEAs’ governing boards to schedule special meetings, if necessary, to review the 20-page memorandum of understanding drawn up for the state’s new application. LEAs may also want to consult with their legal counsel regarding the need to approve or ratify the MOU with a vote of the governing board, she added.
The MOU is a four-year, binding commitment with significant implications for LEAs’ collective bargaining agreements, as well as obligations concerning curriculum and academic standards, a prescribed menu of reforms for underperforming schools, and other considerations.
“LEAs must implement everything in the MOU. There’s no backing out,” Hoffman stressed.
E-mails of intent needed by Wednesday, completed MOUs by Friday
Although the state did not make the MOU available until Monday evening, LEAs that want to participate must signal their preliminary plans to do so by Wednesday and return the MOU to state officials by 6 p.m. Friday. The state, in turn, must submit its application to the U.S. Department of Education by June 1.
The MOUs must be signed by an LEA’s superintendent—and ideally, according to the MOU, by the president of its governing board and the local teachers union—in order to demonstrate the broad support favored by Race to the Top’s scoring rubric. While the MOU states that only the superintendent’s signature is mandatory, CSBA Assistant Executive Director Holly Jacobson warned that an MOU would also need the approval of an LEA’s governing board to be valid, because the law requires that all contracts be approved or—if authority to enter into contracts has been delegated to the superintendent— ratified by the board.
“As a practical matter, the MOU will likely require changes to existing collective bargaining agreements. If the teachers union is not in support of the MOU, it will make collective bargaining concessions much more difficult,” Jacobson added.
MOU details
The MOU would obligate LEAs to some details that are still being developed, such as a set of common core academic standards, while others, such as the Obama administration’s four “turnaround” models for underperforming schools, have not been implemented on the scale contemplated in the state’s application.
But the personnel provisions may be the most problematic.
While probationary employees can be dismissed “with cause” as long as the LEA follows the notice procedures specified in law, the law also allows for the “non-reelection” of probationary employees, without cause, at the end of the school year. It is possible that the MOU can be read to prohibit an LEA from utilizing the non-reelection procedures since the MOU states that LEAs “shall use an evaluation system in conjunction with available data systems to identify and dismiss ineffective/unsatisfactory teachers in their first 18 months of employment.” LEAs must have comprehensive data systems already in place to qualify to participate, and those systems will need to be expanded and augmented to tie student performance to annual evaluations of teachers and administrators.
“Participating LEAs as a group will develop multiple measures for evaluating teacher and principal effectiveness based, in part, on student achievement data, observations by administrators, accomplished educators, etc. Every teacher who has direct interaction with students shall be evaluated using the measurements defined by a student growth model which will be used in evaluation systems,” the MOU says.
“Clear expectations shall be set for teachers and principals in terms of performance, and effective supports shall be provided to teachers and principals to help them meet performance requirements,” another passage reads. “If a teacher or principal is identified as ineffective for two years consecutively, he or she shall be dismissed from his/her position.”
What’s next?
California sought $1 billion but finished 27th among 41 applicants in Race to the Top’s first-round competition earlier this year. Only two states—Delaware and Tennessee—received funding. Federal guidelines are limiting states’ funding requests for phase 2, so California is eligible for no more than $700 million over four years.
Six school districts have led the planning for California’s phase 2 competition. The number of LEAs that agree to participate in phase 2 will help determine how much—if any—of the $700 million the state will actually receive. Winning states will be notified in September.
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