Our district has decided not to enter the race.  We have received unofficial word that our district has decided NOT to apply for the competitive grants under the Race to the Top program through the federal government.   Apparently, we wouldn’t qualify.   Our community is large and we don’t have a high enough percentage of socio-economically disadvantaged families, nor do we score low enough on high stakes assessments.

What does this mean?  I am not sure.  What I think it means is that we will not be eligible for any federal money for reform or improvement.  We will not be getting any additional support to cover any intervention we need to provide for students.  I have no idea what it means for current levels of funding or how it impacts current programs.  I do know, though, that it means that there won’t be anything new or innovative coming out of our district.

 I do not mean to imply that our district should apply for these monies.  They are going to be hard to get and probably come with a lot of accountability and restrictions and reporting, as well as open up any district that does apply to criticism.  I also don’t think our district has a plan to implement.  The funds are based on innovative improvements.  I haven’t seen anything innovative out of our district.   We are high enough performing that we haven’t needed to innovate until now – when we are being held accountable for the huge differences in academic performance between schools within our district and our classic achievement gap among Latinos and African American students as compared to white and Asian students.    And this innovation, from what I have seen, is just to ‘teach it again’ to the lowest performing students.  The attempt to bridge this difference is to provide intervention classes, using the adopted curriculum.    Isn’t what didn’t work to begin with?

Our district, under mandate, is implementing a pull-out, short term intensive instructional model for the lowest performing students.  It was approved over the summer, but they are just now hiring teachers for the positions.  They wanted well-qualified teachers, who had three or more experience in our district.  Very few teachers wanted to leave existing classrooms to do this.  We have put our sweat and energy into our students – we get attached and form bonds, develop a way to be together.  I bet if they had posted these positions in the first three weeks of school, well-qualified teachers would have been all over them.  As it is, they have resorted to looking at teachers who were laid off last year due to budget cuts because not enough existing teachers applied.  

Clearly, I do not understand this dance of funding.   I am afraid, though, that many of us will be left out of the innovative loop.  I hope our district is listening to what others are doing.  I hope that we get to hear about innovations and best practice.

I am not sure what this is going to bring in the future, or not bring, as it were.  I would prefer to be on the cutting edge, even if that means potentially getting pushed off.