The Obama administration is raising some concerns about Georgia’s early work to improve public schools with a $400 million, four-year federal Race to the Top grant.
The administration is stepping up the pressure on Georgia and 11 other Race to the Top winners to make good on the reforms they promised in 2010 in exchange for millions in grant money. In mid-January, the U.S. Department of Education is set to issue a report sizing up how the winners did in the first year.
A draft of Georgia’s “progress report,” obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shows the state was largely on target at the one-year mark. But it points out that Georgia was slow to fill 21 high-level jobs considered critical to executing some of the state's complicated and controversial reform plans, including the launch of a teacher evaluation system that is tied to student achievement.
The report notes that the state won the grant in August 2010 but the final member of its Race to the Top management team wasn’t on board until mid-September 2011, in part because of leadership changes: a new governor, new state school superintendent and new school superintendents in Atlanta, DeKalb and four of the 26 participating local school districts.
Those 26 school districts will be piloting the new teacher evaluation system. Educators are skeptical that a fair system can be created given the wide range of student abilities, but generally acknowledge that it's difficult to weed out mediocrity when all teachers are currently rated as either satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
The draft report also points out that Georgia has pushed back several timelines and scaled back some initiatives.
For example, a pilot of the teacher evaluation system starts in January, six months behind schedule. The teacher evaluations will be based in part on students' progress compared with the average progress of similar students. This model was selected a year later than expected and after the USDOE developed information for the draft report.
The draft report notes that state officials acknowledge the ongoing challenge of communicating with the public about their Race to the Top initiatives. The report says this could hurt the state as it tries to take initiatives such as the new teacher evaluation system statewide.
Teresa MacCartney, deputy state school superintendent for Race to the Top implementation, said staff at the state DOE wasn't "surprised by any of the issues" raised in the draft report.
"This is very complicated work," she said.
The draft report rates grant winners in five broad categories: state success factors, standards and assessments, data systems to support instruction, great teachers and leaders, and turning around lowest-achieving schools. In each category, Georgia received either the top rating (green) or the second-highest rating (yellow).
Tim Callahan, spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, said he's not overly concerned that Georgia gets "marked down a bit in some areas" on the one-year progress report.
"My view is that taking too much time is a virtue not a vice, particularly given the complicated and technical nature of what they are trying to do," Callahan said. "The feds will have to allow states to take the time they need."
He said any evaluation system must have educator buy-in, meaning teachers have confidence in how the system was developed, what it is based on and how it is implemented.
"Those confidences will have to be earned, not commanded," Callahan said. "Absent those confidences, we will have a disaster on our hands."
Last week, the Obama administration placed Hawaii's four-year $75 million federal grant on "high-risk" status, warning that the state could lose unspent funds if state educators don't make progress on their promised Race to the Top reforms.
Race to the Top, President Barack Obama's signature education initiative, offered states $4.3 billion and prompted many to change laws on topics such as teacher evaluations and academic standards. Since then, all the states have submitted waivers to alter their timelines.
Georgia was one of five states that received permission to push back by a year their efforts to link student achievement to teacher evaluations.
The delays and adjustments could give added fuel to the program's critics, some of whom already claim the money went exclusively to states that were willing to embrace initiatives the administration supports.
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