Posts tagged education reform

Hopefully you are aware of the Race to the Top grant program which the federal government has developed as a carrot to induce states to modify their laws to reform education.

Both states and school districts are being induced to modify legislation and contracts to provide for changes in teacher certification, promotion, pay and termination.   I’m not going into details however I have provided a link here to the federal program plan and the goals set forth by NYSED for New York.

Most states have applied for the grant money being offered. They have agreed to take necessary steps to reform their education systems appropriately. Here’s a summary of some of the points and reforms included in the plan.

• New rules for closing nonperforming schools, including terminating principals and 50% of the staff, converting them to charter schools, etc.

• A substantial focus on student improvement as the criteria for teacher certification, promotion, compensation, and termination. Use of merit pay to reward teacher performance, modifying laws relating to termination procedures.

• Modifications to curriculum including more incremental assessments and data being made available at the district and state level. (This data will be the basis for the assessments discussed above.)

See the links above for more of the many aspects of the plan.

There was no specific reference made to the online learning and virtual school initiative in the January 2010 meeting of NYSED, however it is clearly woven into the school reform plan which is also part of the Race to the Top application. In December we see a clear reference to the virtual high school in the discussion of options to improve performance of schools.  Take a look here at the report outlining such plans. I am happy to see the virtual high school reference to also include “blended” models which I assume would include a combination of online and classroom instruction.

We also see a reference to the virtual high school in the discussion of curriculum revision.  Here we see see the NYSED intention that future curriculum modification be done with the intent that such may incorporated into the virtual high school.

No doubt the Board of Regents is focused on the Race to the Top federal dollars.  We see online learning as part of the plan but still await the details!

I have some concerns about some of the other aspects of the Race to the Top reform proposal which you can read on my Blog, www.educationallysound.com.  This is another iniative which is very critical for our education system.  If you have not read it, I enourage you to look at the links above!

More change on the horizon?