EdVANTAGE Blog

The New York Times “City Room” blog had an insightful post yesterday on what went wrong for New York State’s application for funding under the federal Race to the Top initiative.

The Times notes that in the rush to finalize the application,  “…much of the spotlight fell on the State Legislature, as lawmakers wrangled over a bill that would increase the number of charter schools permitted in the state.   New York did not win the first round of the federal Race to the Top competition, but the failure to increase the number of charter schools was not the only reason.”

The Times goes on to note reviewers’ criticisms for some planned uses of the federal aid (for furniture, for example), but focuses more on the role of local support for the state plan.  In the two winning states (Delaware and Tennessee), all school districts and nearly all local teacher unions indicated support for their state’s application.

New York, in contrast, submitted memorandums of understanding signaling support for the state plan from 66 percent of districts and 61 percent of teacher unions.

In fact, 94 percent of districts sent in MOUs signed by their superintendents, but nearly one-third of those were omitted from the application by SED because they did not commit to supporting all elements of the state plan.  Clearer guidance from the Department at the outset would have permitted more district MOUs to be included.

The Times notes that most frequent point of contention was the use of student performance data in teacher evaluation decisions.

As the state moves toward assembling an application for round two of Race to the Top, it seems probable for now that fewer districts and unions would submit MOUs than in the first go-round, although the state might be able to show support from a higher proportion of all districts by providing clearer guidance — getting a higher yield of admissible MOUs even if it receives submissions from fewer districts.

The Times does not address the lowest scoring section of the state’s application, however.  New York received 30.4 out of 47 possible points (65 percent) for “Data System to Support Instruction.” Scoring for this category mostly reflects checking off whether states have certain elements of a preschool through college statewide longitudinal data system.

Here New York seems to face a “Catch-22″ situation — it seeks RTTT funds to help build a better data system, but loses points because the system it has now is deemed inadequate.  To the extent that the state cannot improve its score in this area, pressure is compounded to make up ground in others.