Milpitas School District Races Clock for Race to the Top Funding

January 14, 2010

Trustees from the Milpitas Board of Education raced against the clock last week to meet a deadline to participate in President Barack Obama’s campaign to bring more money to education.

During a special meeting Jan. 7, school board members swiftly and unanimously approved a memorandum of understanding indicating an interest to participate in Race to the Top funding. The action comes after the State of California applied to the federal government for Race to the Top monies that, if successful, could bring in a total of $700 million.

"This has never been done before in the history of the country at the amount he’s offering money for," said Michelle Dimas, assistant superintendent of educational services. "It doesn’t mean we’ll get that amount but that’s what the state will apply for."

If awarded the money, the state would choose what to do with 50 percent and filter the remaining 50 percent to Title I districts (classified by high percentages of low-income students) that signed the memorandum by the Jan. 8 deadline. The funding each district would receive is dependent on how many Title I schools and their total amount of students are within the pool.

Even though the money would come through a Title I formula, Dimas said it would not have to be spent on such schools. Instead, the district would submit a plan detailing its intentions with the designated monies.

Before board members signed on, Dimas explained the necessary criteria any school district interested in signing the memorandum must abide to if monies are received:<br /& gt;
Standards and assessments. The state is working with the federal government to adopt new nationwide standards and applicable assessments. Because standards are already set so high within California, and in turn the Milpitas Unified School District, Dimas said it would be easy to incorporate this into what is already taking place.

Data systems to support instruction. The Obama administration wants student achievement data to drive instruction so they are working to implement a system that creates longitudinal data measuring how students are growing and at what rate from one year to the next, which is not something the California system does. Dimas said this is highly beneficial to the district. "Not being able to compare … is frustrating," she said.

Great teachers and leaders. "This is probably one of the areas that there will be the most hang up around," Dimas said. Administration wants the ability to use student data as part of each teachers’ and principals’ assessment from the different sites.

"The idea being a teacher’s job is to teach, we measure what is taught by how much students learn and how much students learn should be part of what we’re evaluating a teacher on," Dimas explained. "So in order to do that they’re talking about an annual evaluation."

She emphasized that it wouldn’t be the sole basis of teacher evaluations. Based on current evaluations, the district looks at the engagement of the students and although there will be a more noticeable data change under the new check in Dimas said: "It’s not way different than what we do now."

According to Superintendent Karl Black, the California Teachers Association has a problem with this aspect of the funding. He added they don’t need teachers to sign on but are being advised to sit dow n and negotiate so the potential policy doesn’t have to be imposed.

Turning around the lowest achieving schools. This is for the lowest 5 percent of schools in the state, which Milpitas Unified doesn’t fall under.

"That’s it in a nutshell," Dimas concluded of the Race to the Top memorandum. "It’s actually hundreds of pages long."

Whether or not the school district signed the memorandum allowing them to receive Race to the Top funding last week, Dimas said the criteria listed would eventually "be a part of the future of our schools … because we do have Title I funds and we are a part of the state."

Board President Marsha Grilli responded to the set criteria, asking whether the federal money will fully cover the new requirements or if it will come from the district’s general fund.

"To be honest with you, we don’t know," Dimas said. "Most of these aren’t going to be a huge burden on our district because we are doing some of these things already."

Black offered his perspective to the proposed educational changes.

"I think the idea here is every state in the union has basically the same standards so there can be some comparison because right now everybody’s standards are different," he said. "California standards are so high compared to other states."

Dimas agreed, stating that certain states set the proficiency level at 30 percent while California’s proficiency goal is 70 percent.

"They are trying to form a new relationship with the schools in the state, a more collaborative one," she said. "The federal government is not OK with proficiency being set at a low 30 percent."