ACT: Association for Contract Textiles

Cited: New York Times

New York finds itself on the government’s watch list as one of three states that has not fulfilled the goals set in place when it applied for assistance through the federal Race to the top program. Education secretary, Arne Duncan said in a terse statement on Monday that despite “significant progress,” New York had hit a roadblock in reaching the goals it set out when first applying for this federal program. Specifically the New York school system has failed to put in place a planned database to track student records across school districts and has failed to fulfill a promise to adopt a system to evaluate the work of teachers and principals.

While New York isn’t living up to it’s end of the bargain, they aren’t as far behind as Hawaii, which has made so little progress that the Aloha State risks losing its federal grant entirely. Also on the list of laggards is Florida. New York has already received over $700 million with half of that amount going directly to the school districts.

It isn’t that easy to keep track of how states are progressing along their Race to the Top agendas, with the federal government’s assessment indicating that reviewing and approving budgets and expenditures is a formidable task.  One of the problems is the sheer size of the program and the number of school districts involved. New York state has 713 school districts, regional education consortiums and charter schools that have signed up for the program, and all of them  have to put in place the changes promised by the state.

New York’s education commissioner, John B. King Jr., said that the federal assessment was disappointing, but not discouraging. Last week, Dr. King, suspended almost $100 million of Race to the Top funds to several districts in New York City to let them know that this is serious. In particular, Dr. King wants these districts to move along in getting an agreement with union officials on an evaluation system that could serve as a model statewide. However, despite his urging, the measures are being met with some resistance. Earlier this week, outside of a Board of Regents meeting in Albany, protester gathered to criticize Dr. King’s decision.

Richard C. Iannuzzi, the president of the state’s teacher’s union, got the crowd going by calling Dr. King a bully. However, Raymond Colucciello, took a different approach and warned that 13 teachers would be laid-off if the federal grant money did not resume.

Negotiations between NYC officials and the teacher’s union fell apart two days before the December 31st deadline for the two groups to come to an agreement in order to receive federal aid.

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My Take:

The pipeline of federal aid from the Race to the Top program is too important to cut off now, especially for the New York school system. It is encouraging to know that this money comes with goals that must be reached in order to see the changes implemented that everyone agrees need to take place. And, the changes and programs that New York promised in the first place.

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