With budget deficits taking their toll on the state’s public school system, two of Santa Cruz County’s largest school districts, Pajaro Valley Unified and Santa Cruz City, have signed up for “Race to the Top,” a federal program aimed at improving schools.
With budget deficits taking their toll on the state’s public school system, two of Santa Cruz County’s largest school districts, Pajaro Valley Unified and Santa Cruz City, have signed up for “Race to the Top,” a federal program aimed at improving schools. The program’s key features include:
• Linking academic staff salaries to student test scores.
• Adopting international academic standards.
• Turning around the lowest-performing schools.
• Creating long-term systems to track student achievements.
• Allowing states to create more charter schools every year.
Only 10-20 states will share the $4.35 billion in federal funding that will be available during the first round of Race to the Top.
To improve California’s chances of obtaining federal funds, the Assembly passed a series of landmark education-reform bills this week. Many of the measures contained in these bills have infuriated the powerful teachers unions. Among the most recent reforms are the tracking of student and teacher performance and an open enrollment policy, which would allow students in failing schools to apply to other schools anywhere in the state, including their own district. Furthermore, parents would be allowed to force school districts to adopt one of three measures to deal with failing schools: they can either fire the principal and half the staff, convert the school into a charter school, or shut it down. Since charter schools are not required employ members of the teachers unions, each of these reform packages would weaken the unions’ negotiating positions.
So far, fewer than half of California’s school districts have signed up for the Race to the Top program. Supporters of the program worry that even with the state’s new reforms, the low number of districts currently enrolled could endanger California’s chances of obtaining as much as $700 million for its school system—a much-needed sum considering the $18 billion budget deficit that the state will face this year.
Read more at Capitol Alert and Santa Cruz Sentinel.
