Schools

Massachusetts Named Race To The Top Finalist

Melrose school officials signed off in January to participate in the program; Massachusetts was previously a finalist in the first round as well.

Massachusetts has made the finals. Again.

Along with 17 other states and the District of Columbia, Massachusetts is a finalist in the second round of the federal 'Race to the Top' program, a $4.35 billion competitive federal grant initiative, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on Tuesday. Thirty-five states and D.C. applied for the second round of grant awards.

In January, the Melrose School Committee, Superintendent Joe Casey and the executive board of the local teachers' union, the Melrose Education Association, all approved Melrose Public Schools' participation in the program.

Find out what's happening in Melrosewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

While Massachusetts was one of 16 finalists out of 41 applicants in the first round of grant awarding, in March the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) only awarded Race to the Top $600 million between two states, Delaware and Tennessee.

Along with $350 million Race to the Top funds set aside for a separate competition to improve the quality of assessments, that left $3.4 billion for the second phase of grant awards that are expected to be awarded in September and are designed to encourage education reforms.

Find out what's happening in Melrosewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In the first phase of awards, Massachusetts' application was highly regarded in the area of turning around under-performing schools, Melrose School Committee J.D. LaRock said at a committee meeting in June, but lost points for not adopting what were still undeveloped national core standards, which the state opted against because "Massachusetts is acknowledged as having the highest standards in the nation," LaRock said at the time.

Last week, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to adopt those national "Common Core" standards. 

In June, LaRock said that the most substantive revisions in the state's second application are in the area of teacher evaluation. The new application now proposes statewide implementation of revised teacher evaluation regulations that will be formulated by a variety of groups, including teachers unions.

The second round finalists will travel to Washington, D.C. during the week of Aug. 9 to present their plans to the peer reviewers who scored their applications, according to a DOE press release. After the state's presentations and an extended question-and-answer period, the peer reviewers will finalize their scores and comments.

The DOE previously announced that depending on the size of the winning state, 10-15 states could win grants in this second round. State officials have estimated that Massachusetts could be eligible for up to $250 million from the program.

Whatever the state wins, if anything, 50 percent of the Race to the Top funding must be disbursed to participating school districts such as Melrose over four years; the total amount each district would receive is determined by its funding for Title I funding, a federal program for extending extra help to students. Local school districts could apply in a competitive grant program for the remaining 50 percent of funds.


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