Archive
August 19, 2009
Editorial: If Illinois Blows This…
What's the best way to make the U.S. public education system serve students better? President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are betting that cold, hard cash -- and plenty of it -- will do the trick. By September 2010, the administration will have distributed $4.35 billion in supplemental education funding to the states. But not every state will get a share of the loot. In fact, most states won't see a dime.
The initiative is intended to drive wholesale changes in the public education industry that too often serves everyone but the students. Dubbed "Race to the Top," the program will parcel out grants to states that lead the way on school reform. Obama's pledge: "We will use the best evidence available to determine whether a state can meet a few key benchmarks for reform -- and states that outperform the rest will be rewarded with a grant." States have to meet four guidelines to be eligible for a cut of the billions:
* Developing and adopting higher, internationally-benchmarked standards.
* Building a data system that can track student achievement from kindergarten onward, and using that data to reward the best teachers, support struggling ones, and replace those who underperform.
* Improving the quality of the teachers and principals.
* Turning around low-performing schools.
Competition for Race to the Top money will be fierce. And Illinois has plenty to do if it wants to qualify. According to The New Teacher Project, a non-profit organization that works nationally to improve teacher quality, Illinois now is only "somewhat competitive" for Race to the Top funding.
Illinois is one of 46 states working together to come up with a common standards in math and English language arts. The effort, known as the Common Core State Standards Initiative, is expected to produce grade-by-grade, internationally-benchmarked standards by the end of 2009. And earlier this year, Illinois was selected to receive $9 million in federal money, the maximum granted to an individual state, to build out a data system for tracking students' progress.
