- In addition to the Race to the Top for districts granting awards of $5 million to $40 million over 4 years to districts, the FY12 budget included Effective Teachers and Leaders State Grants of $2.5 billion. For the FY13 budget, the Title II Teacher Quality Grants are proposing thre separate programs, each including principal evaluation and amounting to $247 million.
- California is now only the second state t be denied a No Child Left Behind Obama waiver; Iowa was the first. So far, 34 states and D.C. have been granted waivers.
- 45 states are now working toward full implementation of the Common Core Standards with possibly two testing systems. One will average a series of test results to determine a student’s score; the other is a single, adaptive test that tailors questions based on a student’s past answers. Two consortia of states were awarded $300 million to develop these Common Core tests.
- Only Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia have yet to sign on to the Common Core Standards.
- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation studied 3,000 teachers across the country and concluded that having a second person, someone other than the principal, evaluate teachers enhances reliability, finding that test scores and principal evaluations are not enough to do the job–exactly what teachers have been saying all along.
