Will Rivertowns Schools Reap the Benefits of NY's "Race to the Top" Win?

During the last week in July, the state of New York received word they were among ten winners—The District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island were also named—in the Obama Administration's second round of competition for "Race to the Top" education reform grant money.

The state will receive $700 million in federal funding, which, within certain parameters, it is at liberty to distribute to districts in the manner lawmakers determine will be most effective.

"The fund will be used to turn around low-performing schools, put in place a statewide data system to rate student performance, increase financial accountability and transparency for charter schools, improve state testing and curriculum, and reform the teacher/principal evaluation process," the New York State School Board Association (NYSSBA) announced recently.

However, since Hastings, Dobbs Ferry and Irvington's districts are not considered high-need school systems, Board of Education officials are doubtful that the state's winnings will trickle into their budgets this school year.

"I'd be very excited to get some of the federal money," John Dawson, Irvington's school board president, said. "But it is very unlikely we will."

After receiving notification from the state that New York would be considered for the federal funds, school boards took votes on whether they thought it was in the best interest of their district to enter the race.

"The state waited until the last possible minute to let us know what was happening," said Dawson, who recently posted an explanation of the Irvington board's split vote on "Race to the Top" on the popular online discussion group, Irvington Parents Forum.

"It was a vote for the process that did not have anything to do with how the money will be distributed," Dawson wrote.

According to Dawson, the board was given so little time before having to vote on whether to compete for funding that they did not have time to investigate whether receiving the federal grant money would place any further mandates on public school districts. "It's not that anyone was against the idea of receiving money; it was just unclear at the time whether it would be good thing to sign on to."

Dobbs Ferry's school board president Jeffrey O'Donnell agreed. "I am almost always in favor of receiving more money for education, with the proviso that it does not cost more to do what is required to get it or force the district to proceed in a way that is contrary to our policies and beliefs," he said.

The two most significant changes state lawmakers made to increase their chances of winning were doubling the number of charter schools in the state and approving a plan that would allow New York to evaluate teachers based on student performance on standardized exams. 

"Charter schools are not something we have to be concerned about because they are created almost universally in areas with low-performing districts," Dawson said.

But because New York had never before based teacher evaluations on test scores, this was something of major concern.

"A number of board members recently attended a meeting with the state education commissioner to get answers to some of these questions," Dawson said. "As we understand it, it is not as if the state is interested in looking at two Irvington teachers and rating one more highly than the other because one teacher's students achieved an average of 93^rd percentile on state tests and the other's an average of 91^st. It's more an effort to look at trends and see which teachers' students are consistently failing." 

But across New York, board members and administrators still feel in the dark about how the changes to state testing and student/district evaluations will play out.

"We understand the main emphasis will be using more hard data, but there are a lot of things still up in the air," Dawson said. "This year has been a bombshell with state testing."

To assure Irvington keeps up with the elevated state and national standards, the board has applied to the New York to waive state testing for two grade levels—4^th and 7^th—so that students can take the national proficiency exams during those years.

"We're still waiting for a response from the state," Dawson said. "We can't expect students to sit for both tests each year, but we want the results from both state and nationally-created exams to serve as a barometer for how our students are performing."