Newport Schools Awaiting Details on Race to the Top

As state education commissioner Deborah Gist visited Washington D.C. last week to get more information on Rhode Island's Race to the Top budget, the Newport School Department was working to determine where it fits into the funds.

Superintendent John Ambrogi said that they're expecting the Rhode Island Department of Education to give a roll-out presentation at the end of September to inform local school districts as to the finances and their responsibilities.

Rhode Island placed 5th out of the applicants in round 2 of the Race to the Top competition. The Ocean State is expected to receive $75 million to put toward education reform.

School Committee Chair Jo Eva Gaines and Committee member Sandra Flowers are among those who have been participating in committees and subcommittees to help advise the direction taken with one of the primary focuses of the reform: educator evaluations.

Gaines, along with Rogers High science teacher Cynthia Cykert, is serving on the Advisory Committee for the Educator Evaluation System. Flowers is serving on a subcommittee of that group, which she said is looking at who would be responsible for evaluating the teachers from pre-K to high school. The primary evaluators, she said, would be principals and department chairs, but others might include retired teachers and experts in the field. Flowers noted a portion of the Race to the Top monies will likely go toward training these individuals to prepare them to go into schools for the evaluations.

"The intent at the state level is not to undercut what's going on locally, but to make it far more fair," she said, "and establish standards, goals and objectives pretty much statewide."

The only elected official in her group, which is also made up of teachers of various backgrounds, Flowers said she, Gaines, and the others were selected to participate in this statewide process after applying online earlier this year.

The state hopes to pilot the evaluator program in a few districts by the start of 2011, then move on to implement it statewide by the next school year.

"We spent three hours yesterday in session looking and wondering, 'how are they going to do this by January'?" Gaines said at the School Committee meeting last week. "But they are determined that there will be a prototype out there to start drawing inferences from so that in 2011 it will be in all schools."

One thing Newport's school officials will have to determine is how the new evaluator system compares to what the district is already doing. Gaines noted at the meeting that the district will need to examine a system it implemented three years ago and determine what, if anything, needs to be retooled to meet the state's new standards.

"We've got to do some work here in Newport, not to say ahead of the game, but stay up to snuff," she said.

Flowers said that those working to devise the evaluator program are trying to figure out how to map out a formula that determines based on several different factors whether a teacher is categorized as effective or highly effective. If someone is deemed ineffective, she said the burden is on the school departments to provide them with the necessary professional development, which is where another large portion of the Race to the Top funds will go.

"It's certainly going to be motivation for people to really seek the proper professional development to really aim all through their careers to be their best," Flowers said. She added that her group will be meeting again in the next couple of weeks, then might reconvene in December to fine tune the program before it's piloted in January.

"The ingredients are in the pot," Gaines noted. "They're just simmering."

To get a full look at the state's winning Race to the Top application, go here.