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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Will Sac City Unified Race to the Top? | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education

Will Sac City Unified Race to the Top? | The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education:


Will Sac City Unified Race to the Top?

California failed to receive RTTT grants under Gov. Schwarzenegger. Gov. Jerry Brown and Supt. Torlakson have applied for a waiver for No Child Left Behind trying to have California meet guidelines under its own terms instead of the Federal governments. Brown has declared he wants to lessen the emphasis on high stakes testing for California children and direct the millions of dollars spent on testing and data tracking systems elsewhere. This has disappointed some districts who have jumped on the "reform" bandwagon that is headed towards increasing the impact of standardized testing rather than decreasing it. !--break--
The Federal Dept. of Education has opened up $400 million in Race To The Top grants for individual schools districts. The focus for the implementation of the grants is personalizing education  for "a set of students in their schools". The guidelines include individualized learning for college and career readiness (on-line learning?), more tests that would evaluate principals, teachers and school boards(!) and a focus on school "overhauls".  15 to 20 districts would receive $15 million to $20 million over four years.  Los Angeles Unified Supt. Deasey has said