The EdVocate West

The New Race to the Top MOU

May 18, 2010 at 9:51 pm arunramanathan Leave a comment

We were very pleased that California chose to participate in the next round of the Race to the Top process. Over the last week there has been a flurry of activity in putting together the memorandum of understanding that districts will have to sign to participate in the second round application. The Memorandum was released today and we are encouraged by several elements of the Great Teachers and Leaders section. We are pleased to see that student growth will be a formal aspect of a teacher’s evaluation. We think it is only rational that the tests that determine how well a student learned in a teacher’s class should be part of a teacher’s evaluation. We are also excited to see that, contrary to common practice, districts who are part of the collaborative applying for second round funding will be evaluating their teachers and leaders every year. For those of you who think this is not remarkable, go take a look at the collective bargaining agreement in a nearby district and see how often a teacher or other certificated employee gets evaluated. In San Diego, the most recent teacher’s contract requires an evaluation every five years.

At first glance, there are a number of other important advances in this MOU in comparison to the earlier MOU. I think this proves that the strategy of working with a small core group of reform-minded districts has the capacity to produce a far more reform and student-focused application than a process that aimed at garnering the broadest support (which in California also means the lowest common denominator of reform). I’ll be commenting more extensively on the MOU in coming days. The MOU is atached to the blog if you want to take a look.

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