Ed Stakeholders Meeting - August 4, 2009 - Part i

I am Massie Ritsch, Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Outreach here at the department, and we are so glad you're here. We are also pleased that to welcome you today and give you an overview of a number of things. Our new newly-confirmed Deputy Secretary, Tony Miller, who brings great management experience, operations in the private sector, and working with school districts. He's been an invaluable part of the Secretary's team on the Recovery Act and in assessing the operation as we have taken over here at the department. And now he is official, so let's welcome him to the lectern, Deputy Secretary Miller. Thank you, Massie. Well, welcome to our second stakeholder forum. It's good to see we have a full house. As you know, today's agenda is focused on our three large and critical programs¬¬¬¬: the Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, and the Phase II of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. I will be giving some very brief opening comments, but the real content, if you will, will be with my former--my current colleagues, soon to be current colleagues, Joanne Weiss, Ann Whalen, and Jim Shelton. So they will be able to give you an overview and answer questions that you might have. Because we have recently published in the Federal Register, as you know, and these particular programs are out for comment, I just want to forewarn you that to the degree that you have specific comments regarding what is in the proposed priorities, that still needs to be logged, if you will, at www.regs.gov. So, again, this is not meant to replace the formal public comment process. We, in fact, would welcome and appreciate the comments. We want to be responsive to all of them, and so if you could respect that as the mechanism to log your formal comments to get a response, and today's discussion will be focused on clarifying what is actually in the notice and providing that overview. Before I get into the specifics--or my colleagues get into the specifics of each program, I thought it would be helpful to very briefly provide the strategic frame that has governed the approach. And so with that, yes, there's a few slides. So bear with the graphics. First, today's discussion is clearly going to be on K through 12. But, at the Department of Education, we really are taking a cradle-to-career perspective, and so we are extending to pre-K readiness and thinking about not just early childhood development but early learning. And we're extending through higher education, thinking about not just four-year baccalaureate programs, but the role that community colleges play in preparing young adults with--to be prepared to enter the workforce and ensure that they truly have the 21st century skills to be competitive. But today's program and the three programs specifically that we'll be talking about are very much focused on K through 12 and around our four key reform priorities. First, common internationally benchmarked college and career ready standards with aligned assessments. Okay, this is critical. This in fact sets the bar. The importance of having appropriately rigorous and consistent standards that ensure our youth will be prepared and it's not dependent on which state they live in. We think it is critical, if we're going to be successful in achieving the President's goal, ensuring our education system is best in the world. But, again, once you set the high standard, what really matters, right, is the interaction between teachers and students in the classroom, and so ensuring that we have the most effective teachers and the most compelling and effective interactions between teachers and students is what matters. And it's important that those teachers and educators are, frankly, well led by principals and supporters. And so our second key reform priority. Third, data systems. Quality data systems are critical if we are going to understand what's working, what's not working, and how we need to improve. We are not going to be best in the world overnight. It will be a journey. It will be a journey of continuous improvement of growth, and so we need data systems that provide educators, policymakers, parents, students, and all who have a vested interest in the quality of our education system to make better decisions and to drive continuous improvement. And then, fourth, despite all of these things, we recognize that, unfortunately, there will be schools that run the risk of falling through the cracks. We need to have the capacity and the capability to turn around our most struggling schools. That capacity needs to be developed at the school level, at the district level, at the state level, and supported by us here at the Department of Education. If we are to close the achievement gap, it is critical that we are able to turn around our most struggling schools. So with that framework, today's context is roughly $22.3 billion, an unprecedented level of funding being made available. So, this funding is comprised of phase 2 of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and several key competitive grants that will be coming up in the coming months. Again, an unprecedented level of funding and for us an unprecedented opportunity and for you and the folks that you represent, an unprecedented opportunity. And one of the challenges that we have is to not think about these as discrete programs with discrete audiences to be planned for discrete uses as portions in a state or local budget. These are, in fact, programs that complement one another, that require interaction at the state and local level and requires a more comprehensive and integrated planning approach. The days of siloed planning, which we often suffer from here at the federal level, we must break down those silos if we're going to make the most use of the $22.3 billion that we're making available. So with that, my last slide, if you actually look at the planning horizon, by publishing the federal notice with the key programs, as we think about what will be published in the coming weeks and months, we will implore you, begin now, that approximately four months between when we published last week to roughly when applications for many of the programs will start being due. Take the next four months to start having conversations, if you are local, with your state agencies; if you are responsible for teacher incentive programs, link to data systems; if you're data program understands the challenges that struggling schools will be facing and what are going to be requirements of those programs, to take in fact an integrated approach and use this time horizon. On the one hand, we understand folks have completed their budgeting process; they're short-staffed in this current time horizon, and so this is daunting to think about, how am I going to adjust to all of these programs? I think the alternative, though, is worse. The alternative of not having full context, full information, will ensure that we will have a suboptimal approach, and so our commitment is to get as much information available as quickly as possible, and to be as transparent and interactive with you to help you understand and digest it. So with that, again, I'd like to thank everyone for taking time out of your schedules to attend. And now I will turn it over to my current colleague, Joanne Weiss. And let me grab that clicker from you. Click and we're going to--thank you. Okay. Thanks. I think the way, can you hear me? I think it--I think the way were going to handle this is that each of us is going to go through our presentations, and then take questions from you in our block, so I'm going to go through a presentation that's probably about 10, 15 minutes, and leave plenty of time for questions. I'm guessing that many of you have already read the Notice of Proposed Priorities that we put out last week and have come with your questions in hand. So I'm not going to belabor all of the different parts of it. Instead, I'm going to try to hit the high points of the things that I think we've heard are questions and misconceptions that people have had over the past little while, and see if I can maybe even pre-answer some of your questions, and then take it from there. So, at the high level, the Race to the Top fund, as you all know, is a competitive grant fund that's designed to help reward people who are implementing comprehensive reforms across all four of the reform areas that Tony just took you through. All with an overarching goal of making sure that what we're really doing is driving substantial gains in student achievement and attainment, and narrowing the achievement gap. So, Race to the Top takes two approaches to this reform agenda. First, it encourages states to create statutory and regulatory conditions that are conducive to innovation and reform; if you will to set a framework within which reform and innovation can happen and are enabled. Second, it encourages the design and implementation of practices at the classroom, school, district, and state levels, that are continuously improved based on feedback and data. So within this, as states prepare their applications, we're really encouraging them to think about three different things. First, we're asking them to think about coming together in broad coalitions to define, again, as Tony put it, a unified state effort around ambitious reforms. And Race to the Top really is the place where all of these different reforms come together in one integrated package, as I think you will see as we go through and talk about this more. We're also asking states to really develop pretty deep expertise and competency in supporting districts' reform efforts. And that means things like being able to identify what effective practices are happening in districts around their state, and thinking about how to replicate and disseminate those practices beyond the boundaries of just those districts that are doing them today and invented them, but spreading them statewide, where that's appropriate, and then holding districts accountable for the outcomes. We also want states to think about how to align all their ARRA funding and all of their sources of education funds around these reforms, so instead of having the silos that Tony talked about, we're using the money in the most impactful way to really drive student achievement gains. So those are the sort of big picture things that we're looking for in Race to the Top. And now let me just turn to the specifics of the program for a second. So, as you know, I think Race to the Top is going to award about $4 billion of funding to states. When a state wins, at least 50% of the funds have to flow through to the districts that are participating in Race to the Top. The funds flow through based on Title I formulas, but they're used in a manner that's consistent with the proposal, so they're not used in a Title I fashion. That's just the formula for how states figure out how much goes to each district, and then the districts use those funds in a manner that's consistent with the proposal that the state submitted. The other 50% is at the state's discretion. They can use it themselves to build capacity, to build infrastructure statewide. They can also pass a bunch of that money through to their districts using any formula that they choose as long as, again, it's consistent with the state's proposal. One other thing that we're starting to get questions about is how we anticipate that budgets will work, what's the amount of money that states will get from this. Our plan is to put out a budget range in our final application package, to put out some guidance on budget ranges that are going to be roughly based on the state's student population. But these are going to be non-binding ranges. What we are really hoping is that states will put together budgets that match the needs that they have articulated in their specific proposals. And, again, we are anticipating hundreds of millions of dollars in most cases that go out to the winning states. So these are contemplated to be large grants that can be spent over four years. I think most of you know that at a later date, we're going to likely be announcing a separate competition to help states that are in consortia around developing a new set of common standards also develop the assessments that go with those standards. We've set aside up to $350 million to support that, that's not the notice that we released last week. We're still thinking about that, working on that, and trying to figure out what that looks like. So what I'm talking to you about today is what we've called the "state competition." And we'll come back to you at a later time with information about the other one. Okay, so some of the specific nuts and bolts. States that apply for this grant do have to comprehensively address all four reform areas, so this isn't a sort of menu pick and choose. This is, we think, all of these building blocks are really critical to significantly moving the needle on student achievement, and we want states to take on all four of these comprehensively, the states that win Race to the Top, and are really leading the way for the rest of the country. States are the applicants here, not LEAs, not non-profits, so states are the applicants here, and states apply individually, although there are ways in which collaborations among states will be rewarded. States are going to have two opportunities to apply, and in a second' I'm going to show you a specific timeframe. But states will have two opportunities to apply with basically the same application used both times. So states that are ready to apply right away can apply in phase 1, which will be toward the end of this year, and states that need a little more time to get their applications together have until next spring to apply. So if you apply in phase 1 and you don't win a grant, you can reapply in phase 2, or you can just wait and apply in phase 2 out-the-gate and not apply in phase 1. If you do win in phase 1, you don't reapply in phase 2, because you get a full-sized grant as of the end of phase 1, and you're off and running. So this is what the timeframe looks like. As you know, last week we released the Notice of Proposed Priorities. The public comment period, which is the period we're in right now lasts for 30 days, so it ends towards the end of this month. Sometime later this fall, we'll then put out the final application package, and about two months after that, applications for phase 1 will be due from the states, and sometime during the first half of next year winners are going to be announced for phase 1, and we'll give feedback from our peer reviewers to all of the people who didn't win in phase 1 that hopefully will help them with their phase 2 applications. Phase 2, then, is going to be due late in the spring of 2010, and by statute all of the money has to be awarded by September of 2010. So that's what the timeframe looks like. Now, I do know that most of you have read this proposal and many of you are probably familiar with the way that Department of Education proposals work. But, I thought this primer was helpful when I started, so I want to just kind of quickly explain to you the five different kinds or the five different parts of these proposals, to make sure that it is clear to you what all of these different pieces are that you see when you read the notices. So first thing are eligibility requirements, and these are things that a state has to meet in order to even apply for a grant. Second, we have absolute priorities, and these are things that a state has to address when it's doing its application. So these are things that the state has to put in its application. Next, there are selection criteria, and these are things that earn points. So, review panels look at these applications and review them, and these are the things that they're tallying up points for. Then, there are competitive priorities. These are sort of like extra credit or tie-breakers. And, finally, there are invitational priorities, which are things we are interested in but don't explicitly earn points. So you'll see in many of these proposals all of these different kinds of devices that are used, and I'm going to just run really quickly through what the Race to the Top version of these looks like. So in Race to the Top, we have two eligibility requirements that you see up here. The first one is that the state's application for funding under the State Fiscal Stabilization Program has to be approved, and the second is that states must not have any legal barriers to linking data on student achievement or student growth to teachers or principals for the purposes of evaluation. So those are the two proposed eligibility requirements. There's one absolute priority, which you already heard about, which is you got to have a comprehensive reform plan in each of the four areas. And then, there are the selection criteria. So in Race to the Top, this is the stuff that earns you points, and the bulk of the document that we've put out is about these selection criteria. Race to the Top has 19 of these. I'm going to spare you going through all of them. But there are two types of selection criteria, and it helps to just be oriented to this as you're reading the document. The first is state reward conditions criteria. These are really a reward for past accomplishments, so here what we're looking for are states that have demonstrated the will and the capacity to improve education by creating conditions that are conducive to reform and innovation, so these are things that are judged--that you have to have accomplished or completed prior to the application deadline in order to earn points for them. Then, there are the reform plan criteria, which is, well, it's great you have already done all this stuff, but what are you actually going to do with the money that we give you? That's the reform plans and those are the strategies that states are proposing together with their districts to implement over the course of the four years of the grant. And here, states are judged by the quality of their plans and by the extent to which the targets they've set in those plans are ambitious but achievable. And as you've heard, all of the proposal criteria here are judged by panels of peer reviewers who will select and we'll get more into the details of how the competition will work at a later time. So now, I have a slide that I am not really going to--slides that I'm just going to skip quickly through on each of these areas. You'll see them in the proposals. These are the sort of high-level bullets on each of the criteria in each of the four assurance areas. In addition, there is a set of overall criteria. These criteria deal with things like: how have you spent your overall education funding to date? And what are your plans for comprehensively using all of your funding sources to address these reforms over the coming years? What's your success been in increasing student achievement level? And what's your plan for doing so? And very importantly, what is your plan for building your statewide capacity to really deliver on all of the plans and reforms that you've proposed in your application? And then, finally, there are a couple of competitive and invitational priorities as well. There's one competitive priority, which concerns STEM, and then there's three invitational priorities. So that's the big picture. I'm happy to take your questions now. I want to just make a couple of things clear to you before I do. The first is that what you're seeing here is a proposed notice, so the public comment period is really important to us. We take it very seriously, and it's really our time to listen to you and hear your feedback and think about what we should alter, do differently, delete, add to the proposal. So your comments are really important to us. You can see here a bunch of resources that we've made available to you to hopefully make it easier for you to provide comments and feedback to us. As Tony mentioned, we have to take all comments and questions in writing through the regulations.gov e-mail site in order to take them into consideration. So we are going to ask you if you've got any of those kinds of questions or comments today; first of all, just know I'm not trying to be obstinate, it really is our listening time. We're not allowed to respond, not even not allowed--it's not the time for us to respond and defend; it's the time for us to listen and learn. We've spent a lot of time ourselves trying to put our best thinking forward here, and now it's time for us to listen to the public and hear what everybody has to say. I can certainly answer questions that are technical, logistical, clarifying questions. Others we're happy to hear, but we will ask you to go online and submit them officially. If you go to this homepage site, ed.gov/program/racetothetop, you'll find not only the proposal, an executive summary of the proposal, but a direct link to the comments site, so that you can make your comments there.