Delaware Race to The Top Presentation

GOVERNOR MARKELL: Well, on behalf of 125,000 students in Delaware and on behalf of the 885,000 Delawarians whose future totally depends upon the quality of our schools, we are delighted to be here today. We own this plan, and in 90 minutes, you are going to want to own it as well. And with that, I would like to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves. MR. DOUGHERTY: Good afternoon. My name is Merv Dougherty. I am the superintendent of the Red Clay Consolidated School District. I am honored to represent all 19 school district superintendents as well as all 18 charter school leaders who have committed to this plan. In my 32 years of education, 16 in the classroom and 16 as an administrator, I have had the opportunity to work with students, teachers, and administrators for school achievement. We are proud of this plan, and we are strongly behind it and promote it. The leaders of Delaware, such as the charter school leaders and the superintendents of Delaware, are realizing the importance of this plan, realize the commitment it is going to take from each school district and each charter school, and we believe that the positive impact of this plan will promote us into the future for student achievement. Thank you. MS. DONOHUE: Hello. Thank you for this opportunity today. I am Diane Donohue. I have been a teacher in Delaware for the past 20 years. I have taught first and third grade, and I have also writing to first through fifth graders. I am currently serving as the President of the Delaware State Education Association -- that is the Teachers' Union in Delaware -- and I am here today representing the 11,000 plus members of the Teachers' Union because I know and our members know how important it is to be part of this education reform effort. Every single local president in Delaware has signed the memorandum of understanding and is committed to providing the best education for all of Delaware's children. Thank you. DR. LOWERY: Good afternoon. I am Lilian Lowery, Secretary of Education. Previously a classroom teacher, a high school principal, and district superintendent, I have never experienced the kind of focused reform enterprise that this Race to the Top opportunity affords us. Coupled with the flexibility that is now included with the student improvement grant opportunities. Delaware has developed a plan for systemic reform that will inform the national conversation around improved student achievement. And as secretary, I am anxious to begin working with district superintendents in schools to develop a model that can be a national model. MR. SCHOENHALS: I am Skip Schoenhals, Chairman of WSFS Financial Corporation, which is one of the largest independent banks in the state of Delaware. That is Main Street banking, not Wall Street banking. I am also a Chairman of Vision 2015, which is a statewide plan that was developed over three years ago to map the path to creating the best public education system in the world by 2015. No exception; no excuses. That plan has been recognized by national leaders as one of the most comprehensive statewide plans for achieving that objective. I represent the private sector of Delaware which over the last 20 years has had a catalytic impact on education reform in the state of Delaware. Besides the Vision 2015 initiative, we formed the Innovative Schools Development Corporation, which is a private sector effort which provides back office and consultive work to charter schools and most recently now traditional public schools. In addition, we formed a consortium to provide, again from the private sector, loan guarantees to charter schools so that they could finance their capital improvements, their new buildings. We have done that with over half -- almost half -- of the charters in the state of Delaware. Delaware's private sector is probably one of the, if not the most, engaged private sectors you could find in the state of Delaware. Over the last five years, we have invested over 30 million dollars into education reform. And given the size of Delaware, I can't overstate the relative significance of that investment in public education. GOVERNOR MARKELL: I am Jack Markell. I am the governor of Delaware. And implementing these improvements is amongst the very highest priorities I have as governor. And what I said at the outset that we own this plan, I'm not talking just about the Department of Education. I'm talking about our thousands and thousands of teachers -- including the teachers' union -- I'm talking about the business community. As Skip just said, so incredibly engaged. I'm talking about all the state superintendents and all the charter school leaders, all of whom signed on to our plan. So we begin our presentation today exactly where we will end it and on the only thing that really matters which is student achievement, as you can see in these goals. Let me just give you a sense of what gets me here today and the passion that I have for this. Several years ago I was the president of the Metropolitan Limited Urban League. It is the only urban league in the state of Delaware. And it became incredibly clear to me that we as a state, if we are going to thrive, we have to make sure that every single student can achieve their potential, which is why our goal is focused on every single student in the state of Delaware. We know that we can make this progress because we have made progress before. MR. DAUGHERTY: These bold new goals are on the legacy of academic performance in Delaware, as you can see on the chart, starting in 1983 with Delaware developing data system with unique student identifiers. Then you can see in 1988, Delaware developed a statewide teacher evaluation system. Now, both of these systems are extremely important for our plan that you will see today. In 1995, Delaware passed a robust charter for statewide school choice regulations as well as implemented the statewide standards. In 1997, the state implemented the student testing program. However, in 19 -- excuse me -- in 2009, Delaware passed regulations to provide framework to turn around low-achieving schools, and it linked these regulations to evaluations of student growth. Delaware was ahead of the curve in 1983, and we believe Delaware is ahead of the curve in 2010. MS. DONOHUE: Being ahead of the curve has led to real results. We have done very well in improving fourth and eighth grade reading scores. We have ranked third and sixth nationally in improved fourth and eighth grade math scores respectively. And we are recognized as a leader in closing the achievement gaps in both reading and math. We are very proud of our results in Delaware to date. But we know that there is more work to be done, and we cannot rest on our laurels. DR. LOWERY: Our bold plan is a logical extension of Delaware's history of success. Because we believe that year over year of student growth is the true measure of instructional effectiveness. Next year, we will offer a computer-based summative assessment grades 3 through 8, and we will replace the one-time high school summative assessment within the core test. As you also know, based on the information we have shared with you, we can now tie student growth to teacher and leader effectiveness, which means that we can identify and incentivize our highly effective teachers to move to our high-need schools. Our new assessment system, which also has three adaptive formative assessments, coupled with the new performance appraisal systems, will enable educators to make data-informed decisions about professional development, models of instruction, and employment considerations, such as our goal to bring to scale STEM statewide in our K to 12 curriculum. By executive order, Governor Markell has established a statewide STEM Council, a coordinating council to work with our curriculum and instruction staff to develop the curricula that will really impact rigor and K-12 we want to focus primarily on our underrepresented and underserved populations, such as minorities and females. We are also partnering with a graduate school of education at the University of Delaware to develop a STEM residency program, which will be an alternative route to certification for about 100 teachers by 2014 to make sure that we have the capacity to fill these courses and yield positive results. We are really excited about the possibilities that going forward that Race to The Top opportunity offers us, and we are going to make sure that we demonstrate that with all of our efforts. MR. DAUGHERTY: We were one of the first states to sign on to the Common Core Standards Initiative, an effort that our governor cochairs. We will be one of the first states to implement the growth model assessment for students. Beginning this summer, 2010 in August, we will be providing professional development for teachers and for administrators on the path forward on this plan, as well as standards and assessments. We believe that marrying high standards with the cutting edge of assessment is exactly where we should be and where we are going to go. Thank you. MR. SCHOENHALS: Delaware has universally been recognized for its leadership in its educational data system. However, it is clunky, which is a technical term for not very user friendly. The result is data -- the result is that Delaware is data rich but not data driven in our educational system. This plan changes that on multiple levels. It includes all elements of the America Competes Act. It will have customized portals for different user groups, unique to their individual needs. It will be -- have more analysis of trends and analytical data. And most importantly, our plan provides for data coaches that go into every school in the state of Delaware. And it is not just a one-time visit. This is programmed over two years where the data coaches will be in every school, meeting in a collaborative mode, teaching the teachers how to use the data, to interpret the data, and then use it in their classrooms. In our network schools, which was a pilot program that was part of the Vision 2015 network, we devoted extensive coaching time to using data. We have shown that it worked. This enhanced system will supercharge that progress and winning Race to the Top gets us there much faster. MS. DONOHUE: We all know that the teachers are in the classroom for one reason and that is student growth. Our evaluation system now is linked directly to that growth. The Delaware performance appraisal system too is a comprehensive statewide comprehensive system based upon Charlotte Danielson's, A Framework for Teaching. It has been modified to meet Delaware's needs. Originally, the student improvement component was added to meet the needs of Senate Bill 260 in Delaware, which at that time, required a component solely directed to student improvement. Delaware's newest regulations around evaluations are pivotal to education reform in Delaware. It is pivotal. One critical change is related to the student improvement component. Prior to the new regulations, all five components were weighted equally. Now in Delaware, however, no educator can be rated effective or better unless all of their students demonstrate satisfactory levels of growth. Additionally, no teacher will be rated ineffective if their students are learning and meeting satisfactory levels of growth. When Delaware looked at the student improvement component and was thinking about increasing the weight to that, they decided that they were not going to use a percentage. Delaware's is a policy. We didn't pick a percentage. We picked a policy. We believe that this policy is stronger because now, simply put, in Delaware teachers will not be rated effectively unless their students are learning. Another significant change is that a highly effective rating has been added to the summative evaluation. To be rated "highly effective" teachers must demonstrate that their students are achieving more than a year's growth. To be rated "effective," teachers must demonstrate sufficient student growth. Teachers who fail to meet this criteria will be rated ineffective or needs improvement. And those teachers who are rated ineffective or needs improvement for two to three years, can be removed from the classroom even if they have tenure. Additionally, the student improvement component will be evaluated each year regardless of the ratings in the other four components. Defining student growth and the measures used for determining teacher effectiveness are paramount to this system. One measure to be used will be the new Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System. This is a computer-based adaptive growth model test which will provide teachers, students, schools, and districts with timely data that will drive and inform instruction. Other measures and sufficient student growth will be defined over the next 16 months with a statewide collaborative effort set forth by Dr. Lowery. By July 2011, the definition of "sufficient student growth" will be defined as well as the multiple measures that are rigorous and comparable across classrooms. I know that this work will be challenging. It won't be easy. I also know that teachers want to be held accountable with a fair and reliable measure and not single snapshots. We are committed to this work because we believe the Delaware plan offers us an opportunity to change the culture in our schools and classrooms. Linking student growth to evaluation is the lynchpin to this reform plan. DR. LOWERY: Currently, over 40,000 students, which is one-third of Delaware's student population, attend persistently low-achieving schools. That it totally unacceptable, and we are going to change that fact. To that end, Delaware has created a special zone that is comprised of our lowest performing Title 1 and Title 1-eligible secondary schools to aid them in turning these schools around quickly. Our state has the authority to require schools to choose a model from closure to turn-around that will significantly improve teaching and learning. And to reiterate, we now have an assessment that strategically and effectively ties student growth to teacher and leadership effectiveness. Delaware is one of six states to partner with mass insight so that we can begin the process of implementing statewide strategies to turn these schools around. And we have signed letters of intent with the New York City Leadership Academy and the New Teacher Project to recruit and develop highly qualified leaders and teachers. Our state will do everything in our means to support and empower our districts and schools to choose models and put into practice those strategies that will yield positive results for our students in two years because they don't have time to wait. Most important to that point is that we are committed to holding each other accountable to make certain that every decision, every strategy is based on "what's in the best interests of our students and our schools" and that is non-negotiable. I commit to you today that Delaware has a plan for systemic change that will ensure that those 40,000 students in two years are in high-performing schools. MR DAUGHERTY: Delaware's plan is sustainable and it must be. The education leaders of Delaware are committed to this plan and its success on the state and local levels. We have reviewed the budget, done the analysis line by line. The Delaware plan requires an 8.5 million dollar a year -- requires a commitment after the Race to the Top funding ends. That is about 1 percent of our budget. The Race to the Top ensures that we have the funding for the first four years. And we, as educational leaders, are committed to having the funding after that time period ends. MR. SCHOENHALS: Bold plan takes capacity: Technical, organizational and process, and finally leadership, which I believe is the most important. Before talking about leadership, a couple of brief comments on process and organization. You heard Diane talk about the new teacher evaluation tool. As she said, that is a lynchpin to our process of improving public education in the state of Delaware. With respect to organizational, our staffing has people going into the schools. Data coaches as I previously mentioned, developmental coaches which is to help teach people how to do effective performance evaluations. Those are people are going into the schools to work directly with teachers and leaders. We also expand the Department of Education with some new functions under Lillian's leadership to help direct this plan. But, frankly, a plan this big, no one knows for sure all the resources that will be required. So we built into the plan some flexibility. Over 2 million dollars of consulting dollars to help us bring people in as needed at key points to make sure we are not falling short on the subject of technical capacity. With respect to leadership, the people in front of you probably represent the most dedicated and engaged stakeholders that you could face with respect to education reform. Our Secretary of Education, who was hired to be the superintendent of our largest district in the state because of her commitment to education reform. She was selected by our governor to become Secretary of Education because she had proved that commitment. Diane, the president of the teachers' union right next to me, actively campaigned amongst her affiliates to have them endorse this plan. As she mentioned, 100 percent of them did. That took true leadership in the face of not-universal acclaim. You have heard from our superintendents. They have endorsed this plan 100 percent, as has the business community, with the comments I have made earlier. And finally, our governor. He is committed to doing what is essential for our children to have a world-class education system, even at the expense of his own political career. GOVERNOR MARKELL: So Delaware is ready to go. But I want to frame this plan in a larger context. Our country's standing when it comes to educational results amongst developed countries is falling. So this competition is about more than securing resources for our state. It is about how Delaware is best positioned -- positioned better than any other state -- to drive a national conversation on how we rethink public education, even as our demographics mirror those of the rest of the nation. Now, there are more that 14,000 school districts across this country. And to the best of my knowledge, there is not a single one that policy makers would credit with having all of the right pieces in place. Not a single one. Great programs, great schools exist throughout the country. But we haven't developed the whole package. The data infrastructure, the recruitment and training models, the performance measurement, and management from the schoolhouse to the statehouse, we haven't developed all that that will take these good ideas to scale. So Delaware is best positioned not only to ensure excellence at the district level but also to ensure excellence at the state level. We can do it faster, and we can do it for less money than any other state in the nation. Now, you have read our plan about how we propose to get there, and we look forward to during the next 60 minutes to digging into the details with you. But this state-level framing is important because when we develop the comprehensive proof point in Delaware, we are going to dramatically accelerate the learning curve for other states. That includes other states many times our size. In the process, we are going to save the nation hundreds of millions of dollars of trial and error along the way. Now, we welcome the possibility of being a national partner. And when I ran for governor, I ran on a platform of accountability and of transparency. And I look forward to working with Secretary Lowery and with the Department of Education to share our successes and our failures along the way. So while Job 1 is certainly creating that proof point in Delaware, we are also committed to playing a critical role in driving that national conversation. Now, what we propose is a strong plan, and it is one that requires both courage and capacity. I want to take a minute to address each of those. We know that we have got to make tough decisions along the way, and it is going to take courage on all of our parts. Diane will need to work with her 11,000 members. Skip will need to keep the business community engaged. Merv will work with 18 other superintendents as well 18 charter school leaders. All of us are going to have to demonstrate courage and leadership. But the fact that we were able to pass some of the boldest policy reforms in the country when it comes to evaluation and school turn-arounds, while at the same time getting 100 percent buy-in from every superintendent, every charter leader, every school board, every affiliate of our teachers' union, demonstrates not only a collective willingness to embrace change but it also demonstrates the level of trust and respect that we have built up and that is needed to make that change stick. There are simply too many moving parts in public education to drive systemic change from the statehouse alone. All parts of the system are inter-dependant. If the teacher in the classroom doesn't want to buy in, she can just close her door. If the business community leader isn't interested any more, he or she can pull away. All of us again are going to need to demonstrate that kind of leadership. And to that end, I think one of the most important things that distinguishes our state is that our executive leadership team is committed to seeing this through. The fact that I am here as governor from the outset --I am going to be here for at least another three years, perhaps seven -- which gives me not only the ability but the responsibility to push this change. Because if it doesn't happen, it is on my watch. And the fact that my secretary of education and I are so closely aligned is critically important. I appoint her and that, of course, is very different than in some other states. Now, finally, to get this done, we are not only going to have to have a great plan, we not only need political courage, we need the capacity to deliver. And given the economic landscape in the traditional compliance role of a state education agency, my guess is that most states around the country are struggling or dealing with this same issue. And again, I believe that Delaware is better positioned than other states to build the right capacity. And we are not going to build that capacity simply to perpetuate what it is that we have done before. In fact, we are paring back state government to cut costs. We are retooling our culture; we are retooling delivery of government services. We are creating, as you can see in the plan, a project management office to oversee implementation statewide. And that is a unit that has not existed before because we are making that move from the compliance-driven culture to a performance-driven culture. We are also creating two NIMBLE units to build and manage our work on human capital and on school turn-arounds. And these new staff positions are really going to be the nucleus of our effort to drive to the new performance-driven culture. And our intent is to build that capacity with state partners and with national partners as we begin -- and we going to begin to do that work immediately. Now the intangibles of this capacity issue are resiliency and the respect that we need to deliver and that we have for each other. We are a functional family. That doesn't mean we always get along. But it does mean that we get the job done. So for the children of Delaware and for the children of this nation, I hope we have a chance to partner with the U.S. Department of Education and with the other lead states to fundamentally rethink how we educate our children and to prepare them for a future that neither they nor we can yet imagine. In Delaware, you don't have to choose between bold and consensus. In Delaware, you get both. That wraps up our 30 minutes. REVIEWER 1: Thank you very much. I appreciate your overview and your timeliness. The three areas that we are going to focus on are areas that you touched on, and that is using data, high quality teachers and principals, and also low-performing schools. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Right. REVIEWER 1: I'm going to turn this over to my colleague for the using data section. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Right. REVIEWER 3: So, our first question concerns the area of student data. Please clarify how student performance data gathered from Delaware schools and classrooms will be used to improve instructional practice by teachers and foster greater student learning and achievement. And there are three areas of student performance data we would like you to address: Student growth measure, longitudinal student data, and formative assessment. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me start with that and then I am going to turn it over to our secretary of education. It is a great question, and it is totally integrated into our entire plan. And if you take a look at our budget, for instance, and you see where we are spending money, a considerable money we are spending is on the data coaches. We really believe -- and I think that Skip in the intro really said it well -- he said we have long been data rich. We are recognized as one of the states with the strongest data systems in the country. But it is one thing to be data rich, and it is something else to be data driven. And so we are -- the purpose of all this data is very much to inform what is going on in the classroom. So we have proposed 35 data coaches, who will be going out into the schools, to be working with teachers and to help inform how the teachers should be using the data in the classroom. And beyond that, we are actually providing time for teachers to share with each other, collaboration time, three 90-minute sessions each month. We can talk about that in the teachers' section as well, but it is -- although you are going to ask about these things in three different areas, really they are very much tied together. The use of data in an intelligent way is totally tied into how we are trying to transform what happens in the classroom. I'm going to ask our secretary to go into the three specific areas. REVIEWER 1: Okay. SECRETARY LOWERY: Thank you, Governor. One of the new arms of the Department of Education is called the Teacher/Leader Effectiveness Unit. And they have -- that particular unit will have three principal responsibilities. But one is the professional development management system. One thing we are going to do is tie all of our professional development to targeted student data, so no longer will federal or state funds that come into the state be spent on anything that is not targeted to student data. They will work with our -- for our instructional improvement systems. Again, to reiterate, we will have data coaches in all of our schools, especially around our statewide assessment, our Delaware comprehensive assessment system looking at English language arts, math then, of course, science and social studies. But they will be working with these teachers to make sure that all these data that we have -- and we have lots of data, as you have heard before -- really do mean something around student growth, how we know that our students are learning. Another piece around student growth is a work in process. If you take a look at our application, we have 16 months built in from the time we go forward, from August forward, because these are in regulation now and it has to happen -- and we are going to be working with national organizations around professional development standards that they have for all subject areas, because we recognize that not every subject area and not every grade level is assessed with our national and our state assessment. So we will have to work with and in collaboration with the teachers' union and our leaders to figure that out. But we also are joining many national consortia around common assessments. And we will be gleaning information from our friends there to determine what growth is. As far as the longitudinal data system, we already have just a phenomenal longitudinal data system. From the time our students enter prekindergarten and every Delawarian who is economically disadvantaged has at least one year of school before going into kindergarten, they have that unique student identifier. So we can follow that student from the time they come into any system in our state through graduate school, we have memoranda of understanding with all five of our institutions -- our institutes of higher education, both public and private -- we can already chart what -- which of our students need remediation, which of our students who get into college actually stay and what year do they come out. We can look at their core selection. We can already share that broadly now. Where we want to enhance the longitudinal data system is so that it will be more interactive. Right now when we share transcripts, they are PDFs. We would like to make that more robust so that our universities when they get those transcripts can manipulate them instead of re-inventing the wheel. And we can also use their data more aggressively. We also want to be able to look at preservice programs, where are folks coming from and what good services are we getting. So the longitudinal data system is really robust. We are also looking at because we can have those unique identifiers at early care is building a data cube and coming up with readiness assessments for our students when they enter kindergarten and following cohorts to see how well they do. As far as formative assessment, when we got ready to go out for our RFP, Request for Proposal for this assessment -- and we are going to test to this – and Merv can attest to this -- one of the non-negotiable for our superintendents and our heads of charters is that we had to have formative assessment. And we are really excited because not only do we have formative assessment, they are computer based and they are adaptive. So when those data coaches go into these classrooms and work with these teachers, they know exactly the level on which students are performing and can help them differentiate instruction effectively. GOVERNOR MARKELL: And that new test will be starting in the next school year. DR. LOWERY: Right. MR.SCHOENHALS: An additional comment I would like to make, Governor, is about data driving student growth. I mentioned what we call our Network Schools, which came out of the Vision 2015 Initiative. And the core of those schools that came into that program was about using data to inform them about instructional strategies within their building. We are just finishing the third year for the first cohort that went into that program. And what we are beginning to see in the data is where they identified from the data that perhaps they had a particular issue with math. They came back and made that their core instructional strategy within their building, and the results are now showing up in the student assessment process. That is the model that we are using with respect to going ahead with having data inform instructional leadership that leads directly to student growth. DR. DAUGHERTY: If I may also comment, going down to the school and to the classroom and the opportunity that this plan provides, which is exciting, is that the data coach is taking formative assessments, after the formative assessments occur, drilling into the student to where they are strong, where their weaknesses occur and addressing those issues with differentiation is a really important part of this plan. I think important in the different districts. I think we have an opportunity to what is called a single sign-on system that where teachers and administrators can sign on because they have a unique password and look at their students in their classroom, in their school, and in their district and look at the data that occurs each time they are assessed. From all the way -- if you know the process of the school -- if you look at the student data assessment but all the data of the student, which is very powerful with some of our students and all of our students. But this is a great opportunity that we have to have students -- take it all the way down to each teacher to find out what specific areas that they need to improve in to make them not only successful but to achieve at a higher level. I think this is very unique for our state where we are headed because now it is not just a superintendent worried about the data; it is not just the principal. Now it comes down to the teacher, which they are excited about because now they want to be able to break their classrooms down in this manner. These formative assessments are extremely important, and as Dr. Lowery said, the superintendents and chiefs really wanted that in the RFP because it was extremely important as you go through the years -- not just at the beginning and the end -- but throughout the course, that is a very unique thing that we have in our state. MS. DONOHUE: If I could also add just another point to this. The data coaches’ idea is really exciting for all of our teachers. In schools that currently have what we call profession learning communities and they are given their 90 minutes of planning time to work together, to look at data and analyze it, it has been very beneficial and has been received very well by teachers. Now I have to say in the beginning when it first started, it wasn't necessarily received very well because people really didn't know what they were doing, okay. But once we were trained on how to use data, how to analyze it and given the time to do that, it really was beneficial. And teachers and educators across the state where it is in place now are loving it. So this was one of the pieces of the plan that our teachers really wanted to move forward with and were excited about. So it is really -- REVIEWER 4: Let me ask you about -- MS DONOHUE: Sure. REVIEWER 2: When did the data coaches, when did that begin? MS DONOHUE: Well, we don't have what we call data coaches currently. REVIEWER 4: Yet. MS.DONOHUE: But in our schools what we have done, like for example, the school district that I'm in, Indian River -- I work in the district Indian River -- about nine years ago, we actually started to look at what we called learning focus strategies. And when we were doing that, the first thing that we had to develop with our learning focus strategy was this 90-minute block time, this professional learning community time. So we were given time -- as third grade teachers -- that is what I was at the time -- we were given time to get together with the other third grade teachers in our building, along with our principal. At that time, our district brought in people to show us how to look at our data, how to analyze it, how to drive our instruction in our classroom, how to modify our assessments, how to modify our instructions -- REVIEWER 4: I have to cut you off -- So the point I wanted to get at, you don't have them officially yet? DR. LOWERY: No. May I? REVIEWER 2: Yes, yes. DR. LOWERY: No, no, we do not. And what has happened is because we are a small state and we work so well and so collaboratively, Indian River informed other districts so we are saying, let's bring that to scale. If it is happening and it is making measurable results -- let’s bring it to scale. REVIEWER 2: All right -- that is part of this grant. DR. LOWERY: Absolutely -- REVIEWER 2: What happens at the end of the grant? GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me, if I could -- and this is really the point that Merv was making -- the sustainability side? REVIEWER 4: Yeah. GOVERNOR MARKELL: This is critically important. We have gone through our budget line by line. And so we have come up with a number we believe at the end of the Race to the Top, we are going to require eight and a half million dollars annually. That was the figure, just under one percent of our budget. We are committed to maintain -- and so that means in some of the areas where we propose to spend we are not going to, you know, we think we will be to scale. We are going to have to train the trainers. Other places we are going to do different things. But we have gone through them and we can share them with you if you like. We have literally gone through line by line. We can tell you exactly where that eight and a half million dollars comes from. REVIEWER 4: That is great. That helps very much. REVIEWER 1: Any other questions? REVIEWER 2: Yeah. How quickly do you anticipate the expansion of the professional learning community data coach initiative? DR. LOWERY: We intend to start that in Fall '11. It is going -- because what we first have to do is -- Skip's point -- is that we have to set up that teacher/leader effectiveness unit. So what we are going to be doing with the 16-month planning period is actually building capacity. We are actually going to be hiring the people who are going to be running the offices in teacher/leader effectiveness. And then we will be using them to hire our data coaches and our development coaches and train them. So we think we will need next year as a planning and capacity building year so that when the Fall of '11 comes, we have the data coaches and development coaches ready to go. REVIEWER 2: And those will be data coaches for math? For ELA? For science and social studies to -- DR. LOWERY: Right now, we are focusing on English language arts, and mathematics. But because they will be talking to teachers one to six in a professional learning community environment, like all third grade teachers, that differentiated instruction can go anywhere. Because what we are pushing is reading, writing, math across the curriculum, that everyone owns it. So if they are meeting with third grade teachers, how do we integrate those same skill sets in social studies, in math, in science, in other elective courses. REVIEWER 2: You may not mean this but it sounded like we are talking about elementary schools only. DR. LOWERY: Oh, absolutely not. No, no, no. Please, I'm sorry. No, that was -- MR.SCHOENHALS: It was a ratio of one to six, one data coach for six teachers. DR. LOWERY: And our -- and let me say this -- when we talk about building on Delaware's history of success, in most of our schools, we already have those 90 minutes built in. We just were not using them effectively. So people were just struggling and trying to figure out where there was visionary leadership, like in Indian River. They got it right. Nothing turns teachers off more than anything else is to take their time and not be able to effectively use it wisely. So even in our high schools -- I would say at least two-thirds of our high schools -- have common planning period both vertically and horizontally. So ninth grade English teachers and nine through twelve English teachers. So professional learning communities are very deep, in our state anyway. We just need to make sure that we bring good practices to scale. REVIEWER 2: And the standard is -- this is it -- the standard is three times a month? DR. LOWERY: Yeah. REVIEWER 2: Across the K to 12 spectrum? DR. LOWERY: About four to five hours a month, yes. REVIEWER 1: And that will segway to the next section, which is about great teachers and principals, and? REVIEWER 4: Related to data, you had mentioned that your graduation rate has remained fairly flat at 82 percent? Is that be correct? DR. LOWERY: Yes, correct. REVIEWER 4: That has not moved? DR. LOWERY: That is correct. REVIEWER 4: You have answered it, thank you. REVIEWER 4: High quality teachers and leaders. We want you -- and we have a series of questions after the general question -- we want you to provide greater detail to us -- we really want to understand what you shared in your application -- around how Delaware intends to provide -- pathways to ensure more effective leaders, both teachers but also principals. Frankly, we felt that one of the things that was not coming real clear in your proposal, your application, was your pathways for your principals. So talk to us about that, if you would. DR. LOWERY: Delaware has been privileged to be a part of the Wallace Foundation Grant around school leadership for the past six years. And if one were to -- and we can certainly provide further information if needed -- investigate the work we have done around leadership. We are leading the nation in that. We have a very strong succession plan as far as growing our own, where we actually take teachers who are interested in being teachers leaders and/or administrators and give them in-district training. They go through the HR Department; they go through curriculum instruction. They go through all the functions of a district, but what we focus on most of all with our curriculum instruction is how does whatever we do feed back to the classroom and impact instruction. One of things we are looking to do in particular, at all of our high-need schools and with all of our novice principals, is bring in external consultants -- right now, we are looking at the National Institute of School Leadership -- to train them for 18 months. The reason we are looking at them is because they actually come to Delaware. And what we -- what will happen because it takes a different skill set -- instead of just giving them the keys -- how does one use distributive leadership among teachers and teacher leaders so that that administrator can be in the classroom observing teachers, giving feedback and helping them work through their improvement plan. As a part of our evaluation system, one will notice that when teachers are rated highly effective, that sets a career pathway for them. And that we know that we have some teachers who are not interested in being administrators. They are interested in being teacher leaders. So they would teach half day and they would be in the consultant role for their -- embedded professional development -- in their schools where the students and the teachers and the data -- they would work closely with our school administrators to glean information needed -- REVIEWER 4: Is that in place now? DR. LOWERY: No. That would be with our Race to the Top funding. And that would be not in effect until year '11-12 because our new assessment goes into effect next year, '10-11. And in fairness to the teachers' union, they wanted us to just live through it for a year, make sure that we are all comfortable with the data and give us time to actually look at what growth measures are we going to use to say that students are learning or not learning and something that is consistently fair with teachers. So in '11-12, we would start that process. GOVERNOR MARKELL: And we have go, I think we got about 2.8 million dollars in the budget specifically in this area, almost 2 million for a novice in a high-need principal training and another 800,000 for the school administration manager training. REVIEWER 4: You have an alternative pathway for leaders -- DR. LOWERY: We do. We have -- we are going to have to develop that. Our alternative pathway for leaders right now is not as strong as our alternative pathway for teachers -- REVIEWER 4: Talk a little bit about that. What do you want to do with that? DR. LOWERY: What we want to be able to do with that is be able to recruit alternative -- for example, we have a person who contacted me who has just recently been downsized from one of our companies, phenomenal leader, I mean excellent reputation -- could come in and really compel, motivate people to surround himself with strong, instructional people. We have nothing that we can do for him. That is just horrible, because here is a great mind who really does know about systemic change and how to motivate folks to do good work with folks and we can't do anything for him. There are instances where the Secretary could actually sign off on some of these leaders, but they would almost have to already be in the pipeline and that doesn't give us what we need. So in working with the New York City School Leadership Academy and with the New Teacher Project, we feel that we can help develop those very quickly, those alternatives. And we have a governor who has already signed into law since he has been in there alternative routes for our teachers to teach for America and the teacher residency and who is a strong supporter of alternative routes for stong leadership. REVIEWER 4: So you are committed very clearly that if you were to receive these funds that there would be an alternative pathway for leaders around the New York City Leadership Academy? DR. LOWERY: Absolutely. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me just make a point that I think is important for you to understand. We unveiled our education agenda several months before the Race to the Top application came out. So when you say we commit because of these funds, we have committed to a plan. The Race to the Top funds would very much facilitate all the things we talked about in the plan. We are committed to a plan. DR. LOWERY: What this will enable us to do is to bring to scale quickly. And we really are focused on that two years of positive results for our students and our schools. REVIEWER 4: How will you encourage differentiated compensation systems based on student growth measures at the ELA level? What are you going to do with this whole compensation system differentiation? DR. LOWERY: One of the things that we are trying to model as a state through a teacher/leader concept in the highly effective teachers we are, Number 1, is we are going to give transfer bonuses to teachers who are rated highly effective to go into our high need schools. And if they stay after getting there, we will give them retention bonuses anywhere from 85,000 plus GOVERNOR MARKELL: $8,500 --- DR. LOWERY: I'm sorry -- 8,500 to stay there in those schools, and they have to give us a commitment of at least two years. And plus 1500 additional in our hard-to-staff subjects. So we are modeling that for them. We are also looking at the Teacher Residency Program around STEM, paying a stipend of $11,000 to each of them. When our students -- when our schools are in our Partnership Zones where they get the additional funds, we are hoping that they will then use the model that we are setting forth as the state to advise teachers to come. Merv actually had a conversation about retooling one of his schools and recruiting teachers and how it would make a difference for them to get those teachers there. Would you like -- care to -- DR DOUGHERTY: We looked at multiple ways to look at our schools. And we went into the schools and said, we need to make a change. And we provided -- one of the incentives was; we talked about it -- was to pay a city wage tax. And the incentive would be that we would pay their city wage tax because the difference in the city and outside the city. So there was a difference in salaries because of this reduction of funding. And it is a small incentive, but one of the teachers have come to us and said, can you help us with that? And a fair process, this would be an excellent opportunity for us to look at this and say what an outside-the-box thinking that we could help all the teachers that are in the city schools with something they have asked us for and we have never really had the funding to do. And it would -- as I was talking to Dr. Lowery -- it would be an opportunity to think outside the box and to see if it would work and how effective it would be because many times, our teachers will leave because of that issue -- not all of the reasons -- but one of the reasons because they are just going to get a pay increase just by moving outside the city. So we thought it was a good idea to think outside the box. DR. LOWERY: And may I please make the point and underscore our major goal is to get highly effective teachers in our high-needs schools so they can make a change. So these retention bonuses are dependant upon the fact that they maintain that level of growth among their students so that we know their students are -- GOVERNOR MARKELL: I'm not sure -- The other thing to add on -- because the question was very much targeted on the link between compensation and these evaluations. So the other areas I"m not sure the Secretary mentioned is to the extent that these teachers are rated highly effective, then they have the opportunity to serve in these teacher leader roles. The other important thing -- and Diane talked about this a bit in the introduction -- we have just made such a fundamental change in the linkage between evaluation and student growth. So, for example, as she mentioned, even if a teacher has tenure protections, if for two or three years, they get either a "needs improvement" or "ineffective," they could actually override the tenure protections and there are links to the compensation in there as well. REVIEWER 1: And I think one of the things that we were wondering about to push a little bit harder is that you did talk about you were going to apply for one of the Teacher Incentive Funds and the language of encouraging differentiated compensation systems was not as definitive as it could have been. And we wondered if Delaware was going to take a more pro-active approach in some of the districts to have a formal differentiated compensation system. DR LOWERY: And we will. But that is going to be -- and our superintendents signed on to it in scope of work that they will look at differentiated models and are committed to doing that and working with their local affiliate of the Teachers' Union. I can tell you already -- and Diane maybe can speak to this a little more -- we have already something called Extra Pay for Extra Responsibilities. So teachers are -- have some differentiation already. How do we use those funds now, to the Governor's point, to link it to highly effective teachers repurposing, retooling the funds we are using now to actually target highly effective teachers. REVIWER 2: I have a couple -- go ahead. MS DONOHUE: I was just going to add that also when you will look at our plan, we talk about developing a career path. An opportunity for Delaware would be to link the compensation along with the career path, so it is differentiated – that is a possibility for the districts to develop as well. REVIEWER 2: I have two questions in this area. The first one is to go back to --- question about principals. What I didn't quite get out of that -- and you can respond as you think will be most helpful -- was with regard to the principals with regard to the New York City Leadership Academy, I still didn't get a picture of what are they going to bring to you that you don't already -- what is the vision for an alternate path for the person who came out of the business concern in Delaware who is so -- such a shining star but cannot get into the system? DR. LOWERY: In -- REVIEWER 2: How are you going to address that? DR. LOWERY: If you will note in the application under the teacher leader effectiveness unit, the preparation manager -- there are three branches and one is under preparation -- they will be working with these external consultants, including Mass Insights, New York City Leadership Academy, to actually come up with the protocols around our code and working with the Governor's policy people to see what do we have in code that already exists and what do we need to have in code that will allow us to move forward? Because we are 100 percent committed to it. We will also, by the way, be incentivizing those highly effective administrators with the same kind of incentives we will be with the teachers. They will be paid $10,000 extra per year to go into these high-need schools. So we are committed to working with the Governor's policy analysts and with our external consultants to come up with ways that we can write into our code the freedom and the flexibility to certify -- REVIEWER 2: Now, the incentive or the differentiated compensation. Please understand that I don't mean any disrespect -- DR. LOWERY: Right. REVIEWER 2: -- but extra pay for extra time is an old thing. DR. LOWERY: Right. REVIEWER 2: It is not really about being highly effective and therefore, being paid. Also, granted that merit pay or anything like that is an extraordinarily sensitive issue and credit to the teacher's union for having signed on to the Race to the Top philosophy, if you will. Tell us more about differentiated compensation and opportunity for being highly effective. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Well, I think that the main thing there is for those highly effective teachers that go into the high-needs schools, there is the opportunity to earn up to an additional $8,500 annually plus another $1,500 based on subject matter expertise. So $10,000 in total. So that is one. The second piece has the teachers who were rated highly effective -- and that is going to be determined based on the student growth -- they can qualify for these teacher/leader positions, which also have the opportunity for additional compensation. So I think in terms of the direct linkage to primary -- DR. LOWERY: And the same kind of revised regulation that we have for teachers, we have for principals. So the $10,000 for those to incentivized those leaders who are also rated highly effective to go into our high-needs schools is there, too. REVIEWER 2: Okay, thank you. REVIEWER 3: One quick follow-up question. Can you speak briefly a little bit about what sort of, what your vision is about what you think highly effective principal leadership is as far as what is it you are striving for as far as what you want to promote as they get trained more to see more in schools. DR. LOWERY: One of the things that we believe is most important is that the students are going to be only led and taught as well as the people who stand in front of them. So having highly qualified people in the classroom is huge. We have to have leaders who understand the growth measure, who understand how to use longitudinal data, who understand how to go out and recruit highly qualified people and retain highly qualified people. So the development coaches, just like the data coaches, will be working with teachers, the development coaches will be working with our leaders, our administrators, to make sure that they understand the nuances of the new evaluation system, that they are giving people good feedback around the evaluation system and that they are sitting with teachers and helping them write improvement plans targeted to their areas of needed improvement that will enable the schools to move forward. We would expect that highly qualified leaders would be able to show significant growth within two years. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me put a finer point on it. Either the second or third slide we put up there has to do with our goals, we are going to be tracking those goals. We are going to be doing so in a very public way. We have got people whose responsibility will be to track those goals to get a sense if we are not making the progress, whether some kind of intervention is going to be required. So at the end of the day, all the things the Secretary of Education just talked about are going to be very important input. So we believe, I mean, this whole plan we think is important to achieving those goals. But in the end, the answer to your question, in terms of our vision for, you know, effective principal leadership are people who are going to be making concrete, tangible -- who are going to be able to demonstrate tangible evidence of getting towards those goals. REVIEWER 1: Final question. DR. LOWERY: Go ahead. REVIEWER 1: Thank you very much. The third area we would like to talk about is your approach to improving low-performing schools and --? REVIEWER 2: In your application, you described your history with turning around schools to date. Given that history, what will the state do differently with the Race to the Top funds than it has been doing in the past that will garner better results? DR. LOWERY: One of the things that we know we can change immediately is there are always five options from the federal government, of models for reform. Delaware always used the other restructuring model, which meant that they pretty much wrote a success plan -- data informed -- but a success plan. And every year that a school didn't make the data points, they wrote -- they added another bullet or did what they were doing longer and it was just kind of a vicious cycle. What the new regulations has done our 103 accountability regulation has done is compelled them -- I mean, now we are required to choose one of those other four models, close the school and send the children to another school that is performing, restart the school close it and restart it as a charter, transform the school by getting the kind of leadership the governor just described in there that will motivate people to really make sure that people are following the benchmark for success or turn the school around. Those options have never been on the table in Delaware; they just haven't. REVIEWER 3: And the results show it. DR. LOWERY: Right. GOVERNOR MARKELL: When the Secretary gave one of the slides in the presentation, the first words out of her mouth was that 40,000 kids in Delaware, which is about a third of our kids, are in these schools that are persistency underperforming. So one of the reasons we are here is because that hasn't worked, which is why we spent so much time on thinking through these other models, as difficult as they will be. REVIEWER 4: You cited Mass Insight as your provider, contracted with these schools. How will bringing in Mass Insight result in dramatically different outcomes? DR. LOWERY: What it does is immediately is bring us capacity. We have never done this before, as I said, we have used that other restructuring model, so incremental around the edges changed. Mass Insight was brought in by the business community as part of that 30 million to which he spoke. Early this summer, to actually review all of our code, all of our policies to see what we could do and what we couldn't do. And then they actually, when we wrote our goal in our section on turning around persistency low-achieving schools, they worked in coordination with us, including meeting with our teachers' union. So the thing about it is they came in early on in the planning so they know Delaware. They know what we -- what our policies are; they know where they are strong. They know where we need to improve them. And they have developed a relationship with our state leadership. So -- and -- but we didn't just bring them in lightly. We did research, and they have a really strong reputation for research and data-based activity around turning around persistently low-performing schools. We actually have someone in the state working at one of our charter schools. He is an external management person, working with one of our schools who used to be on the board of Mass Insight. So there was already that kind of history or experience. REVIEWER 4: So you are very pleased today? DR. LOWERY: Very pleased. REVIEWER 4: Next question, very specific. You are asking for $8.2 million to work with how many low-performing schools? DR. LOWERY: We are going to do ten. We are going to three in the first year and seven in the next year. REVIEWER 4: And then this struck us as being an awful lot of money for that number of schools. DR. LOWERY: Right. What we want to do -- most of the schools with which we are going to be working are really --- and I'm sure this is national -- in impoverished neighborhoods -- so one of the things we are doing, in particular in one district, is community schools. We are really looking at elongating the school day. So we are looking at keeping children in some of these schools until 7 -8:00 at night to make sure -- and we are bringing in all kinds of community organizations. They will have homework; they will have enrichment activities. We need to bring people in who can run those programs too, because when a lot of our students leave at the end of the day, they kind of fall off. And as long as we can keep them there, give them a structured environment and have supports around them, we believe the more it will benefit them. But what we are for also some of those schools looking at elongating the school year. Do our students really need to have two months off, or do we need them there with us, continuing their quality education? GOVERNOR MARKELL: So it's about $200,000 per school per year. DR. LOWERY: Right, right. REVIEWER 2: I have the next couple of follow-ups. But one is just about the community. There was a term of art that cropped up in the application several times, and you came close to using it or just used it, Dr. Lowery. Is there anything more than what you have now described to the community school model such as it is? I hear longer day, possibly longer year. Is there any more that is part of the denotation/connotation of community schools? DR. LOWERY: Let me give you an example of one of the initiatives we had in the Christina schools districts with one of our city schools. We hired someone, his name was Victor Young, who works with community schools. And what he actually did was spent days in the school training the teachers around community engagement, cultural awareness. And then what he did was researched all of the community organizations -- the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA -- any kind of neighborhood affiliates where our students spent a lot of their time after school. And he sat down with those teachers -- to Skip's point -- he came up with a targeted focus and a plan to go out into the neighborhood. He took all those teachers around those two schools that we dealt with at that point to those community centers. We took books to those community centers so when those students go there after school, they have books; they don't have to take their books from home. He set up meetings, monthly meetings, with the directors of these community -- including churches and other organizations, wherever there were after-school programming. And they were amazed. When he started the work with them, the people in the community said, I don't believe this; it's not going to happen. They have given it lip service for years and it never follows through. So for the last two years around those two schools, it has been a really robust engagement in that not only are we just saying that the children can stay longer but we are actually going out into the communities. Our teachers are actually going there some nights after school so they can be where the children live instead of expecting the children and the parents to always come to us. We are -- so that is another model that we are looking at. REVIEWER 2: Okay. MR. SCHOENHALS: I am the least technical person up here. But, Lillian, doesn't -- when we have used community schools in the application, doesn't that also refer to where we put health centers in some of our schools and those kind of resources that -- DR. LOWERY: That is what we are planning to do with some schools on the east side of the city of Wilmington, and that is Poetry in Motion. And we have hired a coordinator there who is going -- we have targeted three of our schools in one of our most impoverished kind of challenging areas in the city of Wilmington with -- in collaboration with JP Morgan and Chase. They pay for the coordinator. They are kind of supporting the external with the Children's Aid Society from New York. We visited there and investigated that. So we have three elementary schools where those kinds of things will be happening. We visited a school that is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania that does have a health clinic there because the point is not -- we take care of the family and the community and bring them in, We get more support around the child. So thank you, Skip. That is a concept that we are developing. REVIEWER 2: My next question is this one: You had rapid/ dramatic growth in charter schools in Delaware. What, if anything, have you learned from this growth in charter schools that is going to inform you in your efforts with the low-performing schools, your lower -- or your habitually or your chronically low-performing schools given -- GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me just start with that and then I will turn it over to the Secretary. One of the things that we have learned from charter schools is that the best ideas don't always come from the state level. So what we have seen is that in many cases it has worked exactly the way it was intended. I mean, the idea obviously behind charter schools originally was to inject some new ideas into education and then some of the traditional schools react accordingly. So you can visit a number of traditional schools in Delaware who have developed new programs to try to keep kids or to attract new kids. In fact, one in Merv's district, one of the reasons that Merv is here is because he has several charters that are actually authorized by his district. And so he has got some strong charters in his district, and one of the schools is -- one of the traditional schools -- is now creating an IB program and some other things as well to try to respond. So I think the idea here is just let's always remember that the State's role in many cases is to create the climate where this kind of academic innovation can thrive. It doesn't work every single time and that is why do, you know, we have to be paying attention to that. But that is one of the things we have learned. We want to take it specifically to the high -- turn-around schools. DR. LOWERY: We have some examples of some really high-need schools. One is -- I will call by name -- Kumba Academy, which is in the city, 100 percent minority and very high poverty rates. They have experimented with Singapore math, made huge differences. I mean, because they have so much more freedom. With the traditional public schools, about 70 percent of their monies are prescriptively assigned according to appropriations, and charters only have about 10 percent of theirs. And so they have the academic freedom to kind of choose their curriculum and experiment as they will. And that is one example of where they have worked in tandem with some nonprofit groups and brought in some really exciting curriculum. And those students are doing well. The school is one of our high-performing elementary schools. So to the Governor's point, there are charter schools that are doing really, really well, and there are charter schools that we work with very closely to ensure that students will get benefit -- GOVERNOR MARKELL: How about trying to that to the question in terms of how we then use what we have learned in the charter schools to affect what is going on in the high-needs schools. DR. LOWERY: Well, the -- we meet with our charter schools once a month. We meet with the superintendents once a month. We meet all of our charter directors once a month. There is every year sponsored a sharing opportunity with our charter schools and our traditional schools. But they talk to each other. I mean, the charter schools come and they have presented to a superintendents around their curriculum and sometimes there are joint meetings. So because Delaware is small, and pretty collaborative. That is kind of par for the course. We talk and share broadly. MR. SCHOENHALS: I would like to add one thing. What I have seen and have been directly involved in that comes out of the charters is -- and the Secretary made mention of it -- is the need for flexibility in dealing with high-needs students. And so starting last year, the Governor introduced legislation to begin to open up the flexibility in our traditional schools, and there is an additional proposal to go further with that with several districts this year. That came directly out of the experience of charter schools in high-needs areas. The need for flexibility, as the Secretary made mention. REVIEWER3: Follow-up question relates a little bit to what was raised earlier about about graduation rates. Can you give me a sense of as far as low-performing high school age kids as to what your vision is what you want to create differently either from a charter school or other (inaudible). DR. LOWERY: You will see in our application we started working with the regional educational laboratories to look at indicators that would be precursors to a student dropping out of school. We are looking at dropout prevention. We actually held a conference last month in our state for our laboratory region so that we can look at indicators of starting as early as elementary school attendance, discipline, grades, proficiencies with math, English language arts, reading, and we are going to share those. We have -- we are making a data cube on our data system, on our longitudinal data system, so that superintendents and teachers can go in and check with the history of the student to determine if these indicators persist. Because what we are trying to determine -- and what we have found -- that it varies from school to school. So while there is a cadre of possible indicators that would imply that a student is not going to graduate from high school, it depends from school to school what those will be. That work is ongoing. It is a part of our P20 Council work. We did at the University of Delaware kind of do some research around that, and our P20 Council asked us to pursue that more aggressively. And that is why we are working with the regional educational laboratory to look at those indicators that would indicate that students are not going to be successful unless there are some interventions taken. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me also address this slightly differently. Diane and I and sometimes the Secretary, we visit lots of schools in Delaware. And when we do, we spend typically an hour with students and an hour with teachers. And when I go to high schools, and in some cases middle schools, we actually talk about this issue with the kids, about how we reduce the dropout rate. And one of the things that we hear over and over again from kids and teachers alike is the necessity of making sure that we do a better job of convincing kids that the education that they are receiving will actually have an impact on what they are going to do for the rest of their lives. I was at a school yesterday morning, Dell Council high school, a wonderful school, I met a number of kids who are in that school because they are engaged; they are busy. They are learning great skills. And in that case -- REVIEWER 1: Governor, I hate to cut you off -- GOVERNOR MARKELL: Not part of the application -- okay. REVIEWER 1: Thank you. REVIEWER 4: Question related to -- you mentioned something about 30 million dollars that could have gone to the schools and part of that was related to charter funding -- MR. SCHOENHALS: Yes. REVIEWER 4: -- for facilities. MR. SCHOENHALS: Yes. REVIEWER 4: Talk about that just a minute, if you would. MR. SCHOENHALS: We -- REVIEWER 4: I hate to say this but for just a minute. MR. SCHOENHALS: We set up a revolving fund that was funded by the private sector. And since I run a bank, I can talk about this. We have had charter schools that come to us and they need financing. But their finances are not real strong. This fund will guarantee a portion of that debt so that we, as a bank, looking at that say, okay, we know the top 25 percent of this loan is absolutely assured because there is collateral behind that fund. So, as a result, we are willing to make some loans that we otherwise would not have made. REVIEWER 4: That is very interesting. MR. SCHOENHALS: And there are -- and it is a revolving fund so there is that guarantee is worked off can go and now fund another school. REVIEWER 4: And is it correct that the state of Delaware does not fund facilities for charters? DR. LOWERY: We do give them minor capital improvement. REVIEWER 4: Okay. Thank you. REVIEWER 1: Anything further on low-performing schools. Okay. Thank you. The final question is sort of closure, if you will, from where you began. I would like you talk a little bit about how you think Delaware's schools will look in Delaware's classrooms and Delaware's students at the end of the RTT grant, and also why you think Delaware should receive these funds. We have heard you already in terms of their being a quitner and comprehensive proof point, so touch on some new things, if you will, and bring us back to where Delaware is going to be in five years. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Sure. Do you want to take that a stab at that from a teacher's perspective? MS DONOHUE: If I understand your question correctly, you want me to tell you what teachers envision happening and what classrooms look like in the future in Delaware if we receive Race to the Top? REVIEWER 1: Right. DR. LOWERY: I wanted to make sure I understand the question. Our hope, as I said earlier, when we look at Delaware's plan -- when the educators of Delaware looked at Delaware's plan -- and I traveled the state, sharing the plan with our educators -- and when we looked at the plan, what really excited us were several things. We were very excited about the opportunity to have a career path. There are many educators in schools who don't necessarily want to leave the classroom but they want to advance in their career. This plan offers us an opportunity to perhaps look at some of those potential programs. So we are excited about that. Many of our educators are very excited about our new Delaware comprehensive assessment system. It is, as we mentioned earlier, it is a computer-based test -- it is a growth-model test -- and it is adaptive to children. We have been screening in Delaware for years for an assessment system for our students that is fair. One, if we are going to be measured on our effectiveness, related to a test, we want to ensure that it is a fair and reliable measure. So we are excited about that part of the plan. We are excited that students in the future in Delaware won't be rated according to one test. It is nor fair to them, so we are excited that it is going to be formative in nature as well. We are also excited about professional development being something that is more meaningful and ties directly to what we do every day in the classroom. So we are excited about that part of our plan. We see that our professional development in the future won't be -- the single workshops sometimes aren't things what we can use in the classroom. Sometimes, they are. I mean, sometimes one-day workshops are very beneficial, so I am not saying all professional development have been poorly done in the past. But we are excited that we are going to be using data and learning how to use data to inform and drive our instruction. Another part of Delaware's plan that we were very excited about was the 90 minutes, the professional community learning time. As I said earlier, that is happening in many schools across Delaware, but it is not happening across the state. And it is very exciting to know that in the future teachers will have time to collaborate and really discuss things with each other. So to just touch on those -- I mean, that we see the environment being more positive, being more collaborative. We look forward to an environment where -- that we have always wanted where there are -- that we are respected, the teachers' opinions are respected. And working together with our administrators and our superintendents, that is all we have wanted to do. We want our voice heard. Now that is not to say there aren't challenges. You know, there are challenges around implementing this. But -- so I would be naive to think there wasn't. But you all know what those are. But we are excited about the future and the possible changes in Delaware because it really is about a culture change in Delaware; it really and truly is about learning how to -- as adults -- how we work together to provide the best possible education that we can for all of our students. If we can do that, that makes our environment as educators more positive. So we are excited about it. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me try to answer that without using the word "proof point." I mean, here is the point: There are a number of different ways to define it. Certainly we started with goals and there is -- we started there intentionally because it is about kids and it is about numbers. But it is about more than that. It is about -- I mean, one of the things we very much appreciate about the chance to go through Race to the Top, as well as the process we went through earlier today that Secretary Lowery led about developing our education agenda, this is a holistic approach. When you asked earlier about Mass Insight and what difference are they going to make, you know, I almost want to jump in and say, one consultant is not going to make the difference. It's just not. And so we think the way that this has been set up is there is very significant overlap between the Race to the Top and our education own agenda. It is starting with high standards, which is why I took on the responsibility with Governor Purdue of Georgia to be the cochair of that -- is to use the data intelligently. It is about great teachers. When you move up those low-performing schools, when you take those 40,000 kids and you improve the performance of those low-performing schools, that has an unbelievable impact on everybody else. And so in the end, what this is about for me, is it is about families in Delaware choosing to stay in Delaware and send their kids in public schools, as opposed to sending them to private school or having them to move over a state line. It is abut having a business community who says, we are willing to keep investing because we are getting a great return on our investments. It is about having teachers who, you know, who are engaged. So I just think this is, as Diane said, it is a change of culture. But it goes beyond that because it is culture driving systemic changes, including at the statehouse, but also from the classroom. We are going to meet this both ways. It is not just coming from on top; it is not just coming from where the real work is done, which is in the classroom. It is everybody engaged in the process. And I really think we have a great opportunity to prove that. DR. LOWERY: I agree. It is distributive leadership. One leader can't do this all by him or herself. There -- we have strong teachers who know what needs to be done, who are subject-area experts. And to Diane's point, why would we not bring them along and make them partners. The most critical relationship in the school is that one between the teacher and the student. So those teacher/leaders who are there, those instructional leaders who are learning that it is important that they use data to target their ideas, to target their funds, to target their personnel decisions and do that in collaboration with the people who are going to get the job done, the teachers. When we talked about community, we have got to find ways to make sure that all of our community -- not just our business community -- and they are vitally important -- but all members of our community surround the schools and their community with support so that children understand that it is the wish of everyone who touches their lives that they have an improved opportunity for success. DR. DAUGHERTY: As a superintendent, this conversation comes up a great deal. Everyone is working extremely hard with their children. We are fighting every day for funding. We are dealing with the issues that are out there. This is an opportunity for our state and our board of education, State Board of Education, to go from compliance issue to an implementation issue, which is systemic. I can go to another district in our state, and we are working on the same issues. We are dealing with the same funding choices. And we are working with the problems in our schools. We deal with a lot of our students who are in low-poverty (sic) schools. And a great opportunity to move forward with this plan is the data coaching. We talked about the data issue, looking at the data. When we look at our data, we just don't look at it from the point of the assessment but the overall data, which is important. The opportunity that this plan gives us for the support to help our districts and down to the classrooms is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we believe will make a difference. And what will those schools look like in five years? Our schools, we do not have low-performing schools that because we take our children and they come out of elementary school and they are above-grade level. That means when they get into are our middle schools they are above-grade level. When it comes to our high schools, how do you want to stop -- drop-out prevention? You go through a systemic plan like this. This plan gets us out of this -- it is not called drop-out prevention, calling it graduation rates that have excelled. I think it is a model for this country that will occur -- that people will want to replicate down the road. REVIEWER 1: We have, like, five minutes so if -- MR. SCHOENHALS: The comment I made was you asked why should we receive these funds? I want to express it from the point of view that I have that we don't have much left to say that we have not said. We came in here with a goal. However, Delaware has been at education reform for a number of years. And while we are in the middle of the pack with respect to the rest of the states in terms of student achievment, we have got a long ways to go both within this country, as the Governor said, by international standards. But the fact that we have been at this, we have learned from some of the things that have not worked. We are very well positioned to learn from some of those things. We talked about flexibility a few minutes ago. We have a business community that has been engaged, and let me tell you one of the things we learned. We engaged really aggressively in the early '90s. I wasn't part of it at that time. And frankly, the business community thought, well, we have kind of done education reform because some things happened in the mid-90's that were a direct result of the catalytic input of the business community. And we have kind of backed off. And we now realize that that was a mistake. We are not backing off again. We understand our role. There is a very specific example of what we learned from the past, that the business community has a responsibility to engage with the community -- the education community and be supportive of it. But at the same time, we are an outside agent, so we can bring a unique pressure to bear that all organizations need if they are going to change, because all organizations tend to stay where they are. So we know we have got a sweet spot to find and to be part of that. We have learned that from history. And there are lots of other stories lie that. GOVERNOR MARKELL: Let me just -- I guess I will wrap it up. There is a lot that we talk about doing in this plan that has not been done before. Some of the work around the turn-around schools and the partenrship zones, it is going to be hard. And I think to some extent, as you all -- and the Secretary decides which states to award this grant to -- some of it beyond the written word -- I mean, I think the fact that we are here and the fact that these other 15 states are here would suggest what was on paper was strong enough to at least merit this interview. But beyond that, it really does come down to is you all taking a look across the table and making a decision about whether or not you believe we can get it done. I mean, that is really what matters. The kids could care less what is on the paper; they really couldn’t. I mean, what they care about is whether we have got the passion, and the conviction, and the willingness to work together despite our differences, to do what we have to do. And I don't know how much stronger I can put it. We are going to make this happen. We have seated at the table the head of the teachers' union with 11,000 members, the head of the business community -- you know, most states, they don't necessarily sit next to each other. They don't. And that doesn't mean they agree on everything either. But I'm telling you between them or the secretary of education and the superintendant amd everyone else, this is a major focus. This is my major focus. And I don't know how many other governors you are talking to over these couple days who are going to be here for three years who are going to be here for seven years. We are going to make this happen. We very much appreciate the chance to be here. REVIEWER 1: Thank you, thank all of you. We very much appreciate your time.