Every District, Union, Charter and School Board Signs DE’s Race to the Top

Dover, DE – The State of Delaware submitted an application for federal Race to the Top funds on Tuesday, and the full application can be accessed on the State website.

Every District, Union, Charter and School Board Signs DE’s Race to the Top

Markell: “We Will Prove That Public Education Can – And Must – Offer Excellence to Every Child”

Dover, DE – The State of Delaware submitted an application for federal Race to the Top funds on Tuesday, and the full application can be accessed on the State website.

“On behalf of every district superintendent, charter director, teachers’ union leader, and school board president in our state, let me assure you that we intend to lead this race,” said Markell.  “Each one of us has signed on to the reform plan.  Each one of us is personally committed to driving the kind of transformative change that will be necessary to deliver on our most important promise – that every Delaware student will graduate career- and college-ready.”

The application emphasized Delaware’s achievements, plans and potential in the following areas:

• Strong fundamentals: Delaware has two components that are critical to comprehensive education reform already in place: state-of-the-art data systems and rigorous evaluation.  The State’s data system makes it possible to know how every school, every teacher, and every student is performing. 

• Opportunities for highly effective teachers: The State is providing new opportunities for highly effective teachers to advance and to contribute. It is creating a “teacher leader” role that engages highly effective teachers as instructional leaders, and it will offer bonuses to highly effective teachers in high-need schools.

• Rapid, comprehensive adoption of reform: Delaware expects all reforms to be operational by the 2011-2012 school year, making our State’s progress far more rapid than that of other states.

• Collaborative school turnaround: In the schools that are persistently lowest-achieving, the State now has the authority to ensure that reform is collaborative, yet credible, with a two-year timeframe for results following any necessary renegotiation of collective bargaining agreements.

• Building core capabilities: The State will invest in building the skills of teachers and leaders so they can use the strong foundation of data and evaluation to improve student outcomes.  With Race to the Top funding, the State would provide data coaches to assist educators in interpreting their students' data and developing strategies for addressing areas in need of additional focus.  In addition, funding would be used to provide development coaches to assist school leaders in performing teacher evaluations and working with teachers to develop improvement plans.

 The administration has focused on education reform in 2010, launching key pieces of Governor Markell’s comprehensive Plan to Strengthen Delaware’s Schools:

• Last week, the Delaware State Board of Education approved Regulation 103, which focuses on targeting schools that need assistance and providing appropriate—and effective—support.

• Regulations 106A and 108A were also approved, reforming the evaluation system for educators by redefining the component of performance that focuses on student improvement and making it a required element for an educator to be rated as “Effective.” 

• On Monday, Governor Markell signed an executive order creating a statewide council to improve student preparedness in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

“I believe that all this work, and the unanimous commitment of our education community, make Delaware not just capable of achieving world-class results, but capable of achieving those results faster than any other state, ” added Markell.