The U.S. Department of Education passed over California'southward largest school districts in selecting finalists for the Race to the Top commune competition. Out of 17 districts that applied for a share of the nearly $400 1000000 in federal grant money, only four made the cut to the finals: Galt Joint Wedlock Simple, Lindsay Unified and New Haven Unified school districts, along with Ánimo Charter Schools, a division of Green Dot Public Schools. Districts that didn't make the cut include Los Angeles, Fresno and Clovis Unified.

California's finalists volition still be competing against huge urban districts, nonetheless. Included amongst the 61 finalists from around the country are New York Metropolis (the nation'southward largest school commune), Philadelphia, Dallas and Miami-Dade.

Under this latest incarnation of the pop Race to the Height program, winning districts volition receive betwixt $5 million and $xl 1000000 over 4 years to implement model programs designed to close achievement gaps, improve teaching and boost pupil learning and achievement by personalizing instruction.

New Haven Unified

New Oasis Superintendent Kari McVeigh said she and other administrators were headed into a meeting when they heard the news, and they all began cheering. She said the thirteen,000-student district in Union City isn't well known, and so they wrote the grant "assertive that we had a proficient chance, and that probably defied the odds for us to think that way."

The commune is seeking $28 meg over four years to expand programs and activities already nether fashion, including hiring additionalliteracy, math and assessment coaches to assist teachers use data to personalize instruction for students and leadership evolution. Some of the money would also become to buy enough mini tablets for every two unproblematic schoolhouse students and for each centre and high school student, to hire IT professionals to support the technology, to expand online courses for high schoolhouse students and to reduce grade sizes for English learners.

The Union City Kids' Zone, which is modeled after the Harlem Children'due south Zone, provides "cradle-to-college" services for disadvantaged students in New Haven Unified School Commune. (click to overstate).

McVeigh besides wants to build up the Kids' Zone, a collaboration of community organizations and the urban center government, loosely based on the Harlem Children'south Zone, that links students and their families living in the district's everyman-income neighborhood with social services, doctors, mental health providers and dentists in club to give them the support and care they need to be successful in schoolhouse.

Information technology'due south important to McVeigh that, if they receive the grant, information technology goes to improving and continuing current programs rather than to creating one more education reform du jour."The last matter I desire to practice to my teachers is give them another matter to do," she said.

Ánimo Charter Schools

Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles Canton learned that they made information technology to the finals through a congratulatory phone telephone call from John Deasy, the superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District. [Deasy wasn't as gracious about the failure of LAUSD'due south proposal, blaming it on the lack of back up from the teachers union. "They killed it for our kids and staff," he told EdSource Today through the district's public information officer].

The nonprofit charter management organisation enrolls more than x,000 students in 14 high schools and four heart schools under the Ánimo banner in South, Key and East Los Angeles. The vast majority are poor; 96 percent of the students are eligible for gratuitous or reduced-price lunches. Part of Green Dot'due south mission is to ready them not just to get into college, but to succeed once they've been accepted. Efforts to meliorate those odds are amidst the five initiatives in Green Dot's Race to the Top application.

  • Personalize pathways to higher: Individualizing pathways for English language learners and special educational activity students, forth with augmenting after-school programs that prepeel students for the California High School Exit Exam and the Saturday exam.
  • College persistence: The transition from high school to college can be challenging for students who are the outset in their family to pursue a higher education. Green Dot proposes to survey its graduates to encounter if they stayed in college and, if not, to find out what the Ánimo schools tin can do to improve their higher success rates. The grant would also fund a summer programme to help high schoolhouse graduating seniors set up for the transition to college.
  • Engineering science: Buying new equipment, such as tablets, computers, document cameras and smart boards, and providing improve grooming for teachers, students and parents so the schools don't wind upwards with a agglomeration of fancy new gadgets that aren't used to raise teaching and learning.
  • Developing leadership and life skills: Offering classes that students need to succeed outside of schoolhouse, including time management, money management and preparation for interviews.
  • Supporting the whole child: Anything from a toothache to the stresses that come from living in poverty tin can impede a educatee's ability to focus on school. Green Dot's proposal calls for providing admission to physical and mental health care on each campus.

Lindsay Unified

For 4,100-student Lindsay Unified, a federal gift of $x million would enable it to speed up the transition to operation-based learning. That's a system in which students master  subjects at their ain footstep, regardless of their age and grade in schoolhouse. In education reform circles it's a hot topic, particularly combined with online technologies that runway each student'southward progress. Performance- or competency-based learning, as it's besides known, is in sync with a priority of Commune Race to the Top, promoting  individualized learning.

Students would work at the own pace, mastering clearly defined skills, under the district's performance-based learning program (click to enlarge).

Students would work at the own pace, mastering clearly defined skills, nether Lindsay's performance-based learning program (click to enlarge).

Merely Lindsay Unified, located in the Central Valley, southeast of Visalia and westward of Route 99, is not a Johnny-come-lately. Superintendent Thomas Rooney said the district has been designing performance-based curricula and instruction techniques for four years, and began adopting information technology, offset with ninth graders, in 2009-10. This year information technology went districtwide. Although those inbound 3rd grade in the fall will even so be third graders come June, they may be doing fifth grade math and second grade reading. If they autumn two grades behind, though, they go extra one-on-ane attention. By high school, they may accept some courses in community college, or even graduate early.

Rooney said the grant would "enable u.s.a. to advance the process exponentially," past training every teacher and principal in personalizing curriculum, testing and electronic grading. The commune would build two online libraries:  ane for educators, explaining the roles of teachers, principals and the superintendent in adopting a operation-based approach, and one for student learning, in which Common Core-aligned lessons, assessments and resources would be detailed. The two platforms would be a playbook for other districts.

Galt Elementary Commune

The 3,800-educatee Galt Uncomplicated District would besides use $ten million to personalize learning. A central chemical element would be to integrateStrengthsExplorer, a programme adult by the Gallup System that identifies and builds on the strengths of each student to create individualized learning, said Superintendent Karen Schauer. All teachers and employees have gone through a like process for staff development.

A focus would exist on blended learning, which would combine individualized online learning with classroom instruction. Galt would rebuild its school libraries, which were airtight due to budget cuts, to become community resources for parents and students. Computers would exist available to be checked out, since many families in Galt, a Fundamental Valley metropolis with high unemployment, don't have them at dwelling house, Schauer said.

The Department expects to select 15-25 winning applications by the cease of the year.

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