Photo by Xugardust / flickr.com/photos/xugardust/5935194606

Photograph by Xugardust

If they awarded points for endeavor, Fresno Unified would get two Race to the Top grants.

After a marathon coming together that ended early Friday morning, Superintendent Michael Hanson and leaders of the Fresno Teachers Association agreed on wording of the district'due south application for a $37.iii million slice of the $400 1000000 competition open to districts nationwide.

Information technology had looked like Fresno would join Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento City and Long Embankment, members of a district collaborative, the California Office to Reform Education (Cadre), whose unions had refused to give their required consent for the submission of an application, primarily because instructor evaluations using standardized exam scores had to exist an element. But Hanson used a three-day deadline extension, which the federal Department of Pedagogy granted districts because of disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy, to keep trying to persuade the Fresno Teachers Clan to say yep. Pressure mounted, equally customs leaders, two metropolis council members, business concern leaders, and a group of ministers chosen on Teachers Association president Eva Ruiz to sign on.

So now Fresno volition join Sanger Unified and Clovis Unified in a joint application, equally the only iii of eight districts participating in Cadre'south  endeavour to pursue the concluding round of Race to the Top. Because they are promising to work together and share their findings with other Cadre districts, the three are as well asking for a supplemental $ii 1000000.

"We are thrilled that CORE districts successfully submitted Race to the Top applications and will be able to compete for these disquisitional funds. The Fresno Unified plan to improve literacy in early grades and the CORE submission on behalf of Sanger and Clovis to amend center school math performance will have huge benefits for the students in these communities and throughout the CORE consortium," said Rick Miller, executive manager of CORE.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy submitted LAUSD's application without the signature of United Teachers Los Angeles president Warren Fletcher, in a symbolic gesture. "I want to make the case that here in Los Angeles, after months of trying repeatedly to form a partnership for youth and faculty on this upshot, our students should non exist penalized due to the absence of a UTLA signature," said Deasy.

A key to reaching an agreement that has eluded other districts is that the application downplays the use of standardized test scores as a component of an evaluation. Fresno cited as its model the recommendations of Greatness by Pattern, the new written report by Superintendent Tom Torlakson's Task Forcefulness on Educator Excellence. It recommends multiple measures of student achievement, including scored essays or projects created past teachers, schools, or districts; and results on Advanced Placement tests and tests directly tied to the curriculum being taught.

Fresno'south application had generated stiff community interest in part considering of its focus on pre-kindergarten to third grade literacy development. Among the uses of the money, Fresno Unified proposed to double omnipresence in preschool, from 42 percent to 80 percentage, in a city among the hardest striking past the economic recession. Money would as well fund extensive teacher training and collaboration time. With the Race to the Top application stressing attention to personalized learning, Fresno would integrate applied science into classrooms, providing high-tech tablets to students.

Hanson said that the district had worked with teachers on the awarding from the offset, merely the union complained that information technology had not seen parts of the 235-page application until the borderline and had problems with the evaluation requirement.

The competition for the coin will be intense for an expected fifteen to 25 grants, with perchance hundreds of districts nationwide competing. The list of California districts applying may not be known until next calendar week. The deadline for states straight affected by the hurricane is November. 7. California's deadline was one:xxx p.m. Pacific Time Fri.

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