School Board Approves Intent to participate in Race To The Top

At our meeting on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009, we approved the intent to participate in Race To The Top (RTTT).  In short we have agreed to send in a letter of intent to participate.  To do this, the school board, superintendent, and our teachers will work together on reforms within the school district. 

What is Race To The Top (RTTT)?  It is a $4.35B competitive grant program awarded by the US Department of Education meant to drive reform in 4 specific areas.  These areas are:

• Increase teacher and principal effectiveness and achieve equitable distributuion of teachers,
• Adopt internationally benchmarked standards and high quality assessments,
• Turn around struggling schools using one of 4 intervention models, and
• Improve the collection and use of data to improve instruction.

According to the PA Dept. of Education, Pennsylvania is in a position to win and be eligible for $200-$400M.  For more information on RTTT, please go to the Pensylvania Dept. of Education website.

As we obtain more information on the status of Pennsylvania's application for participation, I pass the information along.