What Race to the Top Funds Will Mean for NY State

New York State has won almost $700 million for education reform through the Obama administration's highly competitive Race to the Top contest. The state lost the first round of the contest earlier this year to Delaware and Tennesee. But Albany lawmakers passed legislation to boost New York's chances this time around, and the state was among 10 winners.

WNYC's Beth Fertig discusses the state's bid for the federal grant.

What is the money going for?

First of all, it's not going to plug the gap in the state's budget. It's not for hiring teachers or buying supplies. This money is specifically for targeted reforms. State Education Commissioner David Steiner says the state will use the money to turn around the lowest performing schools and doing a better job of preparing teachers. But that also involves giving them data systems for tracking student achievement. Here's Steiner:

"So we know in real time what is being done in the classroom, what's working, what isn't working, what needs to be changed. And beyond that, working on our assessments and curriculum so the materials teachers share with children really do prepare them for further education -- university, college, workplace -- and the assessments give us an accurate reading."

That's the big issue now, that we know the state exams had been too easy. This year a lot more students failed their math and reading tests when the state raised the bar. How much of a difference does the state think it can make? 

When the state applied for the Race to the Top money, it said that if it got the money to improve teacher training as well as the curriculum and assessments, then we'd see a 10 point increase on national math and reading tests by 2013. That's a huge jump. Right now just about a third of New York fourth graders are proficient on these national tests, which are harder than the state exams. I asked Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch what kind of changes teachers and students would see in order to make that leap and she had this answer:

"We're going to ask that teachers be professionally developed around a common curriculum. So teachers will know what to teach and what the standards are, rather than 700 districts across New York state writing their own curriculum. And just seems to me that teachers have been asking for this in New York State for 20 years."

And they'll measure the teachers too?

Yes, and that was very controversial. The teachers' unions in New York agreed to be evaluated with student test scores so principals could see if they were getting their students to make any progress. But test scores will make up 40 percent of their evaluation -- principals will also look at their classroom management, other forms of student work. I can't tell you how many negotiations there were about this. The other big controversy was allowing more charter schools. It was very tense in Albany this spring. That's why State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the Senate leaders kept praising each other for coming together and doing the right thing. They didn't want to be blamed for leaving money on the table.

There's so much emphasis on measuring teachers and measuring students. Do these reforms work?

There are critics or skeptics out there who say nobody's come up with a great way of measuring which teachers are most effective, it's too squishy. Also there are questions about the data system the state has proposed for tracking student achievement in the hopes that this will prevent kids from falling through the cracks. New York City has this. They spent $80 million on a data system and teachers and principals are divided over whether it's useful. I asked Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner Steiner if they worried about spending $60 million on a data system like the one designed by city schools Chancellor Joel Klein and here's what Tisch said:

"This is a very complicated system to build. And I think if you ask Joel Klein what his next level of challenge will be, his challenge, frankly, is to work on working out the kinks."

And Steiner says:

"I think what we can take advantage of is precisely the experience here and elsewhere that is behind us now."

So in other words they're not just planning to replicate exactly what happened in New York City.

Finally, $700 million sounds like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket. New York City's education budget alone is $21 billion a year. The state has thrown money at education in the past, after the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, and scores still aren't where they should be. Why so much confidence now?

I asked David Steiner, because he seems so certain these reforms can work. He thinks scores on the national tests can go up a lot, especially for blacks and Hispanics, who lag behind whites. And he says this infusion of money is different because it's targeted at specific reforms:

"The transformation here is that we've looked not just nationally but internationally at what the research tells us. And it tells us that every country in the world that is making serious progress in education focuses on two things above all else: selecting and training the best possible teachers from the labor force that they can find and providing those teachers with the professional development and the curriuclum that children need."

So I suppose the next question is whether $700 million dollars is enough. Well, as Mayor Bloomberg says, it's never enough. But it's more than they had before.