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An Overview of the Race to the Top Initiative. Angela Stockman WNY Education Associates Fall 2011. Race to the Top. $ 4.35 billion United States Department of Education program designed to spur reforms in state and local district K-12 education
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An Overview of the Race to the Top Initiative Angela Stockman WNY Education Associates Fall 2011
Race to the Top • $4.35 billion United States Department of Education program designed to spur reforms in state and local district K-12 education • Funded by the ED Recovery Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 • Announced by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009
State Applications for Funding Attended to: Great Teachers and Leaders Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance Ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals Providing high-quality pathways for aspiring teachers and principals Providing effective support to teachers and principals Improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs
State Success Factors Articulating State's education reform agenda and LEAs' participation in it Building strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up, and sustain proposed plans Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps
Standards and Assessments Developing and adopting common standards (from the Common Core State Standards Initiative) Supporting the transition to enhanced standards and high-quality assessments Developing and implementing common, high-quality assessments
Turning Around the Lowest-Achieving Schools Turning around the lowest-achieving schools Intervening in the lowest-achieving schools and LEAs
Data Systems to Support Instruction Fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system Using data to improve instruction Accessing and using State data
What Does this Mean for NY? • Aligning to a common set of standards • Improving teacher and leader effectiveness • Creating and leveraging structures for data-driven instruction
Our Charge: Teaching with the Common Core Standards
CCSS CCLS Common Core State Standards Federally Endorsed National Standards Document coordinated at the State level by the National Governor’s Association and the Chief Council of State School Officers in collaboration with teachers, administrators, and content experts Endorsed by the Federal Race to the Top Initiative, which provides monetary reward to states and districts who commit to improving conditions relevant to student, teacher, and administrator performance. • Common Core Learning Standards • The New York State Common Core Standards • Fully aligned to the CCSS • Inclusive of 15% more content, articulated as 2 additional standards: • 1 in Reading for Literature • Multicultural and varied in • form • 1 in Writing • Using varied media to respond to and connect with text
Mission of the Common Core Initiative: The Standards set requirements not only for English language arts (ELA) but also for literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. Just as students must learn to read, write, speak, listen, and use language effectively in a variety of content areas, so too must the Standards specify the literacy skills and understandings required for college and career readiness in multiple disciplines.Literacy standards for grade 6 and above are predicated on teachers of ELA, history/social studies, science, and technical subjects using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language in their respective fields.
CORE COMPONENTS Three main sections • K−5 (cross-disciplinary) • 6−12 English Language Arts • 6−12 Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects Shared responsibility for students’ literacy development Three appendices • A: Research and evidence; glossary of key terms • B: Reading text exemplars; sample performance tasks • C: Annotated student writing samples
Scaffolding of skills RIGOROUS Internationally Benchmarked
College and Career Readiness: • Backwards design • Scaffolding and alignment • Consistent expectations across content areas
Shifts in Thinking • 1. PK-5, Balancing Informational & Literary Text • Students read a true balance of informational and literary texts. Elementary school classrooms are, therefore, places where students access the world – science, social studies, the arts and literature – through text. At least 50% of what students read is informational.
Shifts in Thinking • 2. Grades 6 – 12 Knowledge in the Disciplines • Content area teachers outside of the ELA classroom emphasize literacy experiences in their planning and instruction. Students learn through domain specific texts in science and social studies classrooms – rather than referring to the text, they are expected to learn from what they read.
Shifts in Thinking • 3. Staircase of Complexity • In order to prepare students for the complexity of college and career ready texts, each grade level requires a “step” of growth on the “staircase”. Students read the central, grade appropriate text around which instruction is centered. Teachers are patient, create more time and space in the curriculum for this close and careful reading, and provide appropriate and necessary scaffolding and supports so that it is possible for students reading below grade level.
Shifts in Thinking • 4. Text-Based Answers • Students have rich and rigorous conversations which are dependent on a common text. Teachers insist that classroom experiences stay deeply connected to the text on the page and that students develop habits for making evidentiary arguments both in conversation, as well as in writing to assess comprehension of a text.
Shifts in Thinking • Writing From Sources • Writing needs to emphasize use of evidence to inform or make an argument rather than the personal narrative and other forms of decontextualized prompts. While the narrative still has an important role, students develop skills through written arguments that respond to the ideas, events, facts, and arguments presented in the texts they read.
Shifts in Thinking • 6. Academic Vocabulary • Students constantly build the vocabulary they need to access grade level complex texts. By focusing strategically on comprehension of pivotal and commonly found words (such as “discourse,” “generation,” “theory,” and “principled”) and less on esoteric literary terms (such as “onomatopoeia” or “homonym”), teachers constantly build students’ ability to access more complex texts across the content areas.
Common Core Assessment Common Core Implementation Balancing Informational and Literary text Building knowledge in the Disciplines Staircase of Complexity Text-based Answers Writing from Sources Academic Vocabulary
