It sounds good on the surface.
The $4.35 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative aimed at encouraging education reform could provide Kansas with up to $175 million to spend on education. And at a time when schools have lost enormous amounts of cash in the wake of the state's budget crisis, any money is good money, right?
Not so fast, say local education officials.
"I'm just not sure about that yet," said Mike Philpot, Northeast USD 246 superintendent. "Anytime we can make progress and improve things, that's probably a good thing, but let's see how it shakes out."
A main reason for the reservations about the grant program is the stipulation that encourages merit pay for teachers, a concept President Barack Obama has supported since he campaigned for his current job. But while the leader of the free world supports the idea of teachers being paid based on the performance of their students, not everyone in the education field agrees.
"Teachers don't like it, and administrators don't like it," said Pittsburg USD 250 Superintendent Destry Brown.
So while local districts have signed the Memorandums of Understanding agreeing to be part of the RTTT program, hope remains that certain portions of the plan — merit pay, in particular — can either be ignored or revised.
Other features of the program include developing common standards, improving data systems to inform instruction and providing additional resources to "turn around" the lowest-achieving schools.
The "Race to the Top" fund — and the opportunity to compete for the billions of dollars it holds — was designed to encourage states to rework their education systems and bring them more in line with Obama's vision. Education is largely a state and local responsibility.
"I think everything in the Race to the Top deal most people agree with," Brown said. "The most difficult part, however, is when you get into compensation for teachers and you start using student performance as a measuring stick."
The problem grows more difficult because most merit pay is tied to how students perform on state assessment tests, and many subjects, such as art and music, are not included in those standardized exams. For that reason, and others, Frontenac USD 249 Superintendent Dale Slagle also has reservations about the merit pay system.
“(The RTTT funds) could be significant revenue,” Slagle said, “but the difficulty lies in that they want to tie teacher compensation to how students perform on standardized tests. I don’t know of any real successful systems that do that.”
The Kansas National Education Association supports the RTTT program, but has also expressed concern over the teacher compensation aspect.
"Any changes in those areas must be based on sound research, collaboration and interest based negotiations," KNEA President Blake West wrote on the organization's Web site.
Tony White, director of the local KNEA branch, said that the lack of specific details thus far is also a cause for concern and a reason to proceed cautiously through the RTTT process.
"We need to know what they have in mind to tie student achievement to teacher salaries," he said. "We need to know what that might look like and what the parameters may be. When you're dealing with salary schedules and schemes, it's different from one place to another. The problem right now is that the ideas aren't finalized."
According to the KSDE, Phase 1 of the RTTT awards will be announced in April. It is estimated that 20 states will receive funding. A second phase of applications will be accepted in June, with awards being announced in September.
Last week, Obama announced that he will ask Congress for $1.35 billion to extend the RTTT program. The president said that extending the program would allow more states to win grants.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
PITTSBURG —
