NEW CASTLE, Del. (AP) - Delaware should be proud of the progress it has made under the federal Race to the Top education reform program, but much work remains to be done to help ensure that the state’s schools give students the best preparation possible for life after high school, Gov. Jack Markell said Monday.
Markell discussed the state’s Race to the Top progress in a speech to the P-20 Council, a group formed a decade ago to coordinate and align education efforts across all grade levels.
“I don’t have any illusions about the hard work that remains, but I think we should be very proud of the progress that we’ve made,” the Democratic governor said. “We’ve seen concrete signs that the policies funded by Race to the Top are working.”
Among other things, Markell said more students are staying on track for graduation, with Delaware’s dropout rate hitting a 30-year low this year.
He also said more students are taking and passing advanced placement courses, and that a few struggling schools have made double-digit gains in the percentage of students are who are reaching growth targets.
Markell also said more students are applying to college, including low-income students who can take advantage of application fee waivers.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to visit Wilmington on Wednesday to mark the four-year anniversary of Delaware’s selection as one of the first two states to receive Race to the Top funding.
Markell said Delaware has used more than $100 million in federal Race to the Top funding to develop a sound foundation for school improvement. He rejected the idea that the school improvement effort will prove to be unsustainable when the federal grant money runs out.
“We had to make some big upfront investments in some of these systems in order to serve as a foundation going forward,” he noted. “We can maintain our progress at a fraction of the cost of the Race to The Top funding.”
Markell said that with a new data collection system and new state student assessment already in place, the cost of sustaining the state’s Race to the Top efforts will be less than the $10 million spent upfront to build the data system alone.
He acknowledged, however, that several challenges remain.
Those challenges include implementing a teacher evaluation system that takes into account student performance, despite significant pushback from the state teachers union. The union recently called on lawmakers to impose a moratorium on the evaluation component that links student test scores to teacher ratings.
The union also has expressed concerns about implementation of Common Core standards adopted by Delaware and more than 40 other states in an effort to ensure that students across the country are subjected to uniform achievement expectations in math and English, and that they are able to think critically, not just memorize what they are told.
Markell said implementation of the Common Core standards is critical to school improvement efforts in Delaware.
“Obviously we have to get the implementation right…. We need to continue to listen to our educators to ensure that they’ve got the resources they need, the support they need, to teach to the standards,” he said.
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