18 States, D.C., Named Race to Top Round 2 Finalists
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan picked 18 states and the District of Columbia to advance to the final round of the Race to the Top competition, where 10 to 15 grants totaling $3.4 billion will be awarded in September to applicants he believes have the boldest, most sustainable plans for education improvements. The list announced Tuesday includes all of the states that were finalists in the first round, along with five additional states. Top contenders are: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. In the first round of the $4 billion competition, Mr. Duncan selected two states, Delaware and Tennessee, for a total of $600 million in awards. (*Education Week, July 28, 2010)

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49 Applicants Win i3 Grants
The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that 49 districts, schools, and nonprofits beat out more than 1,600 other applicants in the competition for $650 million in grants from the Investing in Innovation, or i3, fund. Four groups -- the KIPP Foundation, Ohio State University, the Success for All Foundation, and Teach For America -- won what are known as "scale up" awards worth up to $50 million each. (*Education Week, August 5, 2010)

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Gates Foundation Playing Pivotal Role in Changes for Education System
voluntary national standards for English and math, while schools are paying teachers based on student performance. It's an agenda propelled in part by a flood of money from a billionaire prep-school graduate best known for his software empire: Bill Gates. In the past 2 1/2 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged more than $650 million to schools, public agencies and other groups that buy into its main education priorities. (Washington Post, August 3, 2010)

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Senate Passes Edujobs Bill
The U.S. Senate today approved a long-stalled measure that would provide $10 billion to prevent what supporters say would be hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs nationwide. Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives, meanwhile, are taking the unusual step of calling for lawmakers to return from their August recess next week to pass the final version of the bill. (*Education Week, August 6, 2010)

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State Adoptions of Common Standards Steam Ahead
Nearly half the states have adopted a new set of common academic standards, barely a month after their final release and, in most cases, with little opposition. As of July 9, 23 states had decided to replace their mathematics and English/language arts standards with the common set. Another flurry of adoptions is expected by Aug. 2, since the $4 billion federal Race to the Top contest gives more points to states that meet that deadline. (*Education Week, July 9, 2010)

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Obama Defends Education Program
Saying that reforming education is perhaps “the economic issue of our time,” President Obama went before a major civil rights organization on Thursday to defend his main education program against criticisms from some minority and teachers groups. (New York Times, July 30, 2010)

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Fort Mill School to Launch Intervention | South Carolina
State policymakers are studying Response to Intervention programs in place at eight South Carolina schools to help develop a statewide model for helping struggling students. "Some youngsters need special-education services because they're battling specific learning disabilities. But for others, reading problems have more to do with instructional issues. We should be able to help those kids without referring them to special education -- and we shouldn't wait until they're failing reading to start helping them," the state's education chief said. (The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.), August 1, 2010)

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School has High Expectations | South Carolina
For most schools, the goal is to have students recognizing letters and sounds and reading simple text by the end of kindergarten. At downtown Meeting Street Academy, all the students entering first grade are reading, and the same is true for about one-third of those starting kindergarten. Some of the incoming first-graders are so advanced they can read 60-page books. Meeting Street Academy enrolls students whose parents want them to have a high-quality education but can't afford private-school tuition. The goal is for these high-poverty students to graduate from high school and college and become community leaders. (Post and Courier, July 28, 2010)

D.C. Schools Chancellor Dismisses 241 Teachers; Union to Contest Firings
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee announced Friday that she has fired 241 teachers, including 165 who received poor appraisals under a new evaluation system that for the first time holds some educators accountable for students' standardized test scores. Dismissals for performance are exceedingly rare in D.C. schools -- and in school systems nationwide. Friday's firings mark the beginning of Rhee's bid to make student achievement a high-stakes proposition for teachers, establishing job loss as a possible consequence of poor classroom results. (Washington Post, July 26, 2010)

NH To Make Education Reforms without Federal Help
Despite missing out on the second round of Race to the Top funding, the New Hampshire Department of Education will proceed with certain education reforms. It will continue work on a system to create a model teacher evaluation program, which is a main priority for State Education Commissioner Virginia Barry. Barry says a task force will convene in September to examine what other states have done in this regard and to spell out the things that make teachers effective. She hopes to test a model evaluation in 2012 and have a system ready for implementation in three years. Barry adds that the state will not evaluate teachers based on student test scores and that a new standardized assessment is needed, given new academic standards will be instituted over a five-year period. (WBZ TV Boston, July 29, 2010)

The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers
Researchers led by Harvard Economist Raj Chetty looked at the life paths of nearly 12,000 children who participated in a Tennessee-based education experiment in the 1980s and determined that those who learned more in kindergarten were more likely to attend college than peers with similar backgrounds. They also determined that these students were less likely to become single parents and more likely to be saving for retirement. Furthermore, researchers found that for every percentile increase in test-score distribution during their kindergarten year, these students earned $100 more per year at age 27. (New York Times, July 27, 2010)

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