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Wednesday, February 8, 2012
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Maine's application for up to $75 million in the federal Race to the Top competition proposes using a part of those federal funds -- if Maine wins an award -- to expand Jobs for Maine's Graduates, a dropout prevention program that functions as a regular class in about 65 schools.
As I reported on Sunday, Jobs for Maine's Graduates' role in Maine's Race to the Top application is the result of what the program says is its proven track record of getting students at risk of dropping out to graduate from high school and succeed in post-secondary education and the workplace.
One of Maine's goals in seeking Race to the Top funding, Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin told me, is to "scale up" those programs that have been successful on a micro level. Jobs for Maine's Graduates, which serves about 4,000 students, fits that mold, he and Jobs for Maine's Graduates President and chief executive officer Craig Larrabee said.
Jobs for Maine's Graduates' inclusion in the Race to the Top application could prove useful to Maine in another respect. Race to the Top doesn't only put an emphasis on creating and expanding programs that boost graduation rates. The competition standards also push states to start evaluating -- and compensating -- teachers based on the academic outcomes they produce among their students.
Jobs for Maine's Graduates, Larrabee said, has experience with this.
"We're a performance-based program," he said. "We tie the performance of our students to the evaluation of our specialists."
Incorporating student performance in teacher evaluations, to make an understatement, has proven a sticking point in Maine's quest to submit its Race to the Top application. At this point, there's no evaluation system available to school districts if they decide they want to use student measures in teacher and principal evaluations.
If Maine's Race to the Top goal is to scale up small, but successful, programs, the Jobs for Maine's Graduates expansion might be a way to demonstrate that Maine is, at least on a micro level, using student data to inform teacher evaluations before any public school districts adopt the practice in a larger fashion.
Archives
- Rewriting No Child Left Behind: What to expect
- Recurring themes, fresh outlook on education
- National pressure on Maine to allow charters
- The debate on administration, and the latest on the top administrator
- Private funding for "student-centered" learning
- Landing on the staff, not in the cabinet
- Education and the inauguration
- Home schooling, education jobs and Social Security: An education roundup
- A change in circumstances, and a change of heart
- Tonight, students challenge the candidates
- MEA's endorsement and Mitchell
- Worries of the administrative realm
- What's next for Maine students' Social Security numbers?
- Paying for performance, indirectly
- Beyond pay incentives
- Will there be evaluation momentum?
- Same SAT scores. Same questionable comparison?
- It had to be asked sooner or later
- Short of completely empty, and a chance to influence
- UPDATE: Fact-checking Paul LePage, and Common Core's tangled web
- How much and when?
- Zeroing in on "value added"
- Sierra Club: Maine has 3 "Cool Schools"
- Maine joining SSN ranks. Will parents go along?
- Some loose ends tied this week in Maine education
- Six in Maine go for i3
- A steeper cliff after EduJobs
- MEA and the favorable incumbents; updates to a data repository
- One federal pot out of reach, another in flux
- Ed Week: Maine's Race to the Top fate will be known tomorrow
- New graduation rates released, little gained so far
- An updated student-teacher ratio, and updated inconsistencies
- Reformist v. status quo, and a tempering force
- Could Race to the Top shrink?
- Midcoast project earns "pilot project" designation
- What the heck is Maine's student-teacher ratio?
- UPDATED: MEA announces it's Mitchell. Anyone surprised?
- On buy-in, below average
- Initial thoughts on a LePage v. Mitchell match-up
- Innovations that don't fit the national mold: Maine and Race to the Top
- Performance-based evaluations from the bottom up
- Choice phrasing in Race to the Top
- Breaking down buy-in
- For after-school programs, a risk apart from grant bungling
- Building buy-in: Maine at 68 for 215 and 14 for 55
- Choosing the evaluation panel's future
- Maine is in Race to the Top running
- Is MEA warming to Race to the Top?
- UPDATED: Will the budget referendum stay in place?
- Who knew? Department of Education stands in liberty's way
- Bold approaches beyond pilot-project phase
- Not down to 80, but getting closer
- Baldacci claiming credit where it's undue
- Not only plagiarism from Otten, but a lack of facts
- A tiff of irony, a question of purpose, and the administrators' absence
- Teacher evaluation catch-up and the would-be's on education
- A big week in Maine education
- 'Conversations' amid shadows
- A barrier comes down? A few more thoughts
- UPDATE: Sticking to the 'poison pill'
- UPDATE: Amended bill wouldn't do the trick
- UPDATE: More than Race to the Top hangs in the balance
- Hanging in the balance
- Evaluating teachers? Choose from one of the following
- Highlights from the data drop
- What do Delaware and Tennessee mean to Maine?
- 'A personal journey for next generation learners'
- Channeling consolidation's energy in Hancock County
- Innovating within existing infrastructure
- A model charter school law
- Preparing for another charter schools battle
- Will Maine stand a chance in Race to the Top?
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