California excluded from school reform funds? 2

By Diana Lambert
Published: Saturday, Jul. 25, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
California schools may already have lost the Race to the Top.
The state isn't likely to see any of the $4.35 billion in competitive federal grants that will be passed out as part of the American Recovery Act if legislators don't rescind a law that prevents teachers from being evaluated based on student test scores, say federal officials.
"Any state that makes it unlawful to link student progress to teacher evaluation will have to change its ways if it wants to compete for a grant," President Barack Obama said in a news conference Friday.
California's education code states that a system tracking teacher data, to be online next year, is not to be used in combination with student information to evaluate teachers.
Only Wisconsin and Nevada have similar laws.
Read the entire post at the Sac Bee.
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2054895.html
dlambert@sacbee.com

The appointment of Arne Duncan by Barack Obama was disappointing. This is the kind of corporate/media "school reform" he claimed in Chicago. See earlier posts on this topic. Use the search button for Arne Duncan.
If you support this kind of test based accountability, I recommend that you spend some time reading up on testing. Two good sources are , Tested, by Linda Perlstein, and Collateral Damage, How High Stakes Testing Corrupts America's Schools, by Sharon Nichols and David C. Berliner.