MCPS turns down funds

MCPS will not receive $12 million from Maryland's successful bid to the federal Race to the Top (RTTT) competition after declining to sign the state's application. However, MCPS will still be forced to comply with a new state-wide teacher evaluation system that originally led officials to reject the application, said Maryland Department of Education spokesman William Reinhard. MCPS will not get another chance to receive Race to the Top funding, he said.

Race to the Top, a national competition implemented by the Obama administration, encourages states to build educational reform. It seeks to improve underachieving schools, maintain a successful group of teachers, devise a more comprehensive data collection system and adopt standards and assessments that better prepare students for college. On Aug. 24, Maryland was awarded a $250 million grant after submitting its application in April. Of the 24 school districts in Maryland, MCPS and Frederick County Public Schools were the only districts that did not sign the application.

According to MCPS spokesperson Lesli Maxwell, the school district's primary concern with Maryland's application for Race to the Top was a new provision that would make student growth account for 50 percent of teacher evaluations. The Montgomery County Board of Education passed a resolution stating that MCPS would sign the application if it included a waiver that allowed MCPS to keep its current evaluation system, she said. But the state did not agree to the resolution.

The state notified MCPS that it would still have to implement the new state-wide evaluation system even if officials did not sign the application, Reinhard said. However, according to MCPS Director of Public Information Dana Tofig, MCPS still declined to sign the application because there was still confusion as to how the new system would be implemented. RTTT project manager James Foran said the new evaluation system is still being devised by the Educator Effectiveness Council, a group of officials appointed by the governor to design an effective system to evaluate teachers and principals. "Why would we sign on to something and endorse something that we have absolutely no details on all for 0.3 percent of our budget?" Tofig said.

According to Foran, the Maryland legislature passed the Education Reform Act of 2010 which mandated a teacher evaluation system that would make student growth a "significant" part of teacher evaluations. Doug Prouty, Montgomery County Educators Association director, said that the current teacher evaluation system in MCPS does not violate the Education Reform Act. "The school system and union came to an agreement saying that we believe our system already meets that standard of having student growth account for a significant portion of teacher evaluations," he said. However, as a result of the Education Reform Act, the Maryland Department of Education was able to enforce a new teacher evaluation system across the state that makes 50 percent of teacher evaluations to be based on student performance and growth, Prouty stated. According to Foran, the new system was merely included in the RTTT application. "This is a result of the Education Reform Act of 2010; the Race to the Top application referenced the reform act but in truth the state would have required it even if we didn't get Race to the Top," he said.

Making student performance account for 50 percent of a teacher evaluation is essential to providing the best education for Maryland students, Reinhard said. "That's what we believe schools are in the business of, to help students be more successful," he said.
But according to Prouty, the new system will not do anything other than increase standardized testing. "Every teacher will be measured on student growth and the only way to do that is to have standardized tests," Prouty said. This would mean that more tests would need to be created for classes such as physical education and art, programs like special education and grade levels in which state tests are not given. Standardized testing would double at the elementary level and quadruple at the secondary level, he said.

At this point, MCPS does not want to forgo its ten-year-old evaluation system, which it believes has proven to be successful, for a new system that has not been implemented yet, Maxwell said. The Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program, the county's current teacher evaluation system, allows teachers to work together for professional development. Under the program, a teacher is evaluated on a variety of factors, including classroom observation and student growth and performance. Teachers who are underperforming are referred to a PAR panel where they receive aid and mentoring from experienced teachers, Maxwell said. "Our evaluation system has more than a decade of results on which to base its success," she said. "We are very reluctant to make changes based on something that is simply theoretical at this point."