Tag Archives: Race to the Top

NC Paying Out $1.5 Million Over 3 Years To 2 Contractors For Race To Top Monitoring

Posted on September 6, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

Two contracts will pay out over $1.5 million to two contractors for monitoring the Race To The Top grant, which was funded by ARRA (the Stimulus). The scope of work includes tracking of jobs created by the grant and professional development – specifically Common Core.

“Each RESA will plan, coordinate and facilitate regional trainings on the new essential standards and Common Core with regional PD leaders. NCDPI will provide facilitators for all sessions, unless otherwise noted.”

Each pay out is $762k over three years at $254k a year. The contracts are EP4821955 Northeast Region Service Alliance (Dr. Holleman) and EP4823540 Sandhills Region Service Alliance (Jim Simeon).

See the contracts and amendments here. Continue reading →

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, NC DPI | Tagged , | Comments Off on NC Paying Out $1.5 Million Over 3 Years To 2 Contractors For Race To Top Monitoring

Nice Waiver Ya Got There, Be A Shame If Anything Happened To It

Posted on July 9, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

States fighting Common Core in an attempt to regain control over their own education standards are getting the a shot across their bows from the Dept. of Education. What follows in the Ed Week excerpt below could be said in one sentence:
“Nice waiver ya got there, be a shame if anything happened to it…” Continue reading →

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core | Tagged | Comments Off on Nice Waiver Ya Got There, Be A Shame If Anything Happened To It

Common Core Opposition Should Expect To Openly Be Called Racists

Posted on July 3, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

In the last month or so, we’ve seen the supporters up the ante and start using the term ‘politicize’ and phrases like, ‘if you don’t support Common Core you are against this White House and President’. Arne Ducan is on board this train, you better believe it. The supporters have just stopped short of calling opposition racists. Well, I expect that will change pretty soon. At any rate, these are all examples of what I call Shutuppery and it won’t be ending anytime soon.

I hope it doesn’t happen, but I see the signal for it in this Daily Caller article, Common Core Backers Regret Obama’s Involvement. I made the comment on the article that I didn’t think the casual reader was seeing the groundwork being laid in the quotes. They’re giving the nod to attack their own. Continue reading →

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

NC Must Get Out Of The Common Core’s SBAC

Posted on June 20, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

I’ve written in the past about the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) and its ramifications for keeping North Carolina tied to Common Core even with two bills in our General Assembly attempting to get us out of the standards. For those who have not dug into the SBAC, I encourage you to do so. Start with the Cooperative Agreement between the U.S. Department of Education and the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium.

The Cooperative Agreement in a nutshell is the U.S. Dept. of Education getting around the law barring them from creating national tests and curriculum by farming it out to a private company. It was paid for with your tax dollars via the Obama administration’s Stimulus package, of which a portion of was funneled into the Race To The Top Grants. The purpose statement from the Cooperative Agreement:

The purpose of this agreement is to support the consortium recipient in developing new, common assessment systems that are valid, reliable and fair for their intended purposes and for all student subgroups, and that measure student knowledge and skills against a common set of college- and career-ready standards in mathematics and English language arts. In light of the technical nature of this grant and the fact that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) will likely be reauthorized during the course of this project, the Department will provide necessary flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, technology, and laws by working collaboratively with the recipient through this agreement. The objective is to assist the consortium in fulfilling, at minimum, the goals articulated in the consortium’s approved Race to the Top Assessment (RTTA) application, requirements established in the RTTA Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for New Awards for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 that was published in the Federal Register on April 9, 2010, and any subsequent additions detailed through this agreement.

The price tag was large:

The estimated cost for the work to be performed under this Agreement is $159,976,843 and $15,872,696 for the supplemental award.

This article will hit some of the bigger reasons why North Carolina needs to get out of the SBAC. However, before going forward, it is worth noting that the SBAC tests were a confirmed “glitch” fiasco and the tests themselves, like PARCC’s, were shrouded in secrecy. Teachers have told me they were not allowed to see the pilot test beforehand in NC nor were they allowed to talk about specifics afterward.

Keep Reading…. Continue reading →

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, June Atkinson, NCGA | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Assessment Of Your Kindergartener

Posted on June 13, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

Common Core has been consuming a lot of my time lately on the blog, but a reader dropped something in my inbox I had not looked into before: The North Carolina Read To Achieve Kindergarten Entry Process. It is also known as the KEA, or Kindergarten Entry Assessment.

It would appear from my research that the North Carolina’s Department of Public Instruction’s (NC DPI) plans to fully implement the KEA in the 2014-2015 school year.

View the KEA document at NC DPI here or on my Scribd repository here.
Visit the NC DPI Read to Achieve page here.
This program stems from the Race To The Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grant. This grant, like the Race to The Top grant tied to Common Core, was also funded by the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), otherwise known as the ‘Stimulus’. North Carolina won $69.9 million from this grant in 2011: Continue reading →

Posted in EDUCATION | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Assessment Of Your Kindergartener

CMS Superintendent Wants Common Core Opposition to ‘Be Specific’

Posted on June 8, 2014 by A.P. Dillon

CMS Superintendent Heath Morrison wants the Common Core Opposition to be specific. I think he will be getting more than he bargained for. Ann Doss Helms over at the Charlotte Observer’s Your Schools blog has the article up on this challenge. Go read the whole article, especially the bit she quotes from the Achieve, Inc. guy. Relevant snippet:

Mike Cohen of the DC-based nonprofit group Achieve, who helped develop the standards with state leaders, said President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan inadvertently hurt the cause by “taking credit” for the Common Core push and using Race to the Top grants to prod states to embrace the standards.

Inadvertently hurt the cause? That’s a laugh. Race To The Top grants which arguably were monetary coercion for to adopt the Common Core were funded with Obama administration stimulus funds. Most people don’t know that. For some deeper reading on The Race To The Top, check out my three part series here. Continue reading →

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core | Tagged | Comments Off on CMS Superintendent Wants Common Core Opposition to ‘Be Specific’