And stars fell on Alabama....

Alabama's RT3 application is a far cry from that of Florida.

Read the entire article and post a comment on al.com.
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/01/at_aea_chi...bberts_urg.html

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State cuts teacher merit pay from federal fund application after AEA leader objects

Other states are promising sweeping reforms as they compete for a share of $4.35 billion worth of federal education dollars from a program known as Race to the Top.

But Alabama's application for $181 million basically says that schools here would use the money to expand existing programs.

More extensive reforms, including performance-based pay for teachers, were killed after
Alabama Education Association leader Paul Hubbert wrote state Superintendent Joe Morton a letter on Jan. 5 opposing them.

Performance-based pay and seven other proposals that Hubbert questioned -- including quarterly standardized tests for all students and a new salary schedule that would give more money to math, science and special-education teachers -- were deleted from an earlier draft of the application. ...

As part of the application, each state must list how many local superintendents, school board presidents and teachers union representatives support it. According to Alabama's application, 113 of 132 superintendents endorsed the final version, as did 108 AEA representatives.

Race to the Top has been billed by President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as a highly competitive contest among states. Duncan said during a news conference last week that federal officials would award money to states that show the capacity to improve and then teach other states how to improve.

There are no set guidelines as to how much money will be distributed, or to how many states. In fact, Duncan said, only a handful of states might get anything.

Alabama is one of 40 states plus the District of Columbia to apply in the first phase. The U.S. Department of Education will announce winners of the first round in April.

Alabama's application is one of the shortest; various others run more than 1,000 pages.

Some states, including Virginia, seem similar to Alabama's in that officials there are promising to expand existing programs.

"I don't think that there will be any great surprises," Bice said of Alabama's application. "It's a continuation and an ability to expand into more schools, to take it to scale in a much faster way than we would've been able to do" without Race to the Top dollars. ...