Kara Ramos
The Valdosta Daily Times
VALDOSTA —
The Valdosta City School System is in a race with 25 other Georgia school systems to improve education.
On Aug. 24, the federal government announced that the state of Georgia was one of several states to receive educational funding through the second phase of Race to the Top grants.
According to Gov. Sonny Perdue’s office, the state is projected to receive $400 million over four years to implement Race to the Top standards.
Fifty percent of the funds awarded to Georgia will be distributed to the partner school systems.
The Race to the Top fund is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The $4 billion grant supports new approaches to improve schools and is dispersed through competitive grants rewarded to states that are creating conditions for education and innovation and reform, according to the governor’s office.
Just how much funding school systems participating in Race to the Top will receive and when is still unknown, Valdosta City School System Superintendent Dr. Bill Cason said.
“It will have a huge impact on us and should be a fair amount of money, but we do not know how much we will get,” Cason said.
Now that the funding has been awarded, it is up to each state to decide how the money will be disbursed, Cason said.
He said the state has indicated that the money could be divided up in a manner similar to how Title I funding is dispersed.
As far as how the money will be used, Cason said, exact guidelines have not yet been presented to the school systems. The purpose of the funding is to improve instruction and student achievement at schools.
That means the funding could be used to hire teachers and encourage further staff development, Cason said.
The Valdosta City School System may have not considered applying for the money if many of the guidelines and standards within Race to the Top had not already been in place at the school system, Cason said.
Specific goals under Race to the Top include adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy; building data systems that measure student growth and success; and informing teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction, recruiting, preparing, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most and turning around the lowest-achieving schools.
The application process also required Georgia to adopt and implement common curricular standards and internationally-benchmarked assessments that indicate Georgia’s ability to compete within a globally-connected economy, according to the governor’s office.
The State Board of Education adopted these standards in July.
“Ninety-nine percent of what they require we are already doing as a school district,” Cason said.
The school system has already implemented a continuous improvement model and collects statistical data on each student, he said.
When Race to the Top was first introduced, it was presented as a way to push school systems to the forefront of academics.
“If this will help us do that, that’s great,” Cason said.
For more information about Race to the Top, visit www2.ed.gov/programsracetothetop.
