"Forty-six days and counting, holidays included, before the state’s Race to the Top application is due in Arne Duncan’s hands. But if the state’s plan is any closer to completion than last week or last month, the state officials leading the effort aren’t saying.
At the last hearing on Race to the Top before the Assembly’s Education Committee on Wednesday, Deputy Superintendent Rick Miller and Kathryn Radtkey-Gaither, the governor’s undersecretary in his Office of Education, were mum on details. One got the distinct sense that they weren’t being cagey because they’re worried that Texas will steal their ideas. Its’ because the plan is still largely unformed."
Bill would expand who could grant a teaching credential
Jumping ahead of the expected release today of the Assembly’s version of Race to the Top legislation, Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande of Palm Desert has introduced three bills of his own.
Two deal with alternative ways to bring teachers into the profession. The third would make it slightly easier to get rid of those who end up performing badly.
At Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s urging, legislators are considering ways that might improve the state’s shot at a piece of the U.S. Department of Education’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition. Nestande’s bills would tangentially address what Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has targeted as the biggest priority of Race to the Top funding: ways to improve teacher performance.
ABX5-5 would create the biggest change. It would enable non-traditional organizations – business groups or charter schools, perhaps – to begin awarding teacher credentials, just as California Start University campuses do.
University education departments have been broadly criticized for mediocre credentialing programs. So one can make a case for alternative programs for attracting candidates to teaching – especially those entering the profession mid-career. In additon, charter school organizations may want to train their own teachers with different values and skills. (High Tech High, a charter management organization in San Diego, already does run its own credentialing program.)