State joins federal Race to the Top

State joins federal Race to the Top:

"When President Obama talks about turning around the lowest performing schools in the country with the Race to the Top education reform effort, he's talking about schools like San Francisco's Malcolm X Academy."



Sitting at the top of a hill in San Francisco's Hunters Point, the elementary school repeatedly has scored among the lowest in the state despite a decade of education reform at the local, state and federal levels. But state and federal education officials say the federal Race to the Top competition is different.
It's a game changer, they say. By offering a potential windfall of cash in exchange for innovative policy changes, the contest is designed to shake the status quo by, among other things, holding teachers accountable and giving parents much more authority over their children's education.
Parents, principals and teachers say they have heard all that before. Reforms


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/15/MNT41BFLLC.DTL#ixzz0cn2E7v29