Monday, November 23, 2009

The Educated Guess » How LA charters will spend Gates’ $60 million




The Educated Guess » How LA charters will spend Gates’ $60 million:

"A one-year residency program for aspiring teachers;

A data warehouse of assessments to measure individual students’ growth;

A performance-based pay system that teacher help design.

A consortium of five charter school organizations operating in Los Angeles will make these innovations with a seven-year, $60 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,plus $16 million in matching money that they must raise.

They are also precisely the sorts of things that the state should be considering in its application for the Race to the Top competition. Improving teacher performance, including using data as a factor to set teachers’ pay, is a primary focus of the $4.35 billion federal program."