http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2010/07/house_panel_votes_for_another.html

States, start your engines. This month, a House appropriations subcommittee approved a bill financing the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) Race to the Top (RTTT) funding next year to the tune of $800 million. In addition, it looks as though the Investing in Innovation (I3) grant program will be funded for another $400 million in fiscal year 2011.

More money, more innovation, more states, districts, service agencies, and non-profits scrambling to demonstrate how their organizations will be the best fiscal stewards of the Department of Education’s generous support. If the first round of RTTT and I3 grants gave us insight into expectations the DOE’s has regarding “demonstrable evidence” of program effectiveness, one could assume this next round of grants will require applicants to really demonstrate evidence or even prove effects of programming and supports on teachers and students.

A lesson learned via this first experimentation with competitive grantmaking at the national level is it’s very hard to claim direct student impact if the program or support is not directly impacting a student. Research supports the assertion that teachers and family members have the most direct impact on improving student outcomes. Thus, we’ve seen major foundations (Gates, Broad, Wallace) pipeline millions into teacher effectiveness studies and professional development programming. However, most states would like to claim that all supports and interventions will directly impact students in classrooms and are finding it necessary via Race to the Top and I3 grant expectations that all interventions will directly impact student outcomes. This just is not the case; not all interventions can and will directly impact student outcomes. Building a state-wide, P-21 data system to track longitudinal student data will not directly impact student outcomes. Data produced via the system will make it to principals who will give it to teachers who will work with teacher teams to plan classroom interventions which they will implement. So, as demonstrated, it’s not the state data system that will improve student outcomes but rather what is done with the data at the classroom level via teachers. Therefore, states, as you plan for next year’s Race to the Top, be truly honest and concrete about the outcomes your programming and support services can create; get your outcomes as close to students as you can but maintain credibility.