Ablogination

Gotta be proud of this. There are a lot of states with good plans for educational improvements. Tennessee comes in first.

Right On.

From the NYT:

Delaware and Tennessee beat out 38 other states and the District of Columbia to win a share of $4 billion in federal education grants, convincing the Obama administration that they have bold plans for overhauling their public school systems, an administration official said Monday.

The Department of Education said that Delaware would be awarded about $100 million and Tennessee about $500 million.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that both Delaware and Tennessee had won because they had gotten overwhelming statewide support from teachers, school districts and business leaders for comprehensive school improvement plans, and had written new laws to support their policies.

By announcing only two winners in the first round, Mr. Duncan held to his vow that only a small number of states with extremely bold plans would receive money in the Race to the Top competition, which aims to promote educational innovation by rewarding a few states for exemplary progress in areas President Obama considers crucial to education reform.

Georgia and Florida came in third and fourth in the competition, officials said.

The president’s goals include expanding the number and quality of charter schools, reworking outdated teacher evaluation systems, improving the sophistication of states’ student-data tracking systems and turning around thousands of the lowest-performing schools.

Tennessee has long had a student-data tracking system that allows it to trace student achievement to individual teachers, and in its proposal the state promised to adopt an advanced statewide teacher evaluation system by the 2011-12 school year. Currently, teacher evaluation systems there, as in most states, are designed by school districts

Delaware already has a statewide annual teacher evaluation system, and has recently adopted regulations requiring that those evaluations be based on growth in student achievement, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, which rated the finalists’ proposals.

If smarter people tend to lean more Liberal, as is obviously the case most of the time, then this could be very good for the future of the state of Tennessee.
Lord knows we have all the stupid we can handle.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you Gov. Bredesen.
Democrats looking out for Tennessee again.