Race to the Top. Delaware Report. Year 1: School Year 2010-2011. [State-Specific Summary Report]
Author: Department of Education (ED)
Date: 2012-01-10
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Academic Standards,Accountability,Achievement Gains,Achievement Gap,Administrator Effectiveness,Administrator Evaluation,Best Practices,Budgets,Career Planning,Charter Schools,Competition,Data,Disabilities,Educational Assessment,Educational Change,Educational Improvement,Elementary Secondary Education,English Curriculum,Federal Legislation,Federal State Relationship,Graduation Rate,Grants,Higher Education,Language Arts,Leadership Effectiveness,Mathematics,Measurement Objectives,Models,Outcomes of Education,Performance Based Assessment,Poverty,Principals,Professional Development,Program Evaluation,Program Implementation,School Districts,School Effectiveness,School Turnaround,State Government,STEM Education,Systems Approach,Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Evaluation

This State-specific summary report serves as an assessment of Delaware's Year 1 Race to the Top implementation, highlighting successes and accomplishments, identifying challenges, and providing lessons learned from implementation to date. Delaware created new structures at the State level to support both State and LEA (local education agency) Race to the Top work. The State is providing ongoing assistance to LEAs via the LEA Support Program, working with LEAs in an iterative and intensive fashion to ensure that their Years 2-4 plans align with the State's strategic education reform plan and will lead to improvements in teaching and learning. This work includes a thorough review of, and ongoing feedback on, these plans as LEAs develop them. Delaware is holding LEAs accountable for the commitments they made in their Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with the State. Delaware has begun to implement programs across reform areas. Delaware is implementing teacher and leader projects that include data coaches; a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) residency program; Teach for America (TFA); a Delaware Teaching Fellows program; and the Delaware Leadership Project. The State is also supporting the four low-achieving schools in the State's Partnership Zone (PZ) as they plan to fully implement their selected school reform model during the 2011-2012 school year. Although Delaware has fully staffed its Race to the Top team, including the management team and teams across reform areas, securing highly qualified staff took longer than expected. Also, because the State implements many of its reforms at the local level, the State has to reconcile LEA perceptions regarding their needs, capacity, and level of participation in Race to the Top projects with their needs and capacity as assessed by the State. In addition, the State encountered a challenge in implementing a teacher and leader evaluation system due to the complexity, time, and effort required to identify or develop the student growth measures for teachers in grades and subjects not already tested by the assessments required under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (hereafter referred to as non-tested grades and subjects). The State is working to address this challenge, but had to delay by one year the use of the evaluation system to inform certain personnel decisions. Delaware is implementing a plan to identify or build assessments that can be used as part of the required evaluation components for nontested grades and subjects. The State is integrating Race to the Top with other education programs at the federal, State, and LEA levels to maximize the impact on teaching and learning. A glossary is included. (Contains 12 footnotes.) [For the parent report, &quot;Race to the Top Annual Performance Report,&quot; see ED529267. For the full report, &quot;Race to the Top. Delaware. State-Reported APR: Year One,&quot; see ED529309.