Race to the Top. Georgia Report. Year 3: School Year 2012-2013. [State-Specific Summary Report]
Author: Department of Education (ED)
Date: 2014-03-19
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Academic Achievement,Academic Standards,Accountability,Achievement Gap,Administrator Effectiveness,Alignment (Education),Budgets,Career Readiness,Charter Schools,College Readiness,Core Curriculum,Data,Educational Assessment,Educational Change,Educational Improvement,Elementary Secondary Education,Federal Legislation,Federal Aid,Educational Legislation,Federal Programs,Formative Evaluation,Grants,Higher Education,Language Arts,Leadership Effectiveness,Literacy,Low Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Measurement Objectives,Models,Outcomes of Education,Partnerships in Education,Poverty,Principals,Professional Development,Program Effectiveness,Program Implementation,School Districts,School Effectiveness,School Turnaround,State Government,State Standards,STEM Education,Teacher Effectiveness,Teacher Evaluation,Student Characteristics,National Competency Tests

The State-Specific Summary report serves as an assessment of Georgia's annual Race to the Top implementation. This year 3 report for Phase 1 and 2 grantees in Georgia highlights successes and accomplishments, identifies challenges, and provides lessons learned from implementation from approximately September 2012 through September 2013. Among Georgia's year three accomplishments, Georgia launched the Innovation in Teaching Competition, a new initiative under its Innovation Fund, for educators who use innovative and effective strategies in teaching Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (CCGPS) English Learning Arts (ELA) and mathematics. In SY 2012-2013, the State piloted and rolled out an Assessment Literacy Professional Learning Unit (PLU), &quot;Georgia Formative Instructional Practices: The Keys to Student Success,&quot; with 400 teachers in several local education agencies (LEAs) across the State. Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) also continued to roll out its Instructional Improvement System (IIS) and Instructional Improvement Reports (IIRs). Georgia launched the Teacher Resource Link (TRL) to allow teachers to quickly find and access CCGPS resources. The State provided all LEAs with a variety of new STEM resources, including Fast Forward, a new original series of video shorts from Georgia Public Broadcasting. Finally, the State revised its State- and LEA-level monitoring and oversight procedures to focus on the quality of implementation and overall performance towards Race to the Top goals, in addition to progress against the State's approved plan. Georgia continued to experience significant challenges related to implementation of its teacher and leader evaluation systems in Year 3 of its Race to the Top grant. Other challenges Georgia experienced in this year three include Georgia's struggle to provide sufficient support to LEA's across the state as they implemented the new educator system. Georgia indicated that it no longer plans to implement the performance-based compensation system described in its approved application within the grant period, therefore the Department initiated procedures to withhold Race to the Top funds associated with implementation of performance-based compensation. On July 22, 2013, Georgia announced that it was withdrawing from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment consortium. Georgia reports that due to budget shortfalls across the State, Teach for America (TFA) and The New Teacher Project (TNTP) were not able to place as many teachers as planned. Among plans looking ahead, toward Year 4, Georgia plans to scale up its support of LEAs through its new Education Research and Evaluation Specialists (ERES), who provide oversight and targeted technical assistance to participating LEAs on Race to the Top implementation. The State will complete development of its P-20 longitudinal data system and will continue adding additional features to its IIS and IIRs. Georgia must build capacity in the State and LEAs in order to implement and use its educator evaluation system. With the passage of HB 244 in March 2013 that requires the evaluation system to be implemented statewide in SY 2014-2015, the State must scale up its tools, resources, and professional development in order to support nearly all LEAs in the State. GaDOE reports that it will hire over 30 new personnel to work on the ground with LEAs to ensure they have sufficient support and training to implement the educator evaluation system with fidelity. A Glossary is provided. [For &quot;Race to the Top. Georgia Report. Year 2: School Year 2011-2012. [State-Specific Summary Report],&quot; see ED539236 ]