New York’s small city, suburban and rural school districts expect to spend an average of $155,355 this year to implement the state’s new teacher and principal evaluation plans, a report Thursday from the state School Boards Association found.This reform has always been about piling underfunded mandate upon underfunded mandate onto these districts, forcing them into insolvency and eventually breaking the districts up and letting the for profit education free marketeers come and take over.
The one-year costs outpace the four-year federal grant provided for funding the program by nearly $55,000, according to an analysis of 80 school districts outside the state’s “Big Five.”
“Our analysis … shows that the cost of this state initiative falls heavily on school districts,” the group’s executive director, Timothy Kremer, said in a statement. “This seriously jeopardizes school districts’ ability to meet other state and federal requirements and properly serve students.”
The evaluation system is a requirement for receiving funding from President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative.
In 2010, New York was awarded $700 million in grants. About half of the funding will go to local school districts over four years to implement the evaluation system, as well as other initiatives.
The average Race To The Top grant in New York, excluding the state’s five largest city school districts, is $100,670. That’s $54,685 short of districts’ average implementation costs, according to the report.
School districts incurred costs for additional compensation, training, developing new assessments and purchasing technology.
The implementation costs for the 80 districts included in the analysis ranged from $15,500 to $626,583.
“When we talk about unfunded—or, in this case, underfunded—mandates, this is exactly what we mean,” Kremer said.
One year of evaluation costs has eaten up more than the entire four year Race to the Top award for evaluations.
It seems that the $700 million "award" is going to cost well over $2 billion in additional expenditures around the state.
New Jersey should consider itself lucky that Chris Christie and his ed department screwed up the application.
They're saving so much more money in the long run.
When do we put an end to the madness here in NY State?
Kinda like paying $5.00 to some carnie to guess your weight and winning a plastic whistle that costs about .75 a gross isn't it ? But wrap it up in rephormy "excellence" and stir in some free market cut throat competition and the billionaires can sit back and watch the peasants kill each other for peanuts. Priceless.
ReplyDeleteThis is sheer idiocy. I can't believe how our government is run by a bunch of moronic imbecilic bullies.
ReplyDeleteOn a different subject, did anyone see this from WCBS?
ReplyDeletehttp://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/03/07/officials-80-percent-of-recent-nyc-high-school-graduates-cannot-read/
I never could understand why the UFT didn't make it clear to the public that the RttT money wasn't actually going to the schools for operating expenses. The media was carrying on about how the union's recalcitrance was going to cause NYS to lose a lot of money and the teachers unions let them get away with it.
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