California Schools to Receive An Additional $487 Million In Recovery Funds

For Immediate Release
 

Contact: Ricci Graham
510-763-0370

Washington D.C. – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-09) is pleased to announce that the United States Department of Education is making available an additional $487 million to schools throughout the state of California through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2010. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made the funding available to the state after assessing its plan to reform the education system, focusing on critical data that shows what is working in the state’s classrooms and ongoing efforts that illustrate how students, teachers, administrators, community leaders and elected officials continue to work collaboratively to improve the system.

 “With this funding, school districts will have the resources to pursue reforms necessary to improve the performance of our schools and our students,” said Congresswoman Lee

The application submitted for this funding required states to provide data that will lay the foundation for reform including:

• How teachers and principals are evaluated and how this information is used to support, retain, promote or remove staff.
• The extent to which the state has a Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems that includes all the necessary America COMPETES Act requirements and how it will implement a comprehensive system by 2011.
• Whether the state provides student growth data on current students and the students taught in the previous year to, at a minimum, teachers of reading/language arts and mathematics in grades in which the state administers assessments in those subjects in a manner that is timely and informs instructional programs.
• The number and identity of the schools that are Title I schools in improvement, corrective action or restructuring that are identified as persistently lowest-achieving schools. 

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