A great editorial in yesterday's NY Daily News about what NY has to do to get RttT money:

The Legislature has nine days to enact historic school reforms to qualify for up to $700 million in education funding under President Obama's Race to the Top program.

New York must meet the deadline with legislation that aces federal eligibility standards. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Democratic chief John Sampson and Senate Republican Minority leader Dean Skelos must:

• Eliminate the cap on charter schools, the successful alternatives to traditional public schools that have given thousands of poor and minority kids shots at first-class educations.

• Give charter schools access to construction financing through the state Dormitory Authority and let them expand to have prekindergartens.

• Drop New York's bar on using student achievement, including test scores, as a factor in determining whether to give teachers the lifetime job security of tenure.

• Empower districts to use the same kind of data as a basis for rewarding the most effective teachers with higher pay - and for retraining, disciplining or firing instructors who can't do the job.

• Give districts authority to bring in outside managers to take over schools that, year in and year out, fail to educate students.

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Race to the Race: Legislature must strengthen charter schools in push for gov't funds

Sunday, January 10th 2010, 4:00 AM

www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/01/10/2010-01-10_race_to_the_race.html#ixzz0cOrlwlNo