1.This Act may be cited as the
Innovation Districts for School
Improvement Act
.
2.Congress finds the following:
(1)Too many students emerge from secondary
school unprepared for success in college or in the workforce. It is children of
color and children of poverty who suffer most from a failure to provide them
effective teachers and adequate resources.
(2)In urban elementary schools,
African-American and Latino students are several times less likely than their
white peers to be reading at even a basic level, and children living in poverty
are several times less likely than their peers who are not poor to be
proficient in reading or mathematics.
(3)These deficits continue on into higher
levels of education, so that 6,000,000 middle school and secondary school
students are reading with skills significantly below their grade level. Half of
all teenagers are unable to understand basic mathematics.
(4)In New York City, only 35 percent of
African-American students and 32 percent of Latino students graduate from
secondary school. In Chicago, of every 100 African-American males, on average,
only 38 graduate from secondary school by age 19, and less than 3 continue
their education to earn a diploma from a 4-year college.
(5)The dropout problem is not limited to
cities. Poor rural communities are also harmed by inadequate resources and low
teacher quality. As a result, in some States, only 60 percent of white students
graduate from secondary school; in others, there is a difference of 40
percentage points in the graduation rates of whites and students of
color.
(6)Too many teachers and school leaders are
not prepared adequately for their jobs, and too few States and local
educational agencies have effective teacher induction or mentoring programs.
Less-qualified teachers are concentrated in schools attended by
African-American and Latino students, and in high-poverty areas, whether urban
or rural.
(7)The effectiveness of teachers has a direct
relationship to student academic achievement. Students who performed equally
well in mathematics in second grade showed a significant performance gap 3
years later, depending on whether they had been assigned to the most effective
or least effective teachers.
(8)Despite the numerous indicators that public
schools are not adequately educating students, there are many pockets of
innovation and success, where effective teachers work in schools where they
support their students, with additional support from community organizations,
foundations, and nonprofits. In high-poverty schools using the reforms of the
Teacher Advancement Program, the most recent data shows that more that 70
percent of these schools increased the percentage of students achieving at
proficient levels or above on standardized tests. In rural schools using the
Teacher Advancement Program reforms, nearly two-thirds of schools increased the
percentage of students at or above the proficient level.
(9)Lessons from the Teacher Advancement
Program and other successes will form the basis for the expansion of successful
efforts, used to positively transform education in school districts, and, in so
doing, generate additional information on a group of effective practices that
can be widely disseminated and applied.
3.In this Act, the terms
Department
, elementary school
, institution
of higher education
, local educational agency
,
secondary school
, and Secretary
have the meanings
given such terms in section 9101 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 7801).
4.
(a)
(1)The Secretary shall
establish a program to award grants, on a competitive basis, to 10 local
educational agencies in urban areas and 10 local educational agencies in
non-urban areas (which shall include a mix of rural and suburban areas), to
enable such agencies to create innovation districts to implement systemic
reforms in areas of teaching, assessment, school leadership, and
administration, including the following:
(A)Implementation of data systems to evaluate
student progress, identify and share best practices, and conduct rigorous,
data-driven evaluations to determine the effect of reforms on student academic
achievement.
(B)Recruitment and retention of
highly-effective teachers, and allocation of such teachers into the classrooms
of the students who need them most, using incentives, including differential
pay to reward high-performing teachers, teachers who choose to work in the most
challenging schools within a local educational agency, and teachers with
expertise in needed subject areas, such as mathematics, science, and special
education, and systems and schedules to support teacher collaboration and
mentoring, and career ladders for teachers to work as mentor or master
teachers.
(C)Support of teacher academies to recruit
talented candidates, develop effective placement systems, and ensure that
trainees receive both effective pre-service training and effective mentoring
during induction as they enter the classroom.
(D)Placement of an outstanding principal in
every school, including rigorous recruitment, selection, pre-service and
in-service training, and placement of school leaders, and efforts to hold
principals accountable for student academic achievement while providing the
principals with the authority and autonomy needed especially regarding hiring
and assigning teachers and staff.
(E)Support for new schools, including charter
schools or contract schools, or for networks of public schools within the local
educational agency, serving predominantly low-income populations, which are
sponsored by universities, education management organizations, or other
nonprofit entities. Such new schools shall—
(i)serve as demonstration sites for
high-quality kindergarten through grade 12 schooling;
(ii)be the locus for training and support of
aspiring, new and veteran teachers and school leaders; and
(iii)be designed to share best practices with
other schools served by the local educational agency, and other local
educational agencies, State and nationwide.
(2)If the amount
appropriated for a fiscal year under subsection (h) is less than the amount
authorized to be appropriated for such fiscal year, the Secretary may award
fewer than 20 grants under this Act.
(b)
(1)A local educational
agency that desires to receive a grant under this Act shall submit an
application to the Secretary at such time, in such manner, and accompanied by
such information as the Secretary shall require.
(2)An application submitted under paragraph
(1) shall include how the local educational agency will carry out the
activities described in subparagraphs (A) through (E) of subsection (a)(1) and
a description of activities the local educational agency will undertake
to—
(A)recruit and induct new professional
employees into the schools served by the local educational agency, including
establishment of residency-based teacher or leadership academies;
(B)provide mentoring and support for teachers
who are not meeting standards for teacher effectiveness described in this
Act;
(C)use the financial and human resources of
the agency to meet the needs of students in a performance-based model focused
on student learning;
(D)develop and use data systems and
accountability to establish instructional plans to benefit students in schools
served by the agency, with regular evaluation of agency-supported programs;
and
(E)address how the agency will use funds
available under title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
(20 U.S.C. 6601 et seq.) to support the goals of this Act, including having
effective teachers equitably placed in every classroom in every school served
by the agency, and effective principals in every school served by the
agency.
(c)A local educational
agency that receives a grant under this Act shall use the grant funds to carry
out each of the following:
(1)The local educational shall improve
accountability as follows:
(A)Work to establish longitudinal data systems
that can monitor student progress as the students move from grade to grade, to
determine the value-added and effectiveness of specific teachers, schools, and
programs within the local educational agency. The data system may be designed
and established in cooperation with institutions of higher education, regional
educational laboratories (established pursuant to section 174 of the Education
Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (20 U.S.C. 9564)), offices in the Department, or
other entities with expertise in data acquisition and interpretation. Such a
data system shall have the following attributes:
(i)A unique student identifier to track the
progress of each individual student served by the local educational
agency.
(ii)The ability to track the progress and
assessment results of each individual student from year to year.
(iii)Enrollment, demographic, and program
participation information for each student.
(iv)A teacher identifier system to match each
student to each teacher within the system.
(v)Student-level graduation and dropout
data.
(vi)Inclusion of data on risk factors for
individual students, including such indicators as non-promotion mobility,
interaction with the criminal justice system involving the school, eligibility
for a free or reduced price lunch under the Richard B. Russell National School
Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1751 et seq.), and such other factors as may be useful in
targeting appropriate services, interventions, and supports for at-risk
students.
(B)Devise or employ assessment tests to
monitor the progress of all students in grade 1 through grade 12 in all the
elementary schools and secondary schools served by the local educational
agency.
(C)Rate the effectiveness of individual
teachers, administrators, and schools within the local educational agency,
using when feasible, as 1 measure, a value-added system, a statistical method
to measure the influence of a teacher or school on the rate of academic
progress of students. The local educational agency shall evaluate 1 year’s
worth of academic growth for each student using as the reference standard the
national norm gain for each grade level, or the statewide or district-wide
value-added gain.
(D)Assess the effectiveness of individual
teachers, administrators, and schools, using when feasible, as 1 measure, the
value-added system described in subparagraph (C), including a measure of
progress toward the goal of every student becoming proficient in reading,
writing, and mathematics, and a measure of the progress of students through
coursework needed to gain the knowledge and skills necessary for eventual
entrance into a postsecondary degree or certification program.
(E)Award incentives for effective teaching or
school leadership that may be linked to the results of the assessments under
subparagraph (D), including a measure of progress toward the goal of every
student becoming proficient in reading, writing, and mathematics, and a measure
of the progress of students through coursework needed to gain the knowledge and
skills necessary for eventual entrance into a postsecondary degree or
certification program.
(2)Removing
obstacles to innovationThe
local educational agency shall work with local teacher representatives or
unions and other community partners to achieve the following:
(A)Equitable distribution of effective
teachers to all students within the agency to ensure that poor and minority
students are not disproportionately taught by teachers who are—
(i)poorly trained in the subject being
taught;
(ii)less likely to have significant teaching
experience; and
(iii)less likely to excel in other measures of
teacher effectiveness.
(B)Equitable distribution of expenditures to
rectify policies and practices that guide teacher pay and have an adverse
impact on disadvantaged students and schools. This may include the
consideration of teacher salaries and policies of salary averaging in meeting
agency-wide goals based on high expectations for student academic
achievement.
(C)Modification of staffing procedures and
collective bargaining rules to provide greater flexibility for agency and
school leaders to establish effective school-level staffing, to fairly balance
the distribution of experienced teachers, and to recruit, place, and retain new
teachers within schools served by the agency, including the completion of
staffing decisions in a timely fashion to provide effective planning for
student academic achievement.
(3)The local educational agency shall evaluate
and reward teacher effectiveness as follows:
(A)The local
educational agency shall evaluate teacher effectiveness by working with unions
and other community stakeholders to establish a metric to determine the
effectiveness of teachers, administrators, and schools served by the local
educational agency. The metric may be used as the basis for systems of pay,
incentives, and placement within the local educational agency. Such a metric
may include the following items:
(i)Teachers may be rated
for meeting annual objectives that are monitored by evaluating student
improvement in value-added assessments. These evaluations may include
value-added data averaged for a period of several years.
(ii)Measuring
teams of teachersMeasures
may be used to track the progress and reward teams of teachers (such as a
particular grade level or subject area) to encourage teamwork and sharing of
best practices, and draw on similar effective approaches to financial rewards
in the private sector.
(iii)
(I)Professional
evaluation shall be based on formal and informal observations of teacher
effectiveness. The ratings shall be prepared by the supervisor of each teacher,
based on observations of such domains of teaching as the following:
- (aa)Planning and preparation, including
demonstrating knowledge of content, pedagogy, and assessment, including the use
of formative assessment to improve student learning.
- (bb)Classroom and school environment, which
establishes a culture for learning, using when appropriate, schoolwide positive
behavioral intervention and support.
- (cc)Instruction, which clearly and accurately
engages students in learning.
- (dd)Professional responsibilities, including
appropriate interaction with families of students, and with professional
colleagues, which requires a demonstrated ability to work with mentors and
instructional leaders to improve the teacher's teaching and resultant student
learning.
- (ee)Fair analysis of gains in student academic
achievement over time.
(II)A teacher who receives
an unsatisfactory professional evaluation under subclause (I) shall comply with
an improvement plan, developed by the teacher and the school in which the
teacher teaches or the local educational agency and provided by such school or
agency.
(B)Based on measures
of teacher effectiveness and the needs of the school and the local educational
agency, the local educational agency shall work with teacher and community
representatives to develop a differentiated pay scale to provide incentives for
effective teaching, teaching specific subject areas, and teaching in specific
schools, including hard-to-staff schools or schools with high proportions of
students who have been achieving at levels below the local educational agency
or State average.
(4)
(A)The local educational
agency shall establish a Teacher Academy, based upon models of successful
residency-based teacher training and induction programs, as a mechanism to
train teachers for success in such local educational agency. Each Teacher
Academy shall be headed by a director who shall award grants to eligible
individuals to attend such Teacher Academy.
(B)An individual may
be eligible for a grant to attend a Teacher Academy if the individual is a
recent college graduate or mid-career professional from outside the field of
education, possessing strong content knowledge or a record of achievement, or
other such individual at the discretion of the Secretary.
(C)An individual who is eligible under
subparagraph (B) and who desires a grant under this paragraph shall submit an
application to the Teacher Academy.
(D)The director of the
Teacher Academy shall establish criteria for selection of individuals to
receive grants under this paragraph, based on such domains of teaching as the
following characteristics shared by highly-effective teachers:
(i)Comprehensive subject knowledge or record
of accomplishment in an area outside of education.
(ii)Strong verbal and written communication
skills.
(iii)Other attributes linked to effective
teaching.
(E)An individual who
receives a grant under this paragraph shall enroll in the program of the
Teacher Academy, which shall include the following:
(i)A 1-year residency-based program of
teaching in a school served by the local educational agency, under the
supervision of a mentor teacher who will instruct the resident in planning and
preparation, instruction of students, management of the classroom environment,
and other professional responsibilities. Alternatively, the first year of
full-time teaching may be substituted for such residency-based program if all
of the other requirements of this section are satisfied and if the full-time
teaching is supported by a school, university, or nonprofit organization with a
strong track record of helping new teachers get strong academic achievement
results for students.
(ii)A living stipend or salary for the period
of residency.
(iii)Concurrent instruction from a partner
college, State-approved organization, or school of education at an institution
of higher education in pedagogy classes necessary for certification as a
teacher.
(iv)Ongoing mentoring and coaching during the
first 2 years of induction into classroom teaching.
(F)Placement in
hard-to-staff school
(i)An eligible
individual who receives a grant under this paragraph shall teach in a
hard-to-staff school served by the local educational agency for a period of 3
years.
(ii)If an eligible individual does not complete
the teaching requirement described in clause (i), such individual shall repay
to the local educational agency a pro rata portion of the grant amount for the
amount of teaching time the individual did not complete.
(5)
(A)The local educational
agency shall establish a career ladder for teachers in schools served by the
local educational agency.
(B)
(i)In order to progress
to higher rungs on the career ladder, a teacher or school leader shall prove
effective at the teacher or school leader's current level under a set of
criteria established by the local educational agency.
(ii)Increase in
role and compensationIn
progressing to higher rungs on the career ladder, a teacher or school leader
shall—
(I)accept an increasing role in assessing and
helping to improve the teaching effectiveness of other teachers in the school;
and
(II)be offered increased compensation.
(iii)Collective
bargaining agreementThe base
salary and career ladder increments of increased compensation may be
established in a collective bargaining agreement between the local educational
agency and representatives of teachers.
(iv)A career ladder may include the following
steps:
(I)Novice teachers are
teachers in their first years in the profession. This shall be the career entry
stage and include professional employees with initial teaching certificates.
Novice teachers shall receive induction and mentoring as described in subclause
(III) until the novice teachers progress to become career teachers. Such
induction and mentoring shall focus on improving the instructional and
professional skills of the novice teachers. Novice teachers shall receive
periodic performance reviews as a result of regular observations, using the
criteria of teacher effectiveness set forth in paragraph (3)(A).
(II)Career teachers are
teachers who have served several years as novice teachers and have received an
advanced teaching certification or master’s degree, as determined by State
certification requirements. Novice teachers may progress to this stage of the
career ladder after receiving satisfactory reviews of teacher effectiveness as
outlined in paragraph (3)(A) and receiving an advanced teaching certification
or master's degree.
(III)Mentor teachers are
teachers selected by local school administrators under clear criteria
established at the local educational agency level, including superior
assessment of their teaching effectiveness as described in paragraph (3)(A).
Mentor teachers shall have extra responsibilities as teacher leaders and
teacher coaches, including roles in induction and mentoring of novice
teachers.
(IV)Master teachers are
mentor teachers who have received superior reviews of their mentoring and
supervisory role and assume additional responsibilities and teacher mentoring
and leadership roles.
(C)The role of mentor
and master teachers shall include establishing, within each school, a learning
community in which all individuals are expected to continually improve their
capacity to advance student learning, using a shared set of instructional
principles or teaching strategies. The learning community shall require, in
each school, continuing professional development, based on student academic
achievement and behavioral outcomes, embedding in each school system for
on-site coaching, mentoring, and study groups in which teachers work together
to improve the instructional program for students.
(6)The local
educational agency shall include a specific plan to improve the school
leadership in schools served by the agency, with the eventual goal of an
effective principal in every school. The plan should include provisions to
address the following topics:
(A)Responsibility
and role of principalsA plan
to support the primary role of the principal as the instructional leader in the
school responsible for ensuring teaching effectiveness and student academic
achievement schoolwide. Such plan shall include involving principals in
planning systems and strategies for curricular, classroom, and schoolwide
student behavioral interventions and supports, and for establishing mechanisms
for using student academic achievement data to drive instructional decisions.
The plan shall also address ways to give principals significant responsibility
for decisions regarding teacher hiring and placement decisions.
(B)Creating the
pipeline of future principalsA plan for strategies and criteria for
rigorous recruitment, selection, and pre-service training and induction for new
principals who can effectively take on the responsibilities described in
subparagraph (A). As with training teachers, the agency may establish a program
for principal training, including a residency or internship with an exemplary
principal in the agency. The program shall have explicit expectations and
performance-based indicators of outcomes to ensure that each resident is
competent in assuming instructional leadership responsibilities. In the case of
an agency in which several principals are training as a cohort, the agency
shall promote the use of cohort participant groups to discuss best practices
and maintain focus on outcome assessments.
(C)Systematically
transforming the principalship districtwideAn assessment of how the agency currently
handles each major policy and practice affecting the expectations set for the
principalship and a plan for how the agency will align the principalship to the
goals of this Act, including recruitment, selection, training, evaluation,
compensation, management, and job design of the principalship and other school
leadership roles.
(D)A plan for an external evaluation to
examine the impact of principals on driving measurable gains in student
academic achievement.
(d)Flexibility for
small rural districtsThe
Secretary may give a local educational agency that is a small, rural local
educational agency (as determined by the Secretary) that receives a grant under
this Act flexibility in carrying out the activities required under subsection
(c), including a waiver of the requirement to establish a Teacher Academy under
subsection (c)(4).
(e)The local
educational agency may include a plan to support new schools, including charter
schools or contract schools, or for networks of public schools within the local
educational agency, serving predominantly low-income populations, which are
sponsored by universities, education management organizations, or other
nonprofit entities, using—
(1)funds appropriated to carry out this Act,
in coordination with the charter school programs under subpart 1 of part B of
title V of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 7221
et seq.); or
(2)funds from State, local, or private
sources.
(f)A local educational agency that receives a
grant under this Act shall submit to the Secretary a report on the progress of
such agency toward completion of the goals of the agency. Such report shall be
available for public view on the website of the Department. Based on such
reports, the Secretary may terminate grant funding to an agency for
unsatisfactory performance.
(g)
(1)There shall be
established in accordance with paragraph (2), a peer review panel to—
(A)review applications submitted under
subsection (b);
(B)submit to the Secretary evaluations of the
applications reviewed under subparagraph (A); and
(C)evaluate reports described in subsection
(f).
(2)
(A)Subject to
subparagraph (B), members of the peer review panel shall be selected by the
Secretary, in collaboration with the Majority Leader of the Senate, the
Minority Leader of the Senate, the Majority Leader of the House of
Representatives, and the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives and
shall include representatives from foundations, universities, and other
entities with a record of involvement in local educational agency reform
efforts.
(B)National
governors associationTwo
members of the peer review panel shall be selected by the National Governors
Association.
(h)Authorization
of appropriations
(1)There are authorized
to be appropriated to carry out this Act $1,500,000,000 for each of fiscal
years 2008 through 2012.
(2)The Secretary shall
redirect amounts appropriated to carry out programs under title II of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6601 et seq.) that
the Secretary determines are ineffective, to carry out this Act.