K-12 Leaders Provide Five Specific Recommendations to State and Local Decision-Makers For High-Leverage Investments of Federal

K-12 Leaders Provide Five Specific Recommendations to State and Local Decision-Makers

For High-Leverage Investments of Federal Stimulus Dollars to Raise Student Performance

The Coalition for Student Achievement today released five specific recommendations for governors, chief state school officers, superintendents and other state and local education leaders on how to best invest the federal stimulus dollars to leverage significant increases in student performance.

These recommendations were developed by a bipartisan group of more than 30 national education policy leaders and practitioners following an April convening sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation in response to requests from state and district education leaders on how to best invest the federal stimulus dollars. The recommendations were generated from the practices and policies that will most likely dramatically raise student achievement in America, based on the group's decades of experience in education reform.

The resulting recommendations now available at: http://www.coalitionforstudentachievement.org/economic_rec.asp are intended to build upon federal guidance by providing detailed, specific, bold steps that state and local leaders can take to use the one-time American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment to yield powerful, long-term student achievement results. If implemented in conjunction with efforts to save jobs, these recommendations can provide an appropriate balance between short- and long-term gains in the American public education system.

The federal government's unprecedented $100 billion investment in our nation's public schools offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform public education so that millions more young Americans graduate high school ready for college or careers. For its $100 billion investment, the American public rightly expects to see real educational results. In the face of pressure to preserve the status quo, these recommendations are intended to help decision-makers take advantage of stimulus dollars by setting in place new institutional levers that will truly enable our nation's schools to move beyond the status quo to prepare students for college, work, and life.

Under the five recommendations provided in this guide, by 2012, Americans should expect to see:

At least 40 states adopting a common core of fewer, clearer, higher, evidence-based, college- and career-ready standards.
Students, parents, teachers, principals, district and state leaders using robust, user-friendly and timely data to know what is working for students, what is not, and what additional help students need.
Teachers receiving clear, differentiated feedback from meaningful professional teacher evaluation systems in every state and school district, which shines a spotlight on effectiveness and provides teachers with the support they need to improve.
Neighborhoods in every state that are currently served by the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools will have new, quality education options, including public charter schools, because failing schools have been closed and turned around.
Students who are at least two years behind academically in reading, writing, and mathematics will receive additional targeted and intensive interventions that include a longer school day and year, and they will learn from the most effective teachers so that they can catch up quickly.

The Coalition for Student Achievement is comprised of 50 organizations that are committed to ensuring that federal education funds available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are leveraged to both stimulate economic recovery and drive education reform that will dramatically improve U.S. student achievement. The members of the coalition are engaged with federal, state and local policy leaders to increase U.S. K-12 student performance, raise high school graduation rates and better prepare American students for college and the 21^st century workforce. For more information, please visit www.coalitionforstudentachievement.org.