Race to the Top -- and to Our Future

Statement

Employers and educators want the same thing: for students to graduate from our public schools ready to succeed.

In the schools and the majority of Delaware businesses that I visit, I hear the same wish: for our kids to graduate and be able to build upon the hard work, great teaching, and high expectations from their parents, teachers, school districts and state.

Because when companies can move their jobs to another country, we are in a critical race with other nations. A race to provide top talent with the tools, knowledge and productivity that ensures that higher-tech, higher wage jobs of tomorrow will be found here.

Last year was the first full school year since winners were announced of another Race -- the federal government's Race-to-the-Top competition for education reform, where the federal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his team looked at states' plans to improve their public schools and awarded additional resources to make those changes possible.

The end of a race is usually a time to relax -- but the end of Race-to-the-Top meant states needed to keep running, to keep making changes real and keep ahead of our international competition.

I'll let other Governors talk about their states, but here in Delaware, Race-to-the-Top support is helping to fund plans we had underway to make significant changes in underperforming schools -- schools that are now part of our Partnership Zones. By giving teachers more time to collaborate across subject areas; by putting data coaches in schools to help teachers evaluate how they can best help students and by engaging with parents and families, we are making progress.

We've raised expectations around what it means to be proficient in core subjects like reading and math; started testing more frequently so students can be measured against their own progress instead of against a snapshot of the class that came before them, and we've helped lead the nation in the adoption of Common Core Standards so a Delaware diploma can be recognized in any state in the nation as a symbol of achievement.

This race for our economic future is neither quick, nor easy but the direction is clear and we are running hard together - teachers and students, parents and principals, administrators and Delaware's employers- to make sure our schools and our state -- keep moving forward.

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