The federal government rejected a $15 million grant proposal from the Vermont Department of Education on Tuesday.
The grant would have provided funding for student data collection from Vermont’s schools.
Now the state — and local schools required by the federal government to produce the data as a condition for accepting federal stimulus money — must buy and implement new data collection systems on their own.
State Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca said Vermont’s application for the funding was turned down because it provided funding to schools for the purchase and management of the systems.
He said he supports the idea of tracking school success but wishes the federal government would pay for it.
Similar types of programs put in place in local school systems have cost as much as $100,000, he said.
The federal government awarded a total of $250 million in the technology grant competition.
In a year when the state has asked local school districts to cut their budgets by $23 million, or at least 2 percent for fiscal year 2011 and fiscal year 2012, that additional $15 million in unfunded mandates from the federal government could become a real hardship for local schools, according to Vilaseca.
“It’s a tough time to ask schools to come up with the money,” Vilaseca said.
Memo to Arne Duncan re: LDS grants
Twenty states received grants for the student tracking systems, and only one small rural state – Maine – was among the winners, according to Vilaseca.
Vermont is one of five states that has not received any funding for data collection.
Vilaseca says the U.S. Department of Education’s decision will lead to a widening technology gap between rural and urban states.
“We are very disappointed we were unable to secure this money for our state,” Vilaseca wrote in an e-mail: “I see this as a validation of my concerns that the competitive nature of federal education funding is leaving several rural states, and their students, behind.”
Vilaseca said such systems can cost schools tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and manage. He said he had hoped the grant could be used to defray costs incurred by local schools.
“This is not an auction,” Vilaseca said, in reference to the competitive nature of the grants. “This is what it costs if we want to pay for schools.”
The state agreed to collect the data when it accepted $77.2 million in funding over a two-year period (fiscal years 2010 and 2011) from the federal government as part of the stimulus package.
Read the department’s overview of the impact of the education stimulus funds on Vermont.
And though the state already collects reams of data that track student performance, Vilaseca said there isn’t a comprehensive system in place that would satisfy the federal requirement.
The U.S. Department of Education requires states to gather extensive data, Vilaseca said, that can be used to measure student, teacher and school performance – not only through a child’s preschool, primary and secondary school years, but also beyond high school graduation and into adulthood. According to a press release from the department, the program will link K-12 education information with pre-K, postsecondary, and workforce data.
This information collection program is known as a longitudinal data system, and it will be used by the state and federal governments to track long-term demographic and school performance trends; to measure the impact of education on regional economies; and to gauge the performance of schools and teachers, according to Vilaseca.
Arnie Duncan, secretary of the federal agency, described it as a core reform “at the heart of our agenda.”
“Tracking student progress from birth through college helps teachers in the classroom, helps principals manage and improve their schools, and helps parents better understand the unique educational needs of their child,” Duncan said in a statement. “We are eager to work with states to put these systems in place.”
The full list of award winners includes: Arkansas- $9.8 million; Colorado- $17.4 million; Florida – $10.0 million; Illinois – $11.9 million; Kansas – $9.1 million; Maine – $7.3 million; Massachusetts – $13.0 million; Michigan – $10.6 million; Minnesota – $12.4 million; Mississippi – $7.6 million; New York – $19.7 million; Ohio – $5.1 million; Oregon – $10.5 million; Pennsylvania – $14.3 million; South Carolina – $14.9 million; Texas – $18.2 million; Utah – $9.6 million; Virginia – $17.5 million; Washington – $17.3 million; Wisconsin – $13.8 million.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia , Puerto Rico , and the US Virgin Islands applied.
