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For the following programs, funds will be made available beginning in fall 2009, and will be conditioned upon receipt of further information that will be outlined in future guidance: Title I School Improvement Grants ($3 billion). Educational Technology State Grants ($650 million). The following funds will be made available beginning in fall 2009, based on the quality of the applications submitted through a competitive grant process. Guidelines for these funds will be posted shortly: Teacher Incentive Fund ($200 million). Teacher Quality Enhancement ($100 million). Statewide Data Systems ($250 million).

Under the $5 billion in SFSF reserved for the Secretary of Education to make competitive grants, the Department will conduct a national competition among states for a $4.35 billion state incentive "Race to the Top" fund to improve education quality and results statewide. The Race to the Top fund will help states drive substantial gains in student achievement by supporting states making dramatic progress on the four reform goals described above and effectively using other ARRA funds. $650 million of the $5 billion will be set aside in the "Invest in What Works and Innovation" fund and be available through a competition to districts and non-profit groups with a strong track record of results. Guidelines and applications for the competitive funds will be posted expeditiously. Race to the Top grants will be made in two rounds—fall 2009 and spring 2010).

LEAs that optimize the use of the varied funding streams provided under ARRA

ClassWish, a nonprofit, makes it easy for teachers and schools to create Wish Lists of the supplies they need for students to excel. Parents and others in the community see exactly what is needed and contribute online. Together, we can make a powerful difference in our children's lives

by Grace Rubenstein AUDIO SLIDE SHOW: Lawrence Township Narrated by Grace Rubenstein It is one thing to create change inside a classroom -- the best teachers, masters of their one-room domains, break from tradition and foster innovative learning environments all the time. A harder task, which a growing number of schools are proving can be done, is to convert an entire school to embrace new practices that fulfill the changing educational demands of our age. Then comes the next -- and the messiest -- frontier, the entity most resistant to cohesive change: the school district. Five years ago, administrators in the Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township, in the northeast corner of Indianapolis, tackled this challenge. With a $5.9 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, a local philanthropic organization, they set out to transform the prevailing vision of what preK-12 education is for -- as one district official put it, "to meet the needs of the kids' future, and not the teachers' past." They decided that they needed to teach a modern set of skills in a student-centered way. Critical thinking, self-direction, and cultural competency, along with fluency in technology, information resources, and visual and graphic presentations. These were the elements of digital age literacy the district believed its students would need in the twenty-first century. Educating students for the new era demanded not only new content, they believed, but also new teaching methods. Teachers needed to recast themselves as facilitators, and to demand that students take more ownership of their learning. Into Focus Visit classrooms in Lawrence Township -- at least those where the change has caught on -- and you'll see kids inventing their own projects, using computers in daily work, involving themselves in community initiatives, and inquiring on their own about continued . . . 1234567next ›last » This article was also published in Edutopia Magazine, June 2007