11:45am | Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and other statewide education leaders joined local politicians and officials from the Long Beach School Unified District to sign a second attempt at applying for federal Race To The Top education funds. The signing took place at Lafayette Elementary School in Long Beach, recognized for its achievements in improving Academic Performance Index (API) test scores from 500 to 800 in the past ten years.

The state of California was denied by the program in its first application attempt last year. This year, state education leaders decided not to apply as a state but to apply just seven school districts for about $700 million in public education funding. The LBUSD is included among those seven district that showed exemplary performance.

The state’s second attempt at receiving Race To The Top funding prompted a predictable “I’ll be back” joke from Governor Schwarzenegger.

“This is Round Two,” he said. “We have decided to focus our efforts only on districts firmly committed to reform. This is what makes this different. Our detailed plan was put together by a group of seven of our state’s finest school superintendents.”

Long Beach Superintendent Chris Steinhauser estimated that if approved, the LBUSD would receive approximately between $18-26 million of that funding.

Among those in attendance were local education leaders such as Long Beach City College (LBCC) President Eloy Oakley and California State University (CSULB) Long Beach President F. King Alexander (pictured at right). Oakley said that they wanted to show support for the application and explained that any good news for one education system in Long Beach is good for all.

Schwarzenegger repeatedly stated that throwing money at California’s public education problems will not provide solutions, instead pushing for specific reforms that are already underway at the districts involved in the Race To The Top application. In Long Beach, he said, it is the commitment to teaching curriculum based on detailed analyzation of testing data that set the district apart.

“[Lafayette Elementary] used the data to help teachers craft lesson plans,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “We want to see this all over the state of California. This is what this is all about.”

Some statewide teachers associations refused to lend support to the funding application. The Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) also has not lent their support, though Steinhauser said that the reason is due to a lengthy approval process that TALB has not yet completed.

The California Teachers Association does not endorse the funding application, which calls for strict reforms to teacher evaluation and the use of student testing data to both review a teacher’s performance and mandate changes to their lesson plans. Some have argued that adhering to reforms proposed in the application could bind districts to costly practices that will cause budget problems down the line.

However those reforms are the reason that Long Beach was included in the application and one of the main reasons that the LBUSD has been nationally recognized for improvement in recent years, Steinhauser said. The proposed reforms are already underway in Long Beach and any received Race To The Top funding would simply allow the LBUSD to continue what is already working, while also creating new opportunities such as advanced professional development for teachers.