Race to Top did not work, Brownsville, Warrington schools continue to fail

In 2011, the Escambia County School District was awarded an $8.3 million Race to the Top grant. The district was one of 35 in the state that received a grant. The funds were supposed to be transformative helping our most economically-disadvantaged students.

Gulf Power CEO Susan Story wrote in an viewpoint supporting the grant that of the “half of the $8 million would be targeted toward low-income students.”

The $8.3 million was to be used to implement three Race to the Top initiatives:

• Using data to improve instruction;
• professional development; and
• turning around the lowest-achieving schools.

Seven years since the award, Escambia County has failed to turn around any of its lowest-achieving schools. The number of schools has increased.  As we reported earlier, nearly half of the public elementary schools in Escambia County are on the state’s 300 Low Performing Elementary Schools list. Half of the district’s middle schools are in the bottom 10 percent in the state.

Low-income students are still struggling, and Superintendent Malcolm Thomas appears to be have little expectation of improving their schools improving.

In an interview on WUWF radio: “If you really look at those schools, their zip code is probably all the same,” Thomas said, referencing the corridor of Escambia County that includes Brownsville and Warrington. “When you move out of that area, you don’t have as many problems with school grades; they’re making A’s and B’s as you would expect.”

We looked at the fourth grade Language Arts scores of the district’s lowest performing schools and found little progress has been made over the past three years.

Nearly 90 percent of the fourth graders at Montclair aren’t proficient in the language arts subjects. Weis and Holm have 80 percent below the standard.