Education Reform Plan Relies on Outside Funding

An action plan released today aims to make Tennessee’s schools top in the Southeast by 2014.

Initial funding for the plan hinges on donations from the private sector and federal grants that haven’t yet been awarded.

The education group SCORE is lead by former senator Bill Frist. Its five-year timeline sets a number of specific goals for the state. For instance, the group wants to raise the standards for scoring well on achievement tests and put that data into teachers’ hands more quickly. It also calls for using those scores when evaluating and granting tenure to teachers.

Frist says the plan shouldn’t cost the government any more in the short term. But it does require new money. Frist says SCORE has built a coalition of politicians, teachers, and business leaders that ought to attract some of the nation’s biggest philanthropies.

“People like Eli Broad Foundation, the Wallace Foundation, the Gates Foundation- all of a sudden we can get that attention. We’re serious, we’re there, we’re players, we’re committed.”

The plan calls for beginning several reform projects with money from the federal government’s Race to the Top program. But those grants are no sure thing. Application packets haven’t been sent out to states yet, winners won’t be announced until next year, and it’s not yet clear how many states will share the $4.3 billion.