The U.S. Department of Education is going to send a letter to state school chiefs, inviting them to propose growth models for the latest round of the department’s pilot project.
Here’s the twist: The department will approve every application that meets its criteria, Keri Briggs, the assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education, told me.
When Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings created the growth-model experiment in 2005, she capped participation at 10 states. She has approved nine states so far.
Now Ms. Briggs said the department will remove the cap if necessary.
The department will keep its rules for approving growth-model proposals. The most important one is that students must demonstrate growth that puts them on a pace to be proficient by the end of the 2013-14 school year.
UPDATE: This post originally said that the department sent the growth-model today (Dec. 6). Now, I’ve been told that the department has postponed sending it until tomorrow. Check back at this space for a post on the topic tomorrow, complete with links to the letter and my story about it.
