Scoring system for school aid

Educators argue endlessly about the merits of one idea or another to improve schools. But with billions of dollars at stake, the Obama administration Thursday will lay out a novel federal system for keeping score, the Washington Post reported.

Making education funding a priority? Good for 10 points. Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps? That's worth 30. Developing and adopting common academic standards, turning around the lowest-achieving schools and ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charter schools: Those are worth 40 each.

But improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance is worth more than any specific improvement: 58 points.

Those are the priorities in the Education Department's rulebook for the unprecedented $4.35 billion Race to the Top reform competition. States and the District of Columbia are invited to compete. Bids will be rated on the point system, which Education Secretary Arne Duncan approved. A perfect bid will score 500 points and could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The call to action on teacher-principal improvement, which means factoring student test score growth into job evaluations, is likely to draw intense scrutiny from unions.