Less than a week after Connecticut was rejected from Round 1 of Race to the Top, lawmakers introduced a suite of trailblazing legislation that would make Connecticut competitive in the second round of the Race.

H.B. 5493, “An act concerning strategic planning in state education policy and charter school funding” would eliminate the use of the annual state appropriation process to fund charter schools and adopt a “money follows the child” funding mechanism instead phased in over several years.

Text of this bill is available here.

S.B. 440, “An act concerning school districts and teacher performance programs,” would institute a better data system that defines principal and teacher effectiveness in terms of student achievement growth and links teacher and principal training programs to the classroom effectiveness of their graduates.

Text of this bill is available here.

Section three of H.B. 5491, “An act concerning certain school district reforms to reduce the achievement gap in Connecticut,” requires schools districts to incorporate student achievement growth into their teacher and principal evaluation systems by July 1, 2011.

Text of this bill is available here.

Each bill will have a public hearing in front of the education committee beginning at 3:30pm on Monday, March 15.

“The Connecticut General Assembly is moving quickly and with force to make up for Connecticut’s failure in the first round of Race to the Top,” said Alex Johnston, chief executive officer of ConnCAN. “With this kind of leadership, Connecticut is picking up steam for the second round of this competition.”

The introduction of these bills comes on the heels of the education committee’s first concrete step to boost Connecticut’s competitiveness for the Race to the Top, the introduction of H.B. 5421 to establish alternative certification pathways for school administrators.

Detailed policy goals and other information are available on www.ourracetothetop.org.