The city awards preference points to Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Southeast Asians, Korean Americans, Filipinos, Asian Indians, African Americans, Latinos, Arab Americans, Native Americans, nonminority women and now, possibly, even Persian Americans.
They determined the stronger half by watching which way the fish turned to avoid a predator: Turning right 80% of the time meant the right eye--and thus the left brain hemisphere--was dominant, whereas showing no turn preference pointed to a nonlateralized brain.
In those cases, the schools would be free to forego the competitive preference points.
For example, government agencies can provide preference points on competitive grants to schools that commit to using proven programs.
Requests for proposals routinely include competitive preference points for criteria a lot less important than whether the program schools are proposing to use have been proven to work.
But next time anyone thinks of doing something on the scale of Striving Readers, I hope they will provide preference points in the application process for applicants who propose to use approaches with solid evidence of effectiveness.
Readers of this blog may recall that I have long advocated the provision of, say, two competitive preference points in discretionary grants for proposals promising to use proven programs when such programs are available.
For example, seven competitive funding programs would give preference points to applications with evidence meeting one of those categories, and a replacement for School Improvement Grants requires local educational agencies to include "evidence-based interventions" in their comprehensive support and improvement plans.
Title II (professional development) has begun requiring grantees to have at least moderate evidence of effectiveness and gives a lot of competitive preference points for programs with strong evidence.
The new definitions in EDGAR make it relatively easy for the Department of Education to put competitive preference points or other encouragements for use of proven programs into requests for proposals.
