Data and The Race to the Top

According to Wikipedia:
Race to the Top, abbreviated R2T, RTTT or RTT, is a $4.35 billion United States Department of Education contest created to spur innovation and reforms in state and local district K-12 education. It is funded by the ED Recovery Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and was announced by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009. States were awarded points for satisfying certain educational policies, such as performance-based standards (often referred to as an Annual professional performance review) for teachers and principals, complying with nationwide standards, promoting charter schools and privatization of education, and computerization.

State applications for funding were scored on selection criteria worth a total of 500 points. In order of weight, the criteria were^[1]:

• Great Teachers and Leaders (138 total points)
  • Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance (58 points)
  • Ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals (25 points)
  • Providing high-quality pathways for aspiring teachers and principals (21 points)
  • Providing effective support to teachers and principals (20 points)
  • Improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs (14 points)
• State Success Factors (125 total points)
  • Articulating State's education reform agenda and LEAs' participation in it (65 points)
  • Building strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up, and sustain proposed plans (30 points)
  • Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps (30 points)
• Standards and Assessments (70 total points)
  • Developing and adopting common standards (from the Common Core State Standards Initiative) (40 points)
  • Supporting the transition to enhanced standards and high-quality assessments (20 points)
  • Developing and implementing common, high-quality assessments (10 points)
• General Selection Criteria (55 total points)
  • Ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charters and other innovative schools (40 points)
  • Making education funding a priority (10 points)
  • Demonstrating other significant reform conditions (5 points)
• Turning Around the Lowest-Achieving Schools (50 total points)
  • Turning around the lowest-achieving schools (40 points)
  • Intervening in the lowest-achieving schools and LEAs (10 points)
• Data Systems to Support Instruction (47 total points)
  • Fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system (24 points)
  • Using data to improve instruction (18 points)
  • Accessing and using State data (5 points)

In addition to the 485 possible points from the criteria above, the prioritization of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education is worth another fifteen points for a possible total of 500.^[1]

After viewing this i thought it was interesting that a states effort to include Data systems to support Instruction was only worth 47 points from the totally 500. Also, I was wondering how a state would prove that they were implementing some of these points. For example, how would a state prove that they are Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps? The best is improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance (58 points). How then do you show that teachers are improving. Should this improvement be based on the data? Not all schools are using NWEA so what data are they using. Is this data even useful?