Race to Tops $4.35 Billion Education Fund Chooses Few States
Forty states and Washington, D.C. applied to the Race to the Top fund, the largest pool of federal discretionary education money in U.S. history. The grants, to be announced today, reward school systems for finding ways to strengthen academic standards, recruit better teachers, collect data on student performance and turn around failing schools that can be replicated across the country.
Most states wont get any money because their proposals arent tough enough, Grover J. Whitehurst, who served in the Education Department under former President George W. Bush, said in an interview. Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee may prevail because of their use of technology to track student achievement over time, he said.
“Underlying the Obama administrations specific proposals is an agenda for dramatic change of the public schools,” said Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, which analyzes U.S. public policy. “The reviewers will have been asking: Is the state willing and able to change the status quo?”
There will be “a lot more losers than winners,” Duncan said in testimony yesterday before the House Education and Labor Committee.
California, Michigan, Tennessee and Massachusetts are among the states vying for federal dollars that have passed laws removing barriers to policies favored by Duncan, including charter schools and merit pay for teachers.
Data Warehouse
Florida has collected student information from kindergarten through high school since the 1980s, and, in 2001, began adding preschool and graduate data into one data “warehouse,” Jeff Sellers, an acting deputy commissioner in the states education department, said in an interview.
Florida applied for more than $1.14 billion from the Race to the Top fund. The state would use the money, in part, to develop early warning systems to flag failing students and to evaluate teachers, Sellers said.
Speaking before Congress yesterday, Duncan singled out Louisiana for its efforts to use student-tracking systems to evaluate the effectiveness of both teachers and the education colleges that train them. The state applied for $314 million.
Substantial Change
Tennessee, another state that has invested in student data- tracking, is seeking $500 million from the fund. To qualify for the money, the state passed legislation in January that allows school districts to tie pay to teacher performance — in part, using that student performance data.
States will have the chance to apply for a second round of funding in June.
In yesterdays House hearing, U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, said districts in his state were changing their policies, so Indiana would qualify for “Race to the Top” money even though the schools may never “get a dime.”
He criticized potential federal intrusion into schools, which have been under local control in the U.S.
“Im not part of a federal school board,” Souder said.
While local schools may make their own policy decisions, the administration wanted to back the most successful programs, Duncan said. He said he was pleased to see many states and districts making changes without getting any money.
“You havent seen that kind of movement in decades,” Duncan said.