Race to Top Part of Ed-News Marathon
I joined what seemed like half of the Washington ed world today for Arne Duncan’s speech at the National Press Club, where he winnowed the field of contenders vying for $3.4 billion in Race to the Top money to 18 states and the District of Columbia.
Based on how they fare on a complicated 500-point scoring rubric, the second-round winners will be picked from the following finalists: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
Duncan predicts 10 to 15 winners when the final cut is made in September. If bigger states—whose proposals require more money—come out on top, the number of winners is likely to be on the smaller end.
For education reporters, the secretary’s announcement of Race to the Top finalists is a milepost in what is shaping up to be a busy stretch of news on the federal-funding front. But Race to the Top, as high-profile as it is, is just one pot of Washington money that ed reporters should keep their eyes on.
As Duncan noted in his speech, the department will soon be unveiling the winners of the $650 million Investing in Innovation (i3) competition for school districts and their partners. The department attracted 1,700 applicants for that pot of funds.
News is also coming on who gets the big bucks (some $600 million, according to Education Week's Steve Sawchuk) available through the Teacher Incentive Fund. Those grants, as Duncan put it in his speech, are “for districts willing to try new compensation programs that reward excellence in the classroom or provide incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools and subjects.” Definitely worth watching.
And states around the country are doling out some $3.5 billion in federal school-improvement grants available for efforts to turn around low-performing schools.
I’ll leave it to others to double-check Duncan’s math. But at today’s lunch, he said that through those and other programs, including for charter schools and new data systems, "nearly $10 billion is going out to support education reform." And he said that is "over and above the billions of dollars we distribute in formula grants to support low-income students and other special populations.”
In his speech, Duncan touted a wave of changes in state education policies that he say add up to a “quiet revolution.” His colleague Rahm Emanuel has used that phrase to describe the administration’s education efforts; that’s the first time I’ve heard it from Duncan himself.
He said that win or lose, states were better off for having assembled applications for Race to the Top: “In support of those applications, 13 states altered laws to foster the growth of charter schools and 17 states reformed teacher evaluation systems by including—among other things—student achievement.”
I’m wondering what the reaction will be in states that didn’t make the cut. Will they agree with Duncan? Or will pressure mount to roll back changes made to score Race to the Top points?
We want to find out, so don’t forget to post links to coverage of Race to the Top, i3, TIF grants, and other stimulus news at www.EdMoney.org.
Based on how they fare on a complicated 500-point scoring rubric, the second-round winners will be picked from the following finalists: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
Duncan predicts 10 to 15 winners when the final cut is made in September. If bigger states—whose proposals require more money—come out on top, the number of winners is likely to be on the smaller end.
For education reporters, the secretary’s announcement of Race to the Top finalists is a milepost in what is shaping up to be a busy stretch of news on the federal-funding front. But Race to the Top, as high-profile as it is, is just one pot of Washington money that ed reporters should keep their eyes on.
As Duncan noted in his speech, the department will soon be unveiling the winners of the $650 million Investing in Innovation (i3) competition for school districts and their partners. The department attracted 1,700 applicants for that pot of funds.
News is also coming on who gets the big bucks (some $600 million, according to Education Week's Steve Sawchuk) available through the Teacher Incentive Fund. Those grants, as Duncan put it in his speech, are “for districts willing to try new compensation programs that reward excellence in the classroom or provide incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools and subjects.” Definitely worth watching.
And states around the country are doling out some $3.5 billion in federal school-improvement grants available for efforts to turn around low-performing schools.
I’ll leave it to others to double-check Duncan’s math. But at today’s lunch, he said that through those and other programs, including for charter schools and new data systems, "nearly $10 billion is going out to support education reform." And he said that is "over and above the billions of dollars we distribute in formula grants to support low-income students and other special populations.”
In his speech, Duncan touted a wave of changes in state education policies that he say add up to a “quiet revolution.” His colleague Rahm Emanuel has used that phrase to describe the administration’s education efforts; that’s the first time I’ve heard it from Duncan himself.
He said that win or lose, states were better off for having assembled applications for Race to the Top: “In support of those applications, 13 states altered laws to foster the growth of charter schools and 17 states reformed teacher evaluation systems by including—among other things—student achievement.”
I’m wondering what the reaction will be in states that didn’t make the cut. Will they agree with Duncan? Or will pressure mount to roll back changes made to score Race to the Top points?
We want to find out, so don’t forget to post links to coverage of Race to the Top, i3, TIF grants, and other stimulus news at www.EdMoney.org.
posted by Caroline Hendrie at
4:38 PM
1 Comments:
It's not quite what you're looking for, but once again I'm appalled by the results when uninformed reporters with no education-beat experience try to cover education.
Today I heard a dreadful report on San Francisco news radio station KCBS on California's finalist showing in this round of RTTT. As the reporter -- a veteran who should know how to report a story but failed this time -- described it, only teachers' unions criticize RTTT, and (as the reporter put it) that's only because it pushes for teacher evaluations based on quality.
The reporter was apparently unaware of yesterday's letter from a coalition of civil rights groups "skewering" (Valerie Strauss' word -- the AP headline said "discussing"!) RTTT. The reporter was apparently unaware of the case against RTTT made by Diane Ravitch and myriad other informed education commentators.
Helicoptering in to do a story without adequate research -- without any understanding of the issues -- is really poor journalism, and our struggling mainstream media really can't afford to blow it that badly. Worse, it does harm to the teachers who were unjustly and falsely maligned, and to schools and children.
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