(From The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2010)
By STEPHANIE BANCHERO
The Obama administration on Tuesday named 18 states and the District of Columbia as finalists in the race for federal money to help overhaul troubled schools.
Thirty-five states and the district applied for part of the $3.4 billion available under the Race to the Top competition. The finalists are 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.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is scheduled to formally announce the finalists later Tuesday during what he has billed as a “major speech on education reform” to be delivered at the National Press Club in Washington.
Race to the Top, the centerpiece of Mr. Duncan’s efforts to push innovation, aims to reward states that promote charter schools, tie teacher evaluation to student performance and adopt rigorous learning standards.
The program began last year with $4.35 billion. Mr. Duncan set aside $350 million for a separate competition to improve student assessments and awarded $600 million to Delaware and Tennessee in the first round of the competition. That leaves $3.4 billion.
The Education Department used a panel of outside judges to score each application based on 19 criteria, including willingness to open charter schools, efforts to link teacher evaluations to student achievement and dedication to transforming the lowest-performing schools. States were graded on a scale of zero to 500 points.
Finalists will make formal, in-person presentations before a judging panel in August. Winners will be named in September, and Mr. Duncan said he expects to pick 10 to 15.
Race to the Top has dangled millions of dollars in front of cash-starved states, encouraging at least 23 of them to overhaul education policies. Colorado, for example, made it tougher for teachers to earn tenure and easier for them to lose it. Illinois and New York lifted the cap on the number of charter schools. Michigan and Massachusetts passed laws allowing state intervention in poorly-performing schools or districts.
The federal competition even convinced 27 states to adopt a set of common learning standards, dictating what students should know at each grade level in math and language arts.
But after enjoying broad bipartisan support, Race to the Top has come under fire recently. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to slash $800 million from the program. The Senate rejected those cuts. On Monday, a group of civil-rights leaders met with Mr. Duncan to express their unhappiness over the competitive nature of the program, which they argue leaves many low-income and minority schools wanting for resources.
But others praise the power of the program and the reforms it has ushered in.
“Some [states] enacted solid reforms that are not revolutionary, but, nonetheless, take significant steps toward better teacher training and learning,” said Charlie Barone, director of federal policy with Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group. “Almost every state, with just a few exceptions, began to re-examine education policies.”