Race to the Top, lap two
By Yuan Li Ren July 16, 2010 7:56 AM EDT


Later this month, the second round of competition for "Race to the Top" grants will be announced. It's been about a year since President Obama allocated $4.35 billion from the Recovery Act to initiate the program, intended to provide quality education opportunities for students from grade K to 12.

Race to the Top's aim is to prepare students for a better future, in both higher education and their careers. States participate by competing for the federal grant and fulfilling what the program calls the four assurances: instituting rigorous standards and assessments; recruiting and retaining effective teachers; turning around low-performance schools; and establishing data systems to track student achievement and teacher's performance.

"Great teachers are the bulwark of America," said President Obama, when introducing the program. Obama alluded to China and India as our competitors in mathematics and science education. "Knowledge is the most valuable commodity a person and a country have to offer," he said.

"The best job will go to the best educator" and "the future belongs to the nation that best educates its people," Obama said.
"Curriculum is not mentioned at all in the Race to the Top," said Grover J. Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings Institute. "There are things left out of the reform effort that are important."

Whitehurst said that curriculum and instruction are ignored in the conditions to qualify for the grant. It "does not include any elements of interaction between teachers and students in the classroom where learning occurs" whereas the criteria to attain the fund is more political, "leaving out the heart of the matter," he said.

The changing trend of the first and second round of applications is that "states have done more to get the buy-in from school districts and teachers union," Whitehurst said.
Whether promises will be translated into state action, "we will have to see" because "as governor, legislator, and superintendent of education of states change, which they do regularly, what the old crowd commits to may not be what the new crowd commits to," Whitehurst explained.

On March 29, 2010, Delaware and Tennessee were announced as the winners of the first round competition. Delaware was awarded $100 million and Tennessee was awarded $500 million for Race to the Top. On July 26, the finalists for the second round will be declared. By September, results from the second round of applications will be released.

"Colorado is very anxious to be awarded the Race to the Top grant" and that was the intent behind enacting the Educator Effectiveness Bill into law, said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, headquartered in Washington, D.C. "We do not know whether Race to the Top is effective but we can see the impact it has on states to bring important reforms."

For those states that chose not to compete, they did so because they were not competent to implement legislation or enforcement of educational reforms, Walsh said.
Myug Kim, communications manager for Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, stated that the Educator Effectiveness Bill was a component for Race to the Top and a state strategy to improve education for children of Colorado.

The Colorado law, enacted in June, drew national attention because it ties student performance to the granting of tenure to teachers.
"We believe that Race to the Top complements the efforts we have in place" to enhance quality learning for students, Kim commented.

The Knowledge Is Power Program offers to help disadvantaged students in poor performing schools by implementing the five pillars: more timeline tasks, choice and commitment from parents and teachers to serve, accountability, high expectations, and result-oriented progress measurements.

Steve Mancini, National Public Affairs Director the Knowledge Is Power Program, describes KIPP as "a national network of 99 public charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia" that "defines the odds for low income kids and what is possible in public education."
"Our schools have five pillars and there's some crossover with Race to the Top," he said. "We at KIPP see Race to the Top as setting the bar high in terms of expectations for students and serving as a catalyst for a healthy dialogue among state leaders about how best to improve public education in America."

"What's important about this model is to promote what works in education and how we can improve teacher education, how we can turn around under performing public schools and encourage reforms to improve education in this country, reforms like what Colorado did with the bill," he continued.

"There is a stubborn achievement gap, both between public school students in low and high income communities, and between American students and their peers in other industrialized nations," and these gaps trigger counter opinions about Race to the Top, he said.
Jeanne Beyer, director of Communications for the Colorado Education Association, said,
"Colorado applied to Race to the Top in Phase 1 and did not get the award."

The Educator Effectiveness Bill "will be sufficient evidence that Colorado has changed its teacher evaluation and tenure law in order to be more competitive in Phase 2," she commented. "Our organization did not support the bill and we did not sign onto the Phase 2 application as we did in Phase 1. While we definitely believed that our evaluation should be improved, we felt a lot more work could have been done to put together that piece of legislation."
"We have no way to know whether Race to the Top is effective or not because we didn't win in
Phase 1," Beyer said. "No matter how much the amount of money we will get, it's totally insufficient in terms of implementing the reform that Colorado has passed."

Beyer talked about the overwhelming cost to overhaul Colorado's K to 12 academic content standards, while implementing longitudinal growth models and new tests.
"No matter how much money we get from Race to the Top, we won't have enough money to design and implement them," she said. "We've passed a K to 12 education reform bill but there's no money. The state is short of revenue in the recession and we're further handicapped by spending caps."

According to Beyer, there are fewer states applying for Phase 2 because of "less money."
"And it was a tremendous surprise for states to see that only two states were awarded," she said.

"Race to the Top creates a real opportunity, but it will work only if all stakeholders come together to make it work," Randi Weingarten, President of American Federation of Teachers, said in a press release.

"On the positive side, officials in Ohio, West Virginia and other states worked closely with teachers and their unions," she said. "As a result, their applications include initiatives with a real possibility of making a difference in children's lives: better standards and assessments that reflect what students need to learn in the knowledge economy; time and supports to help teachers use data to improve instruction; and targeted assistance to schools and students who need it most."

"The story is very different in states where teachers' voices were ignored," she continued. "In New Hampshire, for example, state officials held only cursory consultations with union leaders. Not surprisingly, applications from such states include tired ideas and top-down reforms that will not improve teaching and learning. In Florida, state officials had frequent meetings with union leaders, but then filed an application that would codify the status quo and poison labor-management relations in all but a few school districts."

States such as Texas and Virginia are critical of Race to the Top.
"Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children's future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington," Gov. Rick Perry from Texas said in a press release.

The release also stated, "While Texas could be eligible for up to $750 million in Race to the Top funding, it would cost Texas taxpayers upwards of $3 billion to realign our education system to conform to the U.S. Department of Education's uniform vision for public education."

"We've had a great set of standards here in Virginia for 15 years, and we think those common standards ought to be a floor not a ceiling, and so they would require us to essentially reduce the quality of Virginia's standards, and we just can't do that," said Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia in a published report.