Congressional Pushback on Race to the Top, Competitive Grants
Last week, lawmakers began to turn up the pushback on the department'sbudget proposal, including an extension for the $4 billion Race to the Top program for another year.
Much of the ire came from the House Appropriations Committee, especially its chairman, Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wisc., who has questioned the administration's reform agenda in the past.
Here's a snippet from his opening statement at a hearing last week on the U.S. Department of Education's fiscal year 2011 budget, at which Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified:
That request includes over $3.5 billion for new and untested initiatives, for which you will control how the funding is allocated to States, school districts, and other providers. In times like this, we need to worry about our core, foundational programs which go out by formula and are widely shared across the nation. A school district's ability to attract funds should not depend on its capacity to write a grant application.I want to support this Administration and your education priorities, but not at the expense of reliable and predictable federal support that thousands of districts across the country depend on. Perhaps most troubling is the lack of any increase at all in the title I funds, which are broadly distributed by formula to all school districts in need. At the same time, the budget includes an extra $500 million to expand the Innovation Fund, which makes grants through competition run by your Department. Similarly, it seeks to more than double the appropriation for the Teacher Incentive Fund ($950 million) -
