Delaware and Tennessee Win Race to Top
Finally making good on promises to set a "very, very high bar" for Race to the Top, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has picked Delaware and Tennessee as Round 1 winners of the $4 billion education-reform competition, according to an official who was briefed on the winners this morning.
While both of these states were thought to have strong applications, what's most interesting is the two front-runners who didn't win: Florida and Louisiana. We don't know yet how much money each state won, but Delaware asked for $107 million (their top-line budget was $75 million) and Tennessee asked for $502 million (or twice the $250 million the education department had budgeted). Each of those requests was above the state-by-state nonbinding estimates the department had set.
What we do know is that since the biggest states, such as Florida, New York, and Illinois, did not win in this round, there will be plenty of money left over for Round 2.
Less than a month ago, the department named 15 states plus the District of Columbia as finalists, representing one-third of all Race to the Top applications. That prompted criticism far and wide that Mr. Duncan's bar wasn't really that high. In all, 41 states (including D.C.) applied in Round 1. A second round starts now, with applications due June 1.
Finalists came to D.C. in the middle of this month to make a final, in-person pitch to the panel of peer reviewers. Now, we know who really shone (or at least who didn't tank) in that part