State on no one’s Race to the Top short list
Posted in Race to the TopWord in the education blogosphere is that the Department of Education will announce the finalists for Race to the Top competition on Thursday, and none of the handicappers – surprise! – has listed California among them.
The finalists –likely a dozen or fewer states – will be invited to make their pitch in person in Washington on March 15, with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announcing the winners of the first round in April.
The losers – the large majority of the 40 states and District of Columbia that applied for a piece of the $4.35 billion prize – will each get an eight-to-10 page critique of their applications and an invitation to apply for the second round for whatever money is left over.
That could be as much as $2 billion, because the only big state that appears to have a good shot in the first round is Florida. Education Week reporters Lesli Maxwell and Michele McNeil and Thomas Carroll of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal all it put high in their Race to the Top brackets. Florida has a model K-20 student data base and a strong charter law. They also named Louisiana and Tennessee as top picks. Louisiana, Carroll pointed out, has a value-added method of tracking student performance and 41 districts are experimenting with paying teachers for performance – a plus in the Race to the Top rating system.
Massachusetts, with its high state standards, top test scores on the nation’s report card or NAEP and clear plans to overhaul its bad schools was high on the Ed Week’s list.
It’s all speculation, because the evaluation process has been secret, which in itself has drawn criticism. The Education Department has not revealed the
The finalists –likely a dozen or fewer states – will be invited to make their pitch in person in Washington on March 15, with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announcing the winners of the first round in April.
The losers – the large majority of the 40 states and District of Columbia that applied for a piece of the $4.35 billion prize – will each get an eight-to-10 page critique of their applications and an invitation to apply for the second round for whatever money is left over.
That could be as much as $2 billion, because the only big state that appears to have a good shot in the first round is Florida. Education Week reporters Lesli Maxwell and Michele McNeil and Thomas Carroll of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal all it put high in their Race to the Top brackets. Florida has a model K-20 student data base and a strong charter law. They also named Louisiana and Tennessee as top picks. Louisiana, Carroll pointed out, has a value-added method of tracking student performance and 41 districts are experimenting with paying teachers for performance – a plus in the Race to the Top rating system.
Massachusetts, with its high state standards, top test scores on the nation’s report card or NAEP and clear plans to overhaul its bad schools was high on the Ed Week’s list.
It’s all speculation, because the evaluation process has been secret, which in itself has drawn criticism. The Education Department has not revealed the