And the Winners Are ...
The rubrics have been analyzed, the numbers have been tallied, and it looks like we finally have our Phase One Race to the Top winners. While the announcement goes official later this afternoon, the early reports this morning seem to confirm that Delaware and Tennessee are the only states that will walk away with Phase One RttT checks. Michele McNeil over at Politics K-12 has some of the initial breakdown here.
For the record, both Delaware and Tennessee had good applications. But these selections are going to surprise a lot of people, particularly as we wait for the wonks to truly dissect the 500-point scorecards for each state. Eduflack has long thought that Tennessee had one of the best applications in the pool, but I thought it was just a notch behind Florida and Louisiana (in fairness, I actually thought Illinois had the best app I read, but knew that couldn't win for a host of reasons), and it would be tough to award three grants to three states in the same region. So I long believed Tennessee would be a slam dunk for Phase Two.
As for Delaware, it had a lot of positives going for it, perhaps the greatest of which was it was a small state that we expect can move quickly to enact wholesale school reform across the entire state. It is important to note, however, that Delaware was one of only two of the 16 finalists NOT to have financial support from the Gates Foundation. So message sent.
So what does it all mean? First and foremost, the U.S. Department of Education is sending a clear message — "game on!" Of the $4 billion available in RttT, there is still now $3.725 billion remaining in the pot. That's a lot of money for Phase Two, and will require a great deal of scrambling from states over the next two months. Those who failed to make the cut have been working for the last month on
For the record, both Delaware and Tennessee had good applications. But these selections are going to surprise a lot of people, particularly as we wait for the wonks to truly dissect the 500-point scorecards for each state. Eduflack has long thought that Tennessee had one of the best applications in the pool, but I thought it was just a notch behind Florida and Louisiana (in fairness, I actually thought Illinois had the best app I read, but knew that couldn't win for a host of reasons), and it would be tough to award three grants to three states in the same region. So I long believed Tennessee would be a slam dunk for Phase Two.
As for Delaware, it had a lot of positives going for it, perhaps the greatest of which was it was a small state that we expect can move quickly to enact wholesale school reform across the entire state. It is important to note, however, that Delaware was one of only two of the 16 finalists NOT to have financial support from the Gates Foundation. So message sent.
So what does it all mean? First and foremost, the U.S. Department of Education is sending a clear message — "game on!" Of the $4 billion available in RttT, there is still now $3.725 billion remaining in the pot. That's a lot of money for Phase Two, and will require a great deal of scrambling from states over the next two months. Those who failed to make the cut have been working for the last month on
