Delaware and Tennessee beat out 38 other states and the District of Columbia to win a share of $4 billion in federal education grants, convincing the Obama administration that they have bold plans for overhauling their public school systems, an administration official said Monday.
The Department of Education said that Delaware would be awarded about $100 million and Tennessee about $500 million.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that both Delaware and Tennessee had won because they had gotten overwhelming statewide support from teachers, school districts and business leaders for comprehensive school improvement plans, and had written new laws to support their policies.
By announcing only two winners in the first round, Mr. Duncan held to his vow that only a small number of states with extremely bold plans would receive money in the Race to the Top competition, which aims to promote educational innovation by rewarding a few states for exemplary progress in areas President Obama considers crucial to education reform.
Georgia and Florida came in third and fourth in the competition, officials said.
The president’s goals include expanding the number and quality of charter schools, reworking outdated teacher evaluation systems, improving the sophistication of states’ student-data tracking systems and turning around thousands of the lowest-performing schools.
One highlight of Delaware’s proposal was a new state law that allows teachers rated as “ineffective for three years to be removed from the classroom, even if they have tenure, the department said.
Tennessee passed a new state law that will allow the state to intervene in failing schools