California's Big Whiff on Education-Reform Money
What the hell led to the "Race to the Top" rejection from Obama?
For a minute there, it looked as if California might finally begin stitching up a few gaping wounds in its education system. State officials had spent much of the winter drafting reforms included in a proposal that they believed would charm Obama's Department of Education into handing over up to $700 million in "Race to the Top" funds.
"I thought we had a really good shot," says Rick Miller, then–deputy superintendent of the Department of Education, who helped write the application to the feds.
Miller and lots of influential players, from the media to politicians, were blindly optimistic about where California stood with Obama and his education czar, Arne Duncan. The L.A. Times offered a sunny outlook, reporting: "California does have some advantages going into the competition. ... Some parts of California's application could set it apart."
Then in early March, California didn't even make a list of 15 state finalists plus Washington D.C. "I was extremely disappointed," says Lydia Grant, a parent battling L.A. Unified officials over safety and truancy issues at Mount Gleason Middle School in Sunland-Tujunga.
The other shoe dropped on March 29, when only two of the 16 finalists were awarded a combined $600 million — Tennessee and Delaware. The White House released its scoring
