Report Picks Apart Race to Top Scoring
A new analysis argues the Race to the Top competition used flawed and inconsistent scoring, and that federal reviewers should have applied more uniform standards in judging the applications for federal cash.
The review by The New Teacher Project also argues that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should have intervened to look at and possibly overrule individual states' scores from independent reviewers—even though the organization acknowledges such a move might have led to charges of political favoritism.
The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that works to improve instruction among disadvantaged students, advised both winning and losing states in the $4 billion competition. A number of advocates were surprised to see states such as Louisiana and Colorado among the losers (both of which were helped by the TNTP) despite those states going further than many of their rivals in approving new laws aimed at improving teacher evaluation, a priority in