Winners of the Early Learning Race to the Top competition
The announcement of nine winners in the Obama administration’s latest version of its “Race to the Top” education competition will push forward reforms that early learning advocates have lobbied heavily for over the past several years.
The winners are California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington state. To win, they promised to increase accountability, raise the quality of preschool teachers and improve coordination between the various private and public agencies that provide early education.
“We are so incredibly excited,” Deborah Gist, the Rhode Island education commissioner, said during a conference at the White House this morning. “This acknowledgement by the administration to the importance of early education is encouraging.”
The announcement foiled predictions: The New America Foundation predicted only three of the eventual nine
