Results of President Obama's Race to the Top: Win or lose, states enacted education reforms
Caught between extraordinary public expectations and relatively modest constitutional authority, U.S. presidents historically have fashioned all sorts of mechanisms—executive orders, proclamations, memoranda—by which to move their objectives forward. Under President Barack Obama’s administration, presidential entrepreneurialism has continued unabated. Like his predecessors, Obama has sought to harness and consolidate his influence outside of Congress. He also has made contributions of his own to the arsenal of administrative policy devices. The most creative, perhaps, is his Race to the Top initiative, which attempted to spur wide-ranging reforms in education, a policy domain in which past presidents exercised very little independent authority.
This study examines the effects of Obama’s Race to the Top on education policymaking around the country. In doing so, it does not assess the efficacy of the particular policies promoted by the initiative, nor does it investigate how Race to the Top altered practices within schools or districts. Rather, the focus is the education policymaking process itself; the adoption of education policies is the outcome of interest.No single test provides incontrovertible evidence about its causal effects. The overall findings, however, indicate that Race to the Top had a meaningful impact on the production of education policy across the United States. In its aftermath, all states experienced a marked surge in the adoption of education policies. This surge does not appear to be a statistical aberration or an extension of past policy trends. Legislators from all states reported that Race to the Top affected policy deliberations within their states. The patterns of policy adoptions and legislator responses, moreover, correspond with states’ experiences in the Race to the Top competitions.
In the main, the evidence suggests that by strategically deploying funds to cash-strapped states and massively increasing the public profile of a controversial set of education policies, the president managed to stimulate reforms that had stalled in state legislatures, stood no chance of enactment in Congress, and could not be accomplished via unilateral action.
Asking States to Compete
On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), legislation that was designed to stimulate the economy; support job creation; and invest in critical sectors, including education, in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Roughly $100 billion of the ARRA was allocated for education, with $4.35 billion set aside for the establishment of Race to the Top, a competitive grant program designed to encourage states to support education innovation.
From the outset, the president saw Race to the Top as a way to induce state-level policymaking that aligned with his education objectives on college readiness, the creation of new data systems, teacher effectiveness, and persistently low-performing schools. As he noted in his July 2009 speech announcing the initiative, Obama intended to “incentivize excellence and spur reform and launch a race to the top in America’s public schools.”
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) exercised considerable discretion over the design and operation of the Race to the Top competition. Within a handful of broad priorities identified by Congress in ARRA, the Obama administration chose which specific policies would be rewarded, and by how much; how many states would receive financial rewards, and in what amount; and what kinds of oversight mechanisms would be used to ensure compliance. Subsequent to the ARRA’s enactment, Congress did not issue any binding requirements for the design or administration of the program. From an operational standpoint, Race to the Top was nearly entirely the handiwork of ED.
Race to the Top comprised three distinct phases of competition. Both Phase 1 and Phase 2 included specific education-policy priorities on which each applicant would be evaluated. States were asked to describe their current status and outline their future goals in meeting the criteria in each of these categories. The education policy priorities spanned six major scoring categories and one competitive preference category (see Table 1).
To assist states in writing their applications, ED offered technical assistance workshops, webinars, and training materials. Additionally, nonprofit organizations such as the National Council on Teacher Quality published reports intended to help states maximize their likelihood of winning an award. Nonetheless, substantial uncertainty Results of President Obama's Race to the Top: Win or lose, states enacted education reforms : Education Next:
