Thursday, November 12, 2009

Race to the Top Fund




Race to the Top Fund

Race to the Top Fund

Purpose Funding Status Eligibility Laws, Regs, & Guidance Applicant Info Resources Performance Contacts

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education Home
Purpose

What's New

More Resources Race to the Top Assessment Program

The rules for the Race to the Top competition have now been finalized!

Thank you to the 1,161 people and organizations who sent us comments on our draft rules—your collective outpouring of thoughtful input prompted us to make numerous changes and improvements to the final application. But just as important, the overwhelming volume of comments demonstrates the potential for Race to the Top to propel the transformational changes that students and teachers need.

You can now find:

The Press Release announcing the final application -->

The Race to the Top Application MSWord (784K)

The key policy details, summarized in the Executive Summary PDF (288K)

A Summary of the Major Changes we made based on the comments we received PDF (376K)

More details for applicants in the Notice Inviting Applications PDF

The full details on Race to the Top, including our responses to comments, in the Notice of Final Priorities PDF (1.3M)

Upcoming Events

We intend to host two Technical Assistance Planning Workshops this December for States who are considering applying. The first will be in Denver, Colorado on December 3, 2009. The second will be in the Washington, D.C. area on December 10, 2009. We recommend that applicants attend one of these two workshops. For those who cannot attend, transcripts of the meetings will be available on our website.

Watch here for more details regarding the workshops.

Program Description

Program Office: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE)
CFDA Number: 84.395 Program Type: Discretionary/Competitive Grants

Through Race to the Top, we are asking States to advance reforms around four specific areas:
Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;

Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;

Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and

Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.

Awards in Race to the Top will go to States that are leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive education reform. Race to the Top winners will help trail-blaze effective reforms and provide examples for States and local school districts throughout the country to follow as they too are hard at work on reforms that can transform our schools for decades to come.