Once burned, states may shy from aid contest
By Sam Dillon / New York Times
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Apr 05, 2010
A dozen governors, led by Bill Ritter Jr. of Colorado, sat with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a hotel ballroom in Washington a few weeks back, praising his vision and gushing with enthusiasm for a $4 billion grant competition they hoped could land their states a jackpot of hundreds of millions of dollars. But for many of those governors, the contest lost some sizzle last week, when Duncan awarded money to only two states -- Delaware and Tennessee.
Colorado, which had hoped to win $377 million, ended in 14th place, and now Ritter says the scoring by anonymous judges seemed inscrutable, some Coloradans view the contest as federal intrusion and the governor has not decided whether to reapply for round two.
"It was like the Olympic games, and we were an American skater with a Soviet judge from the 1980's," Ritter said.
Colorado is not the only state where the initial results of the Obama administration's signature school improvement initiative, known as Race to the Top, have left a sour taste. Many states are questioning the criteria by which winners were chosen, wondering why there were only twoand criticizing a last-minute cap on future awards.
Besides Colorado, a string of other states -- including Arizona, California, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota -- say they have not yet decided whether to keep participating.
"There's a serious conversation going on here about whether it makes sense to put all that time and effort in again to reapply," said Rick Miller, who as deputy schools superintendent led California's state's round one Race to the Top effort, but has since left state government.
Officials from several states criticized the contest scoring, which favored states able to gain support from 100 percent of school districts and local teachers unions for Obama administration objectives like expanding charter schools, reworking teacher evaluation systems and turning around low-performing schools.
Marshalling such support is one thing for a tiny state like Delaware, with 38 districts, they said, and quite another for, say, California, with some 1,500.
Administration officials say they consider last week's outcome a splendid success. By awarding only $100 million to Delaware and $500 million to Tennessee, Duncan retained $3.4 billion to dole out to up to 15 winning states in September, weeks before