The Secretary of Education announced the first round of finalists for the Race to the Top Grants:
Out of 41 applications, 15 states and the District of Columbia have made the cut so far. They’ve been invited to Washington to make the case that they will be the best trailblazers for innovation and reform in K-12 public schools.
The competition has been a catalyst “to dramatically reshape America’s educational system … prompting states to think deeply about how to improve the way we prepare our students for success in a competitive 21st century economy,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in announcing the first round of finalists.
The finalists are: Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
To be fair, here, I haven’t followed the Race to the Top effort here very closely, but the entire application is up at the Governor’s website. This summary of what is proposed to accomplish with Race to the Top funds is from the Governor’s Press release:
Delaware’s application focuses on four assurances: strong standards and assessment, quality educators, robust data systems, and improving the low performing schools in the state. Last year, the Governor signed into law bills to give districts greater flexibility in funding and providing increased accountability for results. The State Board of Education passed regulations this year that improve assistance and support for schools that are persistently low performing and that reform educator evaluations by focusing on student improvement as a required element for an educator to be rated as “Effective.”
There’s clearly alot more meat to this as the narrative portion of this application is more than 200 pages long.
According to the NYT,
Delaware, the District of Columbia and Rhode Island might win $20 million to $75 million.
Definitely a good job by the State getting to the finalist list. Awards will be announced around 1 April.
(h/t to PBaumbach for passing along this tip)