Race to the Top Round-Two Winners Offer Mixed Bag of Reforms

The U.S. Education Department on Tuesday announced 10 states in all would receive a share of $3.4 billion remaining from the $4.35 billion Race to the Top grant pool, and reformers struggled to make sense of the winners and losers.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan named New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Washington, DC, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island among the winners.

The also-rans were Arizona, California, Colorado, New Jersey, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana and South Carolina. California and Louisiana are among the more high-profile two-time losers. Duncan announced the 19 finalists in July.

Lindsey Burke, an education policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, says despite the hype that surrounded Race to the Top, the winners may come to regret receiving additional federal largesse.

“I have to wonder how enthusiastic these 10 winners are today after learning about their success in Race to the Top,” Burke said. “They’ll be splitting $3.4 billion 10 ways in exchange for what could end-up being a lot of new federal red tape.” The $4.35 billion Race to the Top program was included as part of $100 billion earmarked for education in the 2009 stimulus bill.

“This episode demonstrates the folly of exchanging local control for federal bucks,” said Lance Izumi, Koret senior fellow and senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute in California.

‘Turned to Farce’

Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, sounded an even harsher note on the institute’s Flypaper weblog, calling the announcement a “disastrous outcome” for the Obama administration.

“Support for competitive programs, even among reformers, is apt to plummet as it becomes clear that the vagaries of peer reviewers and the prowess of grant writers are what drive results in such competitions, not true policy change, political courage, leadership or public commitment to reform,” Petrilli wrote. “The lofty rhetoric of the Race to the Top has turned to farce.”

Choice ‘Didn’t Matter Much’

The winners’ list is notable for which states made the final cut and which did not, reformers said.

“While the District of Columbia and Florida deserve to be rewarded for their strong and often controversial commitment to education reform, it does not appear that they ‘won’ the race for the same reasons most reformers regard them highly,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform in Washington, DC. 

“School choice and charter school programs did not matter much in Race to the Top’s scoring, but it’s likely that teacher contract reform counted for something in the case of DC,” she added.

Petrilli pointed to the conspicuous absence of Louisiana and Colorado, both of which ranked high in a new Fordham study focused on reform-friendly cities.

“At the end of the day, Secretary Duncan could have funded Louisiana and Colorado regardless of their scores,” Petrilli wrote. “He might even have nixed Maryland, which nobody in their right mind regards as an incubator of serious education reform.”

‘Jargon in Lieu of Action’

Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute and the lead author of the Fordham study, expressed shock that Louisiana and Colorado lost.
“I think the exclusion of Louisiana and Colorado suggest legitimate concern over the way the program was conceived, the criteria that was designed and the judging that was executed,” Hess said.

Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, echoed Hess’s critique. “Who knows for sure how the winners were ultimately determined? Point allocation was highly subjective,” he said. “But it’s hard to be impressed by the list.”

McCluskey pointed to New York’s “dumbed-down Regents exams,” Hawaii’s 50 school-furlough Fridays, and Maryland’s “constricting” charter school law as reasons to be skeptical Race to the Top can deliver lasting reforms.

“The race was based mainly on who could make the biggest, fastest promises of reform, not who was actually, meaningfully reforming things,” McCluskey observed. “So, at the very least, we should all hold our applause for both the winners and the race, because promises are easy – real change is tough.”

Hess says he worries Race to the Top would not reward innovation and instead encourage states to embrace only those reform endorsed by the federal government — if that.

“Since this kind of compliance is about plans and intentions rather than actions, it’s a call to stack up catch phrases and jargon in lieu of action,” Hess said. “There’s also big question as to how these ambitious promises will be pursued and sustained, as many of the governors, legislators and key state and local education leaders will be leaving their posts in the coming year.”

‘Wrong Message’ on Charters

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools generally praised the round-two outcome, but criticized the selection of three states that have a track record of hostility or weakness on charters. 

“We are pleased to see five states that are strongly supportive of public charter schools among those awarded Race to the Top grants today,” said NAPCS President and CEO Peter Groff in a statement. “However, we are concerned that the selection of Maryland, North Carolina and Ohio sends the wrong message. They have clearly shown a resistance to embracing the role of public charter schools in education reform.”

“Even the U.S. Department of Education scored these states among the lowest of those awarded grants,” Groff added. “These states are still being rewarded for actively limiting public-education options for the families that need them the most. Maryland has the worst charter law in the country, North Carolina has a cap of 100 charters that it reached almost 10 years ago, and Ohio has some of the most arbitrary caps in the country.”

Terry L. Stoops, director of education studies at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, described North Carolina’s successful Race to the Top pitch as “make-believe school reform.”

“Rather than raise our 100-school cap on charter schools, they pushed a bill through the General Assembly that created ‘charter-like innovative, autonomous schools,’ presumably to complement our ‘charter-like schools without charters’ and other ‘charter-like school settings’ in North Carolina,” Stoops said. “Yes, those phrases do appear in our state’s application.”

Common Core Concerns

Although Duncan had said in June that adopting the Common Core State Standards Initiative would play an important role in deciding which states would receive federal grant money, several prominent adopters were shut out. As of last week, 37 states and the District of Columbia had adopted the voluntary English and math frameworks. Many rushed to meet the August 2 deadline imposed by Duncan.

Izumi said Tuesday’s announcement should be especially galling for Californians.

“So California, which has one of the best set of academic content standards in the country, decides to chuck them in favor of comparatively weaker national standard pushed by the Obama administration just to get Race to the Top money,” Izumi said. “Now that California has been passed over for this payday, what has the state gained except weaker standards and forfeiture of its control over its educational direction to Washington?”

Bill Evers, a member of the California State Academic Content Standards Commission who opposed the state adopting Common Core, was even more blunt.

“California sold out for money it didn’t get,” he said. “National standards destroyed California’s successful program of Algebra I in 8th grade; likewise, California high-school English had its strongest features removed.”

Massachusetts also adopted Common Core, which may have boosted the commonwealth into the top 10.

“It’s easy to see how Massachusetts won,” McCluskey said. “It just dropped its own, often-considered nation-leading curriculum standards to adopt weaker, national standards demanded by Race to the Top.”
 
Burke says the cost of adopting the Common Core standards will likely exceed the most generous Race to the Top grant.

“All of the winners are states that have agreed to adopt national standards and tests, and the money they’ll receive from this competition will certainly not cover the costs of throwing-out their existing state standards and tests – which were developed at great taxpayer expense – and will not begin to cover the costs of implementing this new, behemoth national standards regime,” she said.

Change ‘At the Margins’

“At best, these education dollars will lead to small changes at the margins,” said Lisa Snell, director of education and child welfare programs at the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation. “Taxpayers should remain skeptical that $4.5 billion for education reform in the states through Race to the Top can make any difference when the Obama administration is giving states another $10 billion bailout to maintain the status quo through an education jobs program.”

In March, Delaware was awarded $100 million and Tennessee $500 million in the first round of Race to the Top grants.

Ben Boychuk (bboychuk@heartland.org) is managing editor of School Reform News.