Prometheus 6

With $16 billion in school budget shortfalls projected for next year, states are hungry.

States Mold School Policies to Win Federal Money
By SAM DILLON

DENVER — Colorado’s lieutenant governor, Barbara O’Brien, has been parsing every public statement by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for nuances that could help her position the state as a winner in the $4 billion competition for federal school dollars known as Race to the Top.

And officials in dozens of other states have been doing the same, said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, a nonpartisan association of state superintendents of education.

“Whenever we have a conversation about any issue these days, Race to the Top is the gorilla in the room,” Mr. Wilhoit said.

The last time education officials were reading tea leaves so obsessively was after the 2001 No Child Left Behind law reshaped America’s public school landscape. Now Race to the Top is again redefining what Washington calls reform, setting in motion a new cycle of federal school improvement efforts.

States’ hunger for details should be sated when final rules are released this week, a Department of Education official said.

The $4 billion is the most money Washington has ever given to overhaul schools. It is to be awarded in two rounds, in April and September, to about a dozen states that propose bold schemes to shake up how they evaluate and compensate teachers, use data to raise achievement, and intervene in failing schools. With $16 billion in school budget shortfalls projected for next year, states are hungry.

Experts say the process is like watching dozens of states bid for the Olympics.

And some critics question whether the competition will bring the sweeping changes to America’s public schools that the administration hopes for.