Race to the Top Awards Go to Delaware, Tennessee

The Washington Post, March 29, 2010

Delaware and Tennessee won bragging rights Monday as the nation’s top education innovators, besting the District and 13 other finalists to claim a share of the $4 billion in President Obama’s unprecedented school reform fund.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan picked the winners after a team of judges in the Race to the Top competition unexpectedly gave tiny Delaware the highest ranking, with Tennessee close behind. Delaware won as much as $107 million and Tennessee could be awarded $502 million.

Leaders in both states pledged to establish national models for data-driven reform, tying teacher evaluation to student performance in an all-out effort to close achievement gaps.

Georgia, ranked third in the contest, and Florida, considered a favorite to win, fell just short of a threshold for awards that Duncan set himself. More than $3 billion remains in the fund, and they could win some in a future round.

Duncan’s decision to name only two initial winners gives the Obama administration continued leverage to upend the status quo in public education. It also squelches any suggestion that Duncan would seek to spread the money around as much and as fast as possible to help Obama win favor in key political states.

Ohio, Pennsylvania and dozens of others have come up empty so far in their bids for school reform aid. Delaware is the home state of Vice President Joe Biden, but administration officials have said repeatedly that politics would play no role in the contest.

The District ranked last among the finalists. Virginia, one of 41 first-round applicants, had failed to make the final 16. Maryland skipped the first round and is planning to compete in a second round later this year.

The competition has generated enormous buzz in education circles and a flurry of action in statehouses to ease limits on autonomous public charter schools, revamp teacher pay and evaluation, expand the collection of student achievement data and take other steps in line with Obama’s agenda.

Governors and other officials have been lured by the prospect of tens, and even hundreds, of millions of dollars in federal aid at a time of acute fiscal stress. Many also want to capitalize on an auspicious moment for reform. Dozens of states are banding together to raise academic standards and Congress is considering a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind law.

“It’s totally remarkable,” said Cynthia Brown, an analyst at the Center for American Progress. “We’ve never seen this major kind of policy change in so many different states, all in a constrained time frame. They’re taking actions that are usually debated over an extended period, often for multiple years.”

Other analysts call the impact limited.

“The truth is, a handful of states made important changes to their laws,” said Andy Smarick of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “A lot of states did nothing at all, and a good number did minor things to their laws.”

Some states favor a tune-up, rather than a shakeup, for schools, a strategy that appears to weigh against them in the competition. Virginia proposed a modest expansion of charter schools and experiments with performance pay, but was told to reapply. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has proposed somewhat tighter rules for teachers to gain tenure, but it remains unclear how much that would help the state’s chances.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R ) refused to apply, calling Race to the Top an unwarranted federal intrusion.

In the District, school system and charter leaders banded together to build on various initiatives begun by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. But tensions between Rhee and labor leaders may have hurt the District’s chances because the contest awarded credit to applicants with support from unions and school boards. In another crucial factor, the D.C. education data system is much less robust than those in Tennessee and Delaware.

Delaware’s bid, backed by teachers unions statewide, indicates that the state will send a corps of “data coaches” into schools to help teachers track student performance and target lessons where needed. The state will begin new tests in the coming school year, generating achievement data to help evaluate teachers and principals.

Under the plan, student growth must be considered satisfactory for educators to be rated effective. Those rated ineffective could be denied tenure or face other consequences. The state will also offer bonuses to highly effective teachers to work in struggling schools and take other steps to link performance ratings to compensation.

Delaware has narrowed racial achievement gaps in recent years and is ahead of the national average in the latest federal reading scores. But like most other states, it has much room to improve.

Delaware officials said the state’s small size is a strength. It gives educators face-to-face contact with the administrators who oversee reform. Its 126,800 students are fewer than Montgomery County’s.

State officials also noted Delaware’s fame as the first state to ratify the Constitution. “More than 200 years later, Delaware is again ready to lead: being first to provide public education that prepares all students for success in the global economy,” they wrote.

Tennessee’s plan, backed by 93 percent of the state’s teachers unions, also relies heavily on data and teacher performance to improve results for 931,600 public school students. The state will require at least half of a teacher’s annual evaluation to be based on student achievement data and link evaluations to decisions on compensation, promotion and termination. It will track students after high school graduation and into college. And it will intervene directly in persistently low-achieving schools.

As in Delaware, all of Tennessee’s schools will participate in the initiative. That was considered a key selling point in the two bids, in contrast to many other states that encountered resistance from local school administrators.

“We know that we have a long road ahead of us,” Tennessee officials wrote in their application, noting that their students in recent years have not ranked highly on national tests. But “expanded authority over low-performing schools” and “rapid, proven interventions” will enable the state to “share lessons of school turnaround with others,” officials wrote.