(From Bloomberg Businessweek, June 2, 2010)
By MOIRA HERBST
June 2 (Bloomberg) — President Obama’s Race to the Top program, designed to transform U.S. education with $4.35 billion in federal grants, attracted three fewer states to the competition’s second round amid resistance to changes in teacher pay and tenure rules and states’ fears that the federal government may exert too much influence over its schools.
In all, at least a dozen states didn’t apply for one or both rounds of the competition, according to Department of Education data. Applications were due yesterday for the second round of funding; winners will be announced in September. Tennessee and Delaware were the only states out of 41 applicants, including the District of Columbia, to receive the first grants in the competition, the Education Department announced in March.
Race to the Top represents the largest pool of federal discretionary education money in U.S. history. States dropping out of the competition cited objections to Obama’s effort to impose national education standards as well as resistance to changes by teachers’ unions. The application process is too time-consuming for the size of the grants, said Jamie Gass, director of the Center for School Reform at the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit group that advocates market- based public policy initiatives.
“My sense is that states have become exasperated by the process,” said Gass. “The reality is that the competition in some respects may have been overly competitive. With all the staff time and budget restructuring many states are wondering if it’s worthwhile.”
Union Opposition
Nine states, including Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming did not apply for the second round of funding.
Virginia, Indiana and Minnesota failed to include teachers in the application process and then “scapegoated teachers to deflect attention from the decision not to file applications.” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, 1.4-million member union.
The grants reward school systems for finding ways to strengthen standards, recruit better teachers, collect data on student performance and fix failing schools. The department gives preference to states that lift caps on the number of charter schools, adopt national standards for achievement and tie teacher pay to test scores. Tennessee, which will receive about $500 million, and Delaware, which will get about $100 million, won in part because their proposals covered every student in their states, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters in a conference call in March.
‘Stoking Politics’
“Race to the Top wasn’t for everybody; it wasn’t ever a fifty-state strategy,” said Charles Barone, director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform, a Washington-based nonprofit group. “It has brought policy changes in several states and created a political dynamic that will go well past the deadline. I don’t see it waning; I see it stoking the politics of education reform.”
Opposition in states to applying for Race to the Top grants could hinder Obama’s effort to receive another round of funding for Race to the Top, which he requested in March in an appropriations bill, analysts said. Failure to gain traction on overhauling education may be a setback for the administration, said Dan Clifton, a partner at Strategas Research Partners LLC, a Washington-based consulting firm.
Pressure from both liberal and conservative groups helped defeat the first House of Representatives vote on TARP, the Trouble Asset Relief Program, in the wake of the financial crisis in September 2008, Clifton said.
–Editors: Robin D. Schatz, Andrew Pollack