Race to Top czar: Competition works
Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess
The woman overseeing Race to the Top for the Obama administration said Monday that federal Department of Education officials have been “stunned” by the impact of the program. Before even a dollar has been handed out, states competing to win a share of the $4.3 billion program have enacted reforms on a level not seen before, Joanne Weiss, director of Race to the Top, told a conference at Stanford on turning failing schools around. To boost the chances of winning money, states have eliminated limits on charter schools, changed methods for evaluating teachers and principals and enacted aggressive rules on intervening in failing schools. By removing the ban on using standardized test data for teacher evaluations, California took care of a prerequisite to applying for the money. (more...)