Dive Brief:
- The new 76-page report, "Fundamental Change: Innovation in America's Schools Under Race to the Top," claims that every state receiving funding showed improvement of some kind.
- Education Week reports that the DoE analysis skipped over trouble spots, like controversial teacher evaluations and Common Core-related assessments.
- Critics also point to the fact that the report may be intentionally vague because quantifying results is virtually impossible, as benchmarks vary state-to-state.
Dive Insight:
Race to the Top funding pushed recipients to comply with Common Core standards, by mandating that states focus their grants on "several policy initiatives that included new teacher evaluations and a commitment to new standards," Education Week reported. The new government analysis also failed to tackle sticky issues, including the fact that at least four states have dumped the PARCC exam and that tying student performance to teacher evaluation provokes inevitable controversy.
Notably, the report also doesn't weigh what might happen next, now that the one-time grant is over. Programs and initiatives seeded with the Race to the Top funding might possibly be shuttered in the next fiscal year.
"Every day, we are talking about what we'll no longer be able to do," Nora Carr, chief of staff for a large North Carolina district, told Education Week.
