Delaware, Tennessee Beat Florida in Race to the Top’s Phase One; Round Two Applications Due in June

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced today, March 29, 2010, that Delaware and Tennessee have won the first phase of Race to the Top, for which Florida was considered to be a leading contender.   

Including Florida, 40 states and the District of Columbia applied for the federal grant program, which ultimately will award $4 billion for statewide education reform and $350 million to support states working to improve the quality of their assessments.

Approximately $3.4 billion available for the second phase of the Race to the Top competition, for which applications are due on June 1, 2010.  All Phase 1 applications, peer reviewers’ comments and scores are available on the U.S. Department of Education Web site.  Videos of states’ presentations will be posted next week.  To access these materials, click here. 

Media coverage of today’s announcement from the St. Petersburg Times is reprinted below.

Should you have any questions or comments, please contact Colodny Fass.

 

Education shocker: Florida not a winner in federal Race to the Top education grant

By Ron Matus and Jeffrey S. Solochek, Times Staff Writers

Published Monday, March 29, 2010

In a huge surprise, Florida is not a first-round winner of a massive federal education grant that would have pushed participating school districts to change how they pay and evaluate teachers and turn around struggling schools.

Florida was widely considered a leading contender for a share of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s education agenda.

But in an announcement Monday morning on Twitter, the U.S. Department of Education announced only two first-round winners: Delaware and Tennessee.

“This would be the biggest shock of my professional career,” Florida Board of Education chairman T. Willard Fair told the St. Petersburg Times. “There’s just no way in the world that everybody could convince me that we wouldn’t be in the first round of funding.”

In the application it submitted in January, Florida asked for more than $1 billion. Most of the state’s 67 school districts signed on to the application, but only five of the 67 local teachers unions did so.

It’s not yet clear why Florida’s application didn’t make the first-round cut, but even Florida Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith said the lack of union buy-in could hurt Florida’s chances. Both Delaware and Tennessee had strong teacher support for their applications – a fact that the U.S. DOE highlighted on its Web site.

“I applaud the Obama administration for not moving forward on such drastic reform without the teachers in support of this,” said Kim Black, president of the Pinellas teachers union. “Why should Florida be rewarded when teachers on the front lines are not being listened to?”

The Florida Department of Education, which crafted the application, “really believes that they can be a steamroller … and everybody will just take it,” said Florida Education Association President Andy Ford. Now “we can start over and have a serious conversation.”

But leading lawmakers said Florida will continue to pursue the ideas contained in its Race to the Top application – such as merit pay and end-of-course exams – whether the federal money comes through or not.

“I wasn’t willing to turn down $1 billion for public education. Apparently, FEA United was,” said Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, who chairs the Senate PreK-12 Education Committee. “How they ever expect to get a pay raise in this economy is beyond me.”

In recent months, observers as varied as Education Week, the Fordham Institute and The New Teacher Project all ranked Florida at or near the top of their likely-winners lists. The reason: Florida’s record of reform in the past decade, and an application that offered concrete detail on how to build on those earlier steps.

But those predictions apparently didn’t put enough weight on union opposition. Many union leaders said they were willing to try the initiatives outlined in Florida’s application, but that the Florida Department of Education did not give local officials enough leeway to craft their own plans. They also feared how the application might undermine collective bargaining rights.

Andy Smarick, a former education official in the George W. Bush administration, wrote on the Fordham Institute blog this morning that he believed Florida was the only state deserving of one of the grants.

But after the announcement, he suggested Florida’s teachers had won a big victory. The U.S. Department of Education made clear it wanted bold reform plans and stakeholder support, said Smarick, a distinguished visiting fellow at Fordham.

Florida had the former but not the latter.

“I think Florida may be in the most difficult position in the entire nation right now,” Smarick said. “They have to think which of their bold reforms do they have to roll back to get stakeholder support.”

The Race to the Top isn’t over. Applications for round two are due in June, with winners expected to be announced in the fall.

There is plenty of money left over. Delaware asked for $107 million; Tennessee, for $502 million.

Hillsborough Superintendent MaryEllen Elia said she was “surprised and disappointed” by Monday’s announcement. She said she expected Florida to take the feedback it receives from the review team and use it to craft something new and even better for the second round.

“I will certainly be supporting whatever it is,” she said.

Hillsborough was one of the few Florida districts where both the school board and the teachers union supported the state’s application. Elia said the lack of a grant will not affect Hillsborough’s separate effort to improve teacher quality with a Gates Foundation grant.

Monday’s announcement may have repercussions on pending state legislation.

Critics of a fast-moving Republican bill that ties teacher pay to student performance and make it easier to fire teachers say the U.S. Department of Education sent a message to Florida lawmakers too: Slow down.

The bill has been touted as a way for Florida to implement the plans outlined in the state’s grant application. But it has drawn enormous opposition from teachers around the state, including tens of thousands who have joined social networking sites formed to fight it.

“Florida went well beyond the pale,” said Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. “This is a sign we should reconsider.”

“This shows why Senate Bill 6 and its House companion need to die,” said Rep. Marty Kiar, a Democrat who sits on the House Pre-K-12 Policy Committee. “It’s about time they put good public policy over politics. This is the total fault of the majority party for pushing through bad policies.”

Sen. John Thrasher, the bill’s sponsor, took a different position.

He argued that passage could help Florida win a Race to the Top grant in the fall. And even if that grant doesn’t come, he continued, the ideas behind the legislation are solid and should become part of the state’s education law.

They aren’t joined at the hip, anyway, he said.

“I think our ideas are good. … They are consistent with Race to the Top,” Thrasher said. “The only thing I see if you’ve got some union people who don’t want to do that.”

 

Ron Matus can be reached at matus@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8873. Jeffrey S. Solochek can be reached at solochek@sptimes.com or (813) 909-4614.

 

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