Maryland and D.C. schools won a combined $325 million in federal funding on Tuesday for their efforts to enact educational reforms pushed by the Obama administration.
The money will be used in part to collect enormous amounts of data to more effectively evaluate teachers’ performance, to create tests aligned with new national standards, and to support poorly performing schools.
The two jurisdictions are among 11 in the nation to earn a share of $4.3 billion in Race to the Top dollars, made available for the first time this year from the U.S. Department of Education. States — or state-level offices such as the one run by D.C. State Superintendent Kerri Briggs — submitted applications in June explaining why their recent reforms deserved financial backing.
In the District, the city’s $75 million award provides federal backing for the contentious reforms put in place by Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and for the strength of the city’s charter school law.
Part of the District’s plan requires participating schools to “have evaluations in place for principals and teachers based on at least 50 percent student [academic] growth,” and to “support human capital decisions based on evaluations.” Put more bluntly, the plan supports Rhee’s tactic of using student performance to fire bad teachers.
Mayor Adrian Fenty said he was both “thrilled and grateful that President Obama and [U.S. Education Secretary] Arne Duncan are showing support … for our reform efforts.”
Maryland was seen as an underdog in the competition, largely because of a charter school law regarded by many advocates as among the weakest in the nation. But the state scored $250 million on the strength of its proposed reforms to teacher training and evaluation, and because the application earned some union backing.
Outgoing Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast, who was one of two Maryland superintendents to withhold his support for the funding, said he was “tickled to death” that the state won the money.
“Because now they can stop saying we kept them from being a winner,” Weast said.
The county did not sign on to the application due to disagreements over the best way to evaluate teachers, Weast said.
Mike Petrilli, vice president of education think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute, cited Maryland’s victory as proof that the “lofty rhetoric of the Race to the Top has turned to farce.”
“[N]obody in their right mind regards [Maryland] as an incubator of serious education reform,” he wrote on his organization’s Flypaper blog.
Maryland State Superintendent Nancy Grasmick disagreed, saying the funds will “bolster our data systems, improve instruction, and attract and maintain a stronger educational work force.”
