Key Challenges in Implementing Race to the Top

In late August, 2010, the U.S. Department of Education announced the winners of Phase Two of the Race to the Top grant competition. Including the two winning states from Phase One, 11 states and the District of Columbia have been awarded $4 billion in federal grants to implement extensive education reform plans. But ever since the final winners were announced, education stakeholders have expressed concerns about the actual implementation of the proposed programs in each state’s grant applications: Do states have the capacity to do what they promised? Will the Department hold them accountable? Will student performance play a significant role in tracking the success of the grants?

An American Enterprise Institute report, Competitive Grant Making and Education Reform, by Paul Manna explores some of these concerns as it discusses Race to the Top’s “Current Impact and Future Prospects.” In the report, Manna suggests that the Race to the Top grant process has been a mixed bag thus far. The scoring process was transparent and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stuck to his promise to honor the outcomes of the reviewer scoring process rather than supersede the outcomes with political selections. At the same time, however, the states that received grants may not have been the best positioned to implement their proposals and applications were lengthy and difficult to evaluate objectively.

Moving forward, the key to Race to the Top’s success will be in ensuring high quality implementation of the grant proposals. Given that some states may not have the capacity to fully implement their proposals – Manna goes as far as to suggest that some states might have over-promised assuming they would not be held accountable – Secretary Duncan and ED must be willing to withhold funds from states that attempt to water down or ignore aspects of their grant proposals. Both the threat of withheld funding and the actual act of recapturing funds from derelict states should be enough to compel states to comply with their proposals to the fullest extent possible. Indeed, we know that money is a strong motivator for states – the Race to the Top competition itself caused states to enact policy changes that had previously been politically impossible.

Strict accountability will be of particular importance in states where new governors or political parties will take control after the elections next week. ED must strive to maintain the integrity of the winning Race to the Top applications even in the face of state administrations that do not agree with them.

Manna also stresses that Secretary Duncan and ED must ensure that states stay focused on improving academic achievement in addition to completing the tasks set out in their applications. Unfortunately, the Race to the Top application process did not place a heavy emphasis on student performance – only 30 of the 500 points in the application focused on academic achievement; the rest were based on the quality of the proposed plan and compliance with various capacity and legislative requirements.

Shifting the focus from compliance to student performance will require some heavy lifting from ED, which is notorious for compliance-based practices. Most major grant programs out of ED, like Title I and IDEA, require extensive compliance tasks like reporting data, filling out applications, and maintaining services. While these programs do have accountability measures, local and state administrators spend significant time filling out forms to continue to receive funds. ED must find some way to change this structure to ensure that states are both complying with their applications and ultimately focusing on student performance as the final goal.

On the whole, Manna’s report clarifies the many challenges ED is likely to face as the Race to the Top process continues. Implementation will not be easy, particularly with a changing political climate and on-going financial issues. And if Congress does choose to continue to program in fiscal year 2011 with an additional appropriation (the most recent versions of both the House and Senate 2011 appropriations bills suggest this is possible) they will have to start the process all over again in a few months. Race to the Top’s success depends on strict implementation and thorough, performance-based evaluation. Here’s hoping ED is up to the task.