Recalculating Race to the Top

Since the first round of Race to the Top winners were announced in March of 2010, many stakeholders have voiced criticisms of the grant application scoring process. They have claimed that the scores are biased or extremely subjective and that the winning states are not always the ones that are most deserving of the money. But the Department of Education stuck with the complicated five reviewer process for the second round of applications, eventually awarding a total of 12 states (including the round one winners) a total of nearly $4 billion to support reform-oriented activities. In the aftermath of the second round of awards, many critics still argue that the scoring process was flawed – how else could deserving states like Louisiana and South Carolina lose out on grants while Rhode Island and the District of Columbia walked away with millions of dollars?

The American Enterprise Institute recently released a new report in its “Education Stimulus Watch” series that provides an alternative method for calculating each state’s Race to the Top Round One score. Instead of relying on reviewer scores for some of the measures, the AEI report uses independent evaluations of states’ reform criteria. Essentially, the study’s author, Daniel Bowen, believes that these independent measures created by non-political research and policy organizations more reliably quantify a state’s performance on seven of the 30 criteria on the Race to the Top rubric. Bowen considers reviewers’ ratings on these seven criteria, which make up for 18 percent (90) of the total 500 allowable points, more subjective than the remaining 82 percent.

As can be expected, the results of AEI’s alternative scoring method are significantly different from the final Round One Race to the Top scores. In fact, according to the AEI method, South Carolina should have received the most points of the 16 RttT Round One finalists – 380.6. However, South Carolina didn’t even receive a grant in Round One or Two. Florida, which came in 4th place in the actual Round One competition, would have come in second with the AEI method. While Florida did eventually win a Race to the Top grant, it had to wait until the second round when the grant size limits were more strict.

The actual Round One winners, Delaware and Tennessee, did not fare nearly as well under the AEI method. Delaware would have come in 8th place according to AEI, rather than 1st and Tennessee would have come in 4th.

Even more interesting, however, are the comparisons between the rankings for the AEI method and the actual final RttT winners. While it’s not a perfect comparison because many of the states’ applications changed dramatically between the two rounds, the AEI method suggests that several of the final winners should not have been awarded grants at all. For example, according to the AEI method Rhode Island, which actually won a grant in Round Two, should have come in 34th place in the competition based on its Round One application. Similarly, DC should have come in 35th place, and Hawaii should have come in 23rd.

The AEI method certainly validates some concerns about the subjectivity of the Race to the Top scoring method. Outside evaluations of state education reform and success may provide more reliable measures in such a significant grant competition. And the Department of Education could likely provide better guidance for the grant scoring process in the future. But the role of outside reviewers in the grant making process cannot be discounted completely. These expert reviewers provide nuance and unique knowledge to an otherwise opaque and complicated process.