Race to the Top and the Status of Education Innovation

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with Center for American Progress and Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, on Monday released the report “Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation.” The report evaluates states based on several indicators of innovation including school management, finance, and technology and identifies significant shortcomings in nearly all categories. In fact, most states received Cs and Ds with a few exceptions that earned As and Bs in one or two categories. In all, it paints an underwhelming picture of the status of education innovation in the United States public education system.

The National Journal on Wednesday released a brief video about the report and challenges states face in using federal stimulus funds for innovative purposes. The video examines states’ use of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF), which was mostly used to save jobs, and draws lessons from that experience to illuminate expectations for the upcoming Race to the Top (RttT) competitive grant program. In the video, Ed Money Watch’s Jennifer Cohen commented on what we can expect from states and districts for RttT.

“There are some states who have already said, ‘We’re just not going to do the Race to the Top,'” Cohen said, citing states’ financial concerns about the program’s reform goals. “They’ve said ‘We can’t guarantee that after a couple of years that we’ll be able to continue these programs’ or – in a lot of cases – whether they even have the capacity to start them to begin with.”

We will be watching closely to see how states proceed after the U.S. Department of Education (ED) releases the finalized RttT priorities and application later today. While some states have spent the past few months scrambling to make themselves eligible for the competitive grant program, others have decided not to apply. We’re also eager to see how closely ED sticks to its previously identified reform goals, and which states are ultimately awarded the grants.

The full video can be viewed below: