Recommendations for the Race to the Top District Competition

A little over two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education announced its draft proposal for a new Race to the Top competition that allows school districts, not states as was the case in the original Race to the Top program, to compete for 2012 grants. Today is the last day to submit recommendations for making changes to the proposed guidelines, which have both opportunities and challenges for early educators to consider. 

Researchers and policy experts that make up the PreK-3rd Grade National Work Group (including those of us here at the Early Education Initiative) submitted recommendations that praise many aspects of the competition. We also explain why some sections require changes to encourage high-quality applications from districts that want to focus on PreK-3rd initiatives.  Click here to read the work group’s recommendations. 

The recommendations were also posted in the comments field of the Ed.gov site where comments are being accepted until 5 p.m. ET today.