Six New Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge Winners

Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont join the ranks of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) winners, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services announced today. All prioritize building a strong continuum of learning beginning at birth and extending up through the third grade of elementary school.

When the application for this third round was released over the summer, we wrote about a few notable changes. One change we were particularly happy to see was a new competitive priority: adopting PreK-3rd grade approaches to sustain gains made in preschool programs. This priority was worth a significant 10 points, and not surprisingly, each of the six winners included this priority in their application.

Here’s how the winners stacked up:

This RTT-ELC round saw a few surprise applications from Arizona, Indiana, Mississippi, and New Hampshire. (Arizona and Mississippi also applied in the first round.) While RTT-ELC is a program that focuses on helping states to coordinate and improve systems of early care and education for children, birth through age 5, it also emphasizes expanding families’ access to high-quality programs, especially low-income families. But in the past few years, Arizona significantly cut funding for its state pre-K program. And Indiana and New Hampshire have no state pre-K programs at all. Mississippi was in that same boat until this year when funding was appropriated for its first state-funded pre-K program. In October, the state’s Department of Education began accepting grant applications from organizations interested in serving as pre-K providers.

Ultimately, none of these states were successful in their applications. Arizona, however, ranked closely behind Vermont. And while funding in these states for pre-K program remains a concern, at least their new (Indiana and New Hampshire) and continued (Arizona and Mississippi) interest signals a recognition of the importance of high-quality early learning opportunities for children and their families.

The first RTT–ELC competition was held in 2011 and awarded grants to nine states: California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Washington. In 2012, the next five highest-rated states from the first round received funding: Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

In the New Year, we’ll report on the newest winners’ early learning plans – as well as the progress made in states that won grants in previous rounds – for Tiered Quality Rating and Improvement Systems, multi-domain early learning guidelines, comprehensive assessment systems, building an effective workforce, and improving coordination between early learning systems and the early grades of elementary school.

For more on the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge check out our full coverage here.