Illinois finally crossed the finish line first in the latest “Race to the Top” competition for federal education grants, a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s reform agenda.
After coming up empty-handed three times in a row, the state was awarded $42.8 million from the United States Department of Education last week in a fourth round of Race to the Top. It was the largest grant given in a race that essentially guaranteed everyone would be a winner.
Nine states were eligible for a portion of the $200 million left in the Race to the Top pot because they were finalists in previous rounds of the competition. They were asked to submit a budget plan and an application that reiterated their commitment to raising academic standards, turning around low performing schools, improving teacher and principal evaluations and enhancing student data tracking systems. South Carolina did not apply and California submitted an incomplete application. All of the other states received awards.
While state officials said they were pleased with the grant, those involved with the competition described the previous three losses in a competition launched by the former head of the Chicago Public Schools variously as “frustrating,” “baffling” and “mystifying.”
Illinois was eligible for $475 million during the last three rounds of Race to the Top, when nearly $5 billion was awarded to other states.
“I think we’re all feeling a little beaten up,” said Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, an education reform advocacy group that works to influence state education policy.
Race to the Top was created by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the former chief executive of CPS, to spur reform efforts in local school districts. During the first round of the competition in early 2010, Illinois finished in fifth place.
Only the top two states received money in that highly-competitive round. Yet despite not winning, the state earned high marks from competition judges due to the passage of a key reform law, the Performance Evaluation Reform Act, which overhauled the way teachers would be evaluated.
After a strong showing in the first round, many figured Illinois would win money in the second round. But after entering with a similar proposal, the state plummeted to 15th and missed out on up to $400 million.
According to the judges’ comments, Illinois’ fall from 5th to 15th was due in part to a lack of support from local districts for the state’s broader reform plan and a failure to overhaul enough of the lowest-performing schools. Illinois was also knocked by judges for not securing support from more than half of the state’s teachers’ unions, despite more than doubling the number of union leaders who backed the Race to the Top effort from the first round to the second.
Illinois lost out on another grant competition earlier this month–the $500 million Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge to improve early-childhood education. The state lost significant points for not having fully implemented a new kindergarten-readiness assessment, a required component of the application, which is designed to assess a child’s cognitive ability before entering school.
Some say Illinois was a victim of evaluation inconsistencies, and they point to the drastically different scores the state received for similar proposals in the first two rounds as evidence.
“Even states that had similar provisions weren’t scored similarly,” said Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a national organization aimed at improving teacher quality.
An analysis of the Race to the Top scorecards by the New Teacher Project singled Illinois out as a “vivid” example such inconsistencies in scoring.
“The state passed five major pieces of legislation to support its application—all five with the support of its largest teachers’ union,” the report stated, but comments from judges indicate the state lost points because of the perceived lack of union support. Winning states California, Maryland and Ohio all had lower percentages of district and union support, but scored higher in that section of the application.
State officials said they are trying to focus on the money they did win and not dwell on the nearly $475 million they missed out on. Illinois State Board of Education spokeswoman Mary Fergus said the money awarded last week will go to individual districts willing to implement reforms more quickly than required by state law and will help establish a public-private initiative aimed at advancing science, technology, engineering and mathematics curricula across the state.
“A lot is happening here and I think we’re being recognized for that work,” Fergus said. “When we say we’re going to move ahead, we really are going to do that.”