9 States Win Race to Top Early Learning Grants
This from Politics K-12:
Nine states will share $500 million in Race to the Top early learning grants, the U.S. Department of Education confirmed this morning.
They are: California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Washington. They will get grants ranging from $50 million to $100 million, based on the state's student population, to significantly improve early-education programs in their states. North Carolina was ranked No. 1 by the outside peer reviewers who judged the competition. California, by at least one account, was the surprise dark-horse winner. A must-read New America Foundation blog post also agrees that California—and even North Carolina—were surprises.
"Investing in early learning is one of the smartest things we can do," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said during the White House announcement of the winners this morning. "I'm confident these nine states will lead the transformation."
Duncan added that there were far more stellar applications than he could fund, and he and others in the Obama administration indicated they would like to fund more states if they can. And indeed, it seems the Education Department will get another $550 million in Race to the Top money in fiscal 2012, according to a budget deal just reached by congressional negotiators. However, later in a conference call with reporters, Duncan would not commit to using that money for early learning, saying he didn't know yet what the focus of future competitions would be....
2 comments:
It doesn't suprise me. We are being "lead" by a deparment of education which has defaulted on both its responsibiltiies in curriculum and assessment development and oversight.
I hear a lot of folks saying KY is ahead of the game compared to other states but that may be incorrect when it comes to submitting for federal funding grants, we may have confused being a front runner with being lapped.
More of our tax money being diverted to other states by federal government. I thought this was going to be a priority for our re-elected governor.
How many times are we going to have to read about Kentucky not receiving a federal education award? Seems like about 3/4 of the states have gotten some sort of race to the top hand out from the feds. Darn Mitch is killing us, we are never going to get an invitation to the free money education dance.
Post a Comment