Education bloggers still do not know what to make of the list of finalists for Race to the Top dollars. (Blogger Joanne Jacobs provides a good overview of their reactions here.) The states that made the cut, including North Carolina, have few things in common.
Edspresso observes that charter school reform did not make much of difference.
And there you go. Despite early and strong support for the idea that charter schools could turn around failing schools and promises that R2TT would help incentivize more states to lift caps and grow, charter laws were relatively inconsequential to the decisions of reviewers to pre-qualify 15 states plus the District of Columbia for new federal funds.
North Carolina’s cap on charter school did not appear to hurt its application. On the flip side, California’s charter school reform did not do enough to make it one of the finalists.
I agree with Edspresso that DC, Florida, Colorado, and Louisiana were the only states on the final list that have implemented any kind of significant education reform. Eduwonk notes that states with weak applications (New York, Ohio, and South Carolina) made the cut.
Yes, Illinois is a finalist.
There may be some backlash against North Carolina’s $470 million request for a computer-based assessment system. I have read a few comments noting that teacher training is a better use of the funds.
