Final Race to the Top requirements address funding equity issues

After months of public debate over its notice of proposed priorities, requirements, definitions and selection criteria (NPP), the U.S. Department of Education released the final requirements governing the distribution of $4.3 billion in Race to the Top (RTTT) grants, the discretionary portion of federal stimulus funds aimed at promoting innovation in education, on November 18. The NPP released in September elicited considerable controversy, in particular the provision that barred states with laws prohibiting teacher evaluations based on student data from competing for these funds. This eligibility requirement remains, although language was added to emphasize that principal and teacher “effectiveness” should be assessed on input from multiple measures ---- provided that student growth is a significant factor. The Department’s preferential consideration of states promoting charter school growth also remains in tact in the final version. Among the other changes the Department made in response to the 1,161 comments it received on the earlier draft, were several dealing with equity in funding.

A significant addition is a new selection criterion that rewards states that have adopted policies that lead to equitable funding for high need school districts and equitable funding for schools within districts. States also will gain credit for demonstrating that their education budget for fiscal year (FY) 2009 increased, or remained the same, as compared to FY 2008. On the other hand, an additional requirement that all districts provide data regarding the extent to which they had maintained their funding efforts from FY 2008 and FY 2009 was dropped. And in the final version, the new section on “making education funding a priority” counts for only 10 points out of a total of 500 points in the scoring rubric. Additional suggestions from advocates to require maintenance of effort data through 2010 and to allocate more funding to schools with higher concentrations of students from poverty backgrounds were not adopted.

RTTT grants will be awarded in two phases. The deadline for states to apply for Phase 1 grants is January 19, 2010. The Department plans to announce recipients in April. Phase 2 applications will be due on June 1, 2010, and awards will be announced in September 2010.