School-grant finalists named

Arkansas not among 18 states, D.C. to make cut

— Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were named finalists Tuesday in the second round of the federal “Race to the Top” school overhaul grant competition, giving them a chance to receive a share of $3.4 billion. Arkansas was not named a finalist.

In this second round of applications, Arkansas applied for $171.3 million, half of which would have gone directly to school districts and charter schools, and the other half to statewide public-education initiatives.

Some of those initiatives included steps to improve student data systems, intervene in the state’s 19 lowest-performing schools, roll out improved teacher and principal evaluation systems, make a transition to using a national set of educational standards and tests, pilot a differentiated compensation system for teachers, and expand the teaching of science and math. Still other components included the establishment of an office of innovation.

“It’s definitely not what we wanted,” Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimbrell said Tuesday. “The staff and partners around the state worked really, really hard to create what we thought was a progressive plan, a strong plan. It talked about where we needed to go. We felt it laid out succinctly what we were planning to do.”

But Kimbrell said the state’s grant proposal won’t be shelved.

“We are going to use this with the state Board of Education in setting our vision and creating our goals,” he said. “We’ll just implement this plan as best we can looking for other outside resources and also looking inside at our current use of resources to see if we can reallocate those to make these things happen.”

In the first round of the Race to the Top competition, Arkansas’ application earned 394.4 points - just short of the 400-point cutoff to be a finalist.

Duncan said Tuesday that 400 out of a possible 500 was again the cut-off score in the second round. The U.S. Department of Education won’t release the second-round scores until later.

Kimbrell said Tuesday that the Arkansas planners looked at the successful Tennessee and Delaware plans from the first round, as well as other high scoring applications.

“Some of the things those states were proposing were things we’ve already done,” Kimbrell said.

The finalists are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and the District of Colombia.

The competition rewards ambitious policy changes aimed at improving struggling schools and closing the achievement gap.

Dozens of states have passed new education policies to foster charter school growth and modify teachers evaluations, hoping to make themselves more attractiveto the judges.

In a speech announcing the finalists at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said a “quiet revolution” of education policy is taking place across the country.

“It’s being driven by great educators and administrators who are challenging the defeatism and inertia that has trapped generations of children in second-rate schools,” Duncan said.

Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia applied during the second round of the competition.

Applications were screened by a panel of peer reviewers, and finalists will travel to Washington in coming weeks to present their proposals.

The department expects 10 to 15 applicants will ultimately receive money, depending on whether large or small states win.

“Just as in the first round, we’re going to set a very high bar because we know that real and meaningful change will only come from doing hard work and setting high expectations,” Duncan said.

Information for this article was contributed by Dorie Turner, Christine Armario, Michael Gormley, Ileana Morales, Ivan Moreno, Susanne Schafer and Donna Gordon Blankinship of The Associated Press and by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 3 on 07/28/2010

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