When I registered exasperation with the Department for choosing 16 RTT finalists, lots of people emailed me in protest. The large number of finalists, they said, was no big deal. They said there was no reason to believe that such a high number would depress the number of scope of reforms to come as I was fretting.
So...
Hawaii came in 22nd out of 41 states applying in the first round of the RTT.
That means they were in the bottom half.
They finished nearly 100 points behind the top-scoring state.
They missed out on 37 percent of possible points.
And yet, this is the first sentence from Hawaii's major newspaper in a story on the state's RTT loss.
Hawai'i's public school system was just short of becoming a finalist in the first round of the federal Race to the Top grant competition.
The title of the article? "Isle Schools Ran a Close Race"
If you were a Hawaiian legislator, would you feel much pressure to pursue tough reforms since your state came so close?
--Andy Smarick