There has been much written about Secretary Duncan's decision to choose only Delaware and Tennessee for first round winners in the Race to the Top.?? Perhaps the decision was easier than people think. [quote]
First, the Secretary (smartly) decided to follow??the slate recommendations of the peer reviewers. (I leave to others to comment if the process for coming to the slate was??of high quality.)?? If you look at the scores, he needed clear demarcations/natural break points??among the states to differentiate one level of application quality from another.?? In the top 10 finalists there are really??3 distinct groupings:?? 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5/6/7/8/9/10.?? So if he was going strictly by finalist score, his choices would be:
- Delaware and Tennessee;
- Delaware, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida; or
- Delaware, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Kentucky, and Ohio.
Second, and more important, add in the decision the Department made to allow states to submit applications with unlimited budgets (as we've seen, the earlier budget recommendations were exactly that -- recommendations, quickly disregarded by most states). The Secretary (again smartly)??chose not to unilaterally adjust budget requests. ("Illinois asked for 27 million for data systems, but I think they only need??19 million" --- that would be??a recipe for disaster.) So he committed to fully fund the submitted applications.
Now marry up the peer review scores for each state with the budget request from each state, and its pretty clear that the Secretary had two clear options.?? Fund only Delaware ($100 million) and Tennessee ($500 million); or fund Delaware ($100 million), Tennessee ($500 million), Georgia ($460 million) and Florida ($1.1 billion). By choosing option one, he would distribute $600 million of the pot; by choosing option two, he distributes $2.1 Billion.?? As for option 3--funding the top ten finalists--well, so much for Round Two.
So the Secretary was faced with a decision:?? Let half the money go out in Round One to just four states, with every other state encouraged to blow the budget and??submit Cadillac-version applications in Round Two; or just fund two states for $600 million in Round One, allowing a large number of states to be Round two winners (while at the same time rewriting the rules to limit application size to specific ranges).?? Seems the decision made itself.
- Ron Tomalis
Tomalis served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education in the first term of the George W. Bush Administration, and is now a director at Dutko Worldwide.