States Compete for Obama School Reform Funds

Racial desegregation. Mainstreaming of the handicapped. No Child Left Behind. At least three times in the past 60 years, the federal government has radically transformed public schools, with varied results. Here comes another attempt.

President Obama has launched an education initiative called Race to the Top. He has set aside at least $4.3 billion out of the $787 billion stimulus package for controversial education reforms he argues are needed to raise American students' dismal scores on international tests and improve their chances of succeeding in the global economy. "The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens," Obama says.

The Obama administration is offering potentially huge grants to states and schools that implement rigorous reforms. For students, his proposals could mean longer school days and years, dedicated to learning information required to meet national standards for each grade level. All high school seniors, for example, could be expected to solve problems such as "If there are 8 x 10¹² hydrogen molecules in a volume of 4 x 10⁴ cubic centimeters, what is the average number of hydrogen molecules per cubic centimeter?" (Answer: 2 x 10⁸ hydrogen molecules per cubic centimeter.)

For school districts, the plan could mean the creation of databases that enable schools to track any particular student's test scores, attendance, and other information all the way from kindergarten through adulthood. That data would be used to shape everything from teachers' lesson plans to district or state labor force policies. Districts also would have to develop new ways to recruit and retain top teachers and principals, including tying pay to student performance.

Thousands of neighborhood schools already have adopted many of these sweeping changes, even though Obama hasn't yet distributed a penny of the Race to the Top grants. Recession-socked states such as California, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Louisiana are trying to improve their chances of winning some of the money by enacting laws permitting more charter schools and making teacher merit pay an option for school districts.

Also accelerating the reforms: the way Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, intends to hand out the funds. He plans to divvy up that $4 billion among the few states that win a competition to prove they will change their schools in ways the administration deems most likely to succeed. The states that propose the least aggressive reforms won't get any money from this fund. An additional $650 million will be awarded to a few lucky school districts and nonprofits that can convince the administration they've also found better ways to teach.

On top of that, $350 million will fund states and programs that develop common educational goals for each grade, as well as better tests to determine whether kids are meeting those standards and how well teachers are teaching.

Duncan insists that he won't bow to political pressure to make sure every state gets at least a little of the extra money and that he will fund only projects that provide evidence they will help students. But skeptics abound. Already, states with poor reform records are lobbying for exemptions. And many critics note that some of the administration's pet strategies, including merit pay, aren't backed by research.

Even those strategies that have been shown to improve learning work only if executed well. Requiring students to spend more hours in a rotten school could hurt more than help, after all. Doing more than splashy, superficial reforms often requires expensive and politically unpopular actions—flunking students who don't pass standardized tests, firing principals and teachers whose students don't perform well, and funneling extra tax dollars to low-income schools that need more help—that are difficult even in good economic times. "Clearly, [Race to the Top] is going to have a huge impact," says Robert Slavin, director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University whose Success for All teaching technique is one of the few reforms proven to raise elementary students' test scores. Whether the president's plan will work is still unclear, Slavin says.