The eastern winners (with the amounts based on population) were:

·       New York and Florida: $700 million each

·       Tennessee: $500 million

·       Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio: $400 million each

·       Maryland and Massachusetts: $250 million each

·       Delaware: $100 million

·       Rhode Island and the District of Columbia: $75 million each.

 

Officials in western states said they didn’t have much chance of receiving any of the $4 billion awarded as part of the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, Race to the Top, due to how the rules were structured.

 

They claimed the competition was likely to favor “densely populated Eastern states, which tend to embrace more the ideas that Washington currently considers innovative, including increasing the number of charter schools and firing principals in chronically failing schools,” according to The New York Times. The rules were particularly exasperating for states with large rural populations, where districts are too small to create alternative charter schools. In addition, wealthier states were able to hire professional consulting firms to prepare their applications, while smaller states, such as South Dakota, had to depend on teachers and volunteers.

 

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan apologized to the states of Colorado and Louisiana, both of which had changed their education laws to please the Obama administration.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Eastern States Dominate in Winning School Grants (by Sam Dillon, New York Times)

Nine States and the District of Columbia Win Second Round Race to the Top Grants (U.S. Department of Education)