Race to the Top: Introducing Competition for Federal Dollars (with Daniel H. Bowen)

Abstract

In July 2009, President Obama and Secretary Duncan announced the $4.35 billion Race to the Top (RTT) program—a nation-wide, state-level competition aimed at overhauling the infrastructure of education throughout the United States. The primary objectives of RTT included toughening state standards, improving the tracking of students’ performances, turning around failing schools, and improving the recruitment and retaining of effective educators (The Guardian 2009). President Obama accentuated the importance of RTT, deeming it “the single most important thing we’ve done [in education]” (Klein 2010 ). With the conclusions of two rounds of competition (and the ongoing discussions of the possibility of a third round), RTT received its share of praise and criticism. Praise has stemmed from RTT’s successes in fostering meaningful policy discussions regarding the education reform environment at a relatively low cost to taxpayers (Brooks 2009 ), while critics have questioned the application process along with its ability to bring about substantial outcomes (The Wall Street Journal 2009).KeywordsEducation ReformCharter SchoolSupplemental Nutrition Assistance ProgramPolicy EntrepreneurPresident OBAMAThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.