By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: May 22, 2012
School districts will be able to submit proposals for innovative educational programs this year to compete for federal grants of up to $25 million under a new national contest, part of the three-year-oldRace to the Top program. Rules for the competition were to be announced on Tuesday by the Department of Education.
Like the department’s state-level competition for federal grants that preceded it, the program will require systems for measuring student progress and assessing teachers and administrators and will target low-income communities. Under the department’s rules, the schools included in each application must have at least 40 percent of students qualify for federally subsidized school lunches.
A spokesman for the department said it would look for programs that provide ways to tailor instruction to individual students.
“We need to take classroom learning beyond a one-size-fits-all model and bring it into the 21st century,” Arne Duncan, the education secretary, said in a statement.
The rules require districts to show how they will focus resources on “students facing significant challenges, such as students with disabilities, English learners and students affected by impacts of poverty or family instability.”
In the last three rounds, the Race to the Top competition has awarded about $4 billion in grants to 22 states and the District of Columbia. The district-level phase of the program will be much smaller, with about $400 million that could be distributed among 15 to 20 applicants around the country.
School districts can apply on their own or in a consortium with neighboring districts and propose programs that encompass all students or just a subset, making it easier to achieve the low-income population target. A district can specify schools, grade levels and even academic subjects in its application.
The department would then separate applicants into groups to avoid pitting districts instates that won grants in an earlier Race to the Top competition — and who might have a head start on some reforms — against those in states that did not.
The department expects to publish final rules in July, accept applications in October and award the grants in December.
While most states have applied for Race to the Top money and have even changed their laws to qualify — by allowing more charter schools, for example — the program has had its critics. Teachers’ unions have said that some of the measures used to gauge student progress are too crude, and officials in some states have objected to what they see as a bid to shift control of education to Washington.
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