Only Half of Race to Top Funds Went to School Districts
Thursday, August 08, 2013
Half of the $19.1 million of funds spent so far for the Race to the Top—the competitive federal grant program meant to spur innovative education reform and boost student achievement—has gone to local school districts in Rhode Island, according to U.S. Department of Education data.
About $9.5 million of the funds had flowed into local districts by June 2012, according to the latest available federal data. The second largest expenditure, according to the breakdown, was $6.8 million for contractors, constituting more than a third of the total.
Click here to see the top ten areas where the funds have been spent.
Of the 10 states that have funneled any Race to the Top money down to districts, Rhode Island has shared the least amount with its local agencies, about 49.3 percent. In most states, nearly 60 percent to about 75 percent has been shared with districts. The mandated minimum is 50 percent. (Eight other states have not sent any Race to the Top funds to their districts, but most of those states have received considerably less funding so far, typically less than one million. See below table for the full breakdown.)
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWhen Rhode Island announced that it had been awarded $75 million from the Race to the Top in August 2010, the news was welcomed across the board—education reformers and labor advocates alike celebrated the opportunity. One of the supporters on the labor side, the now-retired head of the state chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, Marcia Reback, said there was an expectation at the time that much of the money would go to school districts.
“That was kind of the carrot that got dangled that the districts would get money if they signed on,” said Jean Ann Guliano, who endorsed the state application when she was chair of the East Greenwich School Committee.
Instead, much more of the money than anticipated has been locked up at the state level, according to Reback.
‘Trickle-down’ education funding
“Rhode Island public school teachers haven’t seen any of the Race to the Top money impacting their schools and their classroom instruction,” said Jim Parisi, a field representative for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals. “What we’ve seen is the money being spent on statewide initiatives and contractors, but certainly in terms of expenditures that show themselves in public school classrooms, we’re not seeing Race to the Top money flow down into the classroom.”
When the funding was initially announced, Education Commissioner Deborah Gist said the money “will give us the opportunity to engage more educators across the state and give them the support, tools, and resources they need,” according to an August 25, 2010 news report in the Providence Journal.
“That could not be any further from the reality that I, as a teacher, have seen on the ground,” said state Sen. James Sheehan, a North Kingstown Democrat who is a history teacher at Toll Gate High School in Warwick.
Sheehan said it reminds him of the trickle-down theory of economics. “I haven’t even felt a raindrop of that here below at the teacher level,” he said.
Supporters: funding meant for statewide reform
But supporters of the Race to the Top say the real question is not how much of the money is directly going into school district coffers. “That’s less of an issue than where it will be most impactful and most sustainable,” said Maryellen Butke, the former head of RI-CAN, an education reform group, and a current member of the statewide steering committee for the Race to the Top.
Butke said that, at the time when the money was received, state officials did not want districts to become dependent on a stream of funding that would only be temporary. (All of the money will be spent by November 2014, according to Rhode Island Department of Education spokesman Elliot Krieger.) Instead, Butke said officials wanted to use the money to build infrastructure that it can use long after the federal funding has dried up.
She pointed to her own experience as an administrator at the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (the MET), from 2002 to 2010. Near the end of her tenure she recalled receiving funding through the economic stimulus program which the school used to create what Butke described as “really remarkable programs”—only to have the financial rug pulled out from them when the stimulus ended.
Race to the Top set out to do something different—to fund statewide initiatives and policies, said Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees. Two top aims, he said, were developing a standardized, statewide teacher evaluation system and building the digital infrastructure for data systems that can track school performance and student achievement.
“The money has been well spent,” Duffy said.
“I have not heard a lot of grumbling from school districts that they did not get their fair share,” added Tim Ryan, a former North Providence schools chief who is the new head of the Rhode Island School Superintendents Association.
Even though dollars may not have shown up in district accounts, the benefits from that money have been felt locally, according to Duffy and Ryan. For example, the grant funded training for teachers in the new Common Core standards being adopted in Rhode Island, Ryan said. That money was spent through the state Department of Education and the training was managed at the state level, but the benefit still accrued to the local school district level, he said.
Duffy described the new teacher evaluation system as a major achievement that ensures teachers in districts as diverse as Central Falls and Barrington will be measured according to the same standards. Previously, evaluations differed from district to district, were a function of collective bargaining, and varied widely, according to Duffy.
60 percent of teachers say it’s a waste of money
That system, however, has met with deep skepticism and resistance among teachers. Both the NEA and the AFT have pushed for a delay in the implementation of the new evaluations.
While the Race to the Top showed great promise, scant resources from the Race to the Top funds have been made available at the local, classroom level, Sheehan said. “Is it for teachers in the classroom or is it for building a grand infrastructure or bureaucracy?”
A union-commissioned poll released last April shows that Sheehan speaks for many teachers across the state. Of the teachers surveyed, 60 percent thought Race to the Top was a waste of money while 22 percent said it had been “somewhat ineffective.” Asked if their districts had benefited, 57 percent said they had not, while 31 percent said they had.
But Butke said she had heard from individual teachers—both at the Race to the Top steering committee and at a Statehouse briefing for lawmakers—who said they felt that the new evaluation system funded by Race to the Top had helped them improve their teaching. Race to the Top, she added, has created other opportunities for teachers to get the support they need, such as a new “induction program” with coaches that guide new teachers, according to Butke.
“Of course we shouldn’t have a system that judges teachers and tells people what they’re doing wrong,” Butke said.
Stephen Beale can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @bealenews
Related Articles
- Is RI at Risk of Losing $75 million in Race to the Top Funding?
- TODAY: Education Reformer Demands Answers on Race to the Top
- NEW: RI Has Spent $1M from Race to the Top So Far
- NEW: RI Wins $50 million in Race to the Top Funds
- NEW: State Releases Race to the Top Update
- RI Is a Finalist in Federal ‘Race to the Top’
- Aaron Regunberg: Race to the Top’s Bill of Goods
- Race to the Top: Where Did the Money Go?
- Breaking News: RI Wins Race to the Top
- State Teacher Union Backs ‘Race to the Top’