Home > News Archive	Print View

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Minnesota schools are out of the running - at least for now - for a slice of the $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" grants after the state's application didn't advance past the first round.

The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday named 16 finalists from the 41 applicants. The winners will be chosen in April. A second round of applications will be accepted in June.

The grants are designed to spur states to lift student achievement by developing strong standards, pay-for-performance teacher compensation plans and turning around low-performing schools.

The state teachers union, Education Minnesota, opposed Minnesota's application because the union thought it went too far in linking teacher pay to student test results. Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty's administration blamed the application's rejection on that opposition.

"It's hard to race to the top with an anchor tied to your leg," said Brian McClung, Pawlenty's deputy chief of staff, in a prepared statement. "For years the teachers union has fought against any meaningful education reforms."

He said the state would improve its chances in the second round if the Legislature approves changes in teacher tenure, licensing and compensation that the union opposes. McClung said the response from the DFL-controlled Legislature would "inform" the administration's decision to re-apply.

The money is part of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus program, which provided $100 billion for schools. The Race to the Top fund is targeted specifically to education reform.

The U.S. Education Department said it expects no more than half of the money to be awarded in the first phase of the competition.

Scott Croonquist, executive director of the 33-member Association of Metropolitan School Districts, said, "It's disappointing, but it should not cause immediate hardship because I don't think anyone was banking on it."

In January, Minnesota submitted its 1,000-page application for $330 million in grant money. It included an agreement by 300 school districts to at least consider a controversial teacher pay approach that bases raises partly on student performance.

Minnesota already had a pay-for-performance program called QComp before the application; approval of the application could have increased QComp participation sevenfold to cover 93 percent of the state's students.

Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota, said the failure of the state's application to advance to the next round was disappointing but not surprising.

"It was an underwhelming document that was long on bureaucracy while being short on innovation and ideas that truly helped children learn," he said.

Bernadeia Johnson, deputy superintendent of the Minneapolis schools, said the state application could have offered more daring steps toward reform, such as finding new ways to certify experts in their fields to teach in public schools.

"By Minnesota standards we might have felt like we were very aggressive," she said, "but maybe nationally we were not."

Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, chairwoman of the House K-12 Education Finance Committee, also said she wasn't surprised by the result because the application lacked support from key constituencies. She didn't sign off on it.

Greiling said she was turned off most by the effort to more deeply link teacher pay to student test scores. "There were a lot of poison pills in the application," she said. "Those things probably dragged us down."

The rejection should lead to a rewrite of Minnesota's plan, Greiling said. "I want us to fix the application and get the money," she said. "We need the money."

----

On the Net:

U.S. Department of Education, announcement:

http://www.ed.gov/blog/2010/03/finalists-for-race-to-the-top-announc ed/

http://kstp.com/news/stories/s1449540.shtml