Race to the Top

Race to the top is a 4.35 billion dollar United Sates Department of Education program to help create reforms in schools K through 12 in the United States. This program was announced by President Barack Obama and the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on July 24, 2009. To get the money from this grant you would have to meet certain criteria like how successful your state was at giving kids their education, how good the teachers are in the schools, and doing all the things the government wants you to do. The effects of race to the top are that out of the fifty states forty eight of them adopted common standards for K through 12. Also, there was 350 million federal grant money that went to funding the making of having tests that met the common standards all the states adopted. There was a timetable that was created for race to the top that was separated into two phases. If a state wanted to participate they had to have their entry in on January 19, 2010. Forty states made the deadline. Then if you applied you had to see if you made the cut, so the government announced "winners" on March 4, 2010. Then in phase two the same thing happened just at different time increments. If you were a state that "won" there were different amounts of money you could have been awarded. In phase one the lower range was from twenty to 75 million dollars and the higher range was from 350 to 700 million dollars. Some critics of the race to the top program say that there is too much government interference in education and they say that there is no proof that it will work and that attempts in the past have not been successful. I think that it will be a good thing because we have already seen the benefits of it in our school. Some examples would be getting the smart boards or the class set of ipod touches.





Sources:
http://www.youtube.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_top
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=580&q=race+to+the+top&aq=0&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=race+to