Marcus Winters on the impact RttP is having nationwide:

Race to the Top has emboldened reform-minded policymakers like Bloomberg to push hard for their ideas. Just as importantly, the lure of earning federal dollars makes the reform position an appealing default for those policymakers whose primary interest lies outside education.

For instance, before Race to the Top, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger paid only brief lip service to education reform. After the grant competition was announced, the Governator called a special session of the state legislature and pushed for a series of meaningful reforms such as eliminating the state's charter school cap, using data to evaluate student and teacher performance, and adopting a performance pay program for teachers.

Some reformers question whether the Obama administration really has the stomach to keep Race to the Top strong enough to produce real reform. This argument got a boost when the final guidelines for the grant competition gave strong preference for removing statewide caps on the number of charter schools instead of requiring it as did the initial draft.

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Race to the Top program prioritizes reform

By: Marcus Winters
OpEd Contributor
December 16, 2009

www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Manhattan-Moment/Rise-to-the-Top-program-prioritizes-reform-8659189-79335792.html

Recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg threatened to sue the state legislature if it did not fund charter and public schools equally, promised to close the lowest-performing 10 percent of the city's public schools, and ordered the city schools chancellor, Joel Klein, to essentially ignore the state legislature's ban on using student test scores when evaluating teachers for tenure. That's an aggressive stance, even by the high standard already set by his administration in recent years.

Tellingly, Bloomberg wasn't in City Hall nor at the state capital in Albany when he laid out this uncompromising platform. He was in Washington, D.C., appearing at an event with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The motivation for his broad approach to education reform, he said in his speech, was that it would help his state compete for more than $150 million under the Obama administration's Race to the Top program.