This article captures how states are, for the first time, competing with one another to implement more meaningful reforms:

"The fact that you had thousands of education advocates and officials all over the country at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time this morning (March 4) looking on the Internet to see which states were finalists shows they've created a sense of enthusiasm for reform with this," Joe Williams, head of Democrats for Education Reform, told The Washington Post. "It's hard to remember a time when states were comparing themselves to each other."

…Many states have taken aggressive steps to compete for the money, including changing their laws to allow for more charter schools. That has already made Race to the Top one of the biggest education shakeups in years.

"The amount of state-level policy changes in the last few months that this has generated is really unprecedented," Andrew Rotherham, of the Washington-based think tank Education Sector, told National Public Radio. "It was an ambitious set of proposals for reform, and it came at a time when states needed money."

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Friday, March 05, 2010

Race to the Top: The states react

By Stateline.org Staff

www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=466366