Nine states and the District of Columbia will get money to reform schools in the second round of the $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" grant competition, The U.S. Education Department said Tuesday.
Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., will receive grants, department spokesman Justin Hamilton said.
Florida won $700 million.
The historic program, part of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan, rewards states for taking up ambitious changes to improve struggling schools, close the achievement gap and boost graduation rates.
The competition instigated a wave of reforms across the country, as states passed new teacher accountability policies and lifted
caps on charter schools to boost their chances of winning.
Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia applied for the second round of the competition, and the Education Department named 19 finalists in July.
The applicants named winners Tuesday will share a remaining $3.4 billion. Another $350 million is coming in a separate competition for states creating new academic assessments.
Local
Florida was among the states that got resistance from many teachers unions in the first round of the competition but won their support after taking a more collaborative approach in round two.
"I think it shows that when the governor brought all the stakeholders together, we came up with an application that was strong and doable," said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers' union. "The Department of Education saw the progress that we made and I just hope that collaboration and cooperation continues at the local level."
More than a dozen states vying for the money changed laws to foster the growth of charter schools, and at least 17 reformed teacher evaluation systems to include student achievement. Dozens also adopted Common Core State Standards, the uniform math and reading benchmarks developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association.
"The change unleashed by conditioning federal funding on bold and forward-looking state education policies is indisputable," the
Democrats for Education Reform said in a statement. "Under the president's leadership, local civil rights, child advocacy, business and education reform groups, in collaboration with those state and local teacher unions ready for change, sprung into action to achieve things that they had been waiting and wanting to do for years."
