Innovate+Educate Blog

New Mexico again misses cut on Race to the Top

July 28, 2010

New Mexico once again has missed the cut in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top contest, which is doling out federal dollars to states that propose and adopt innovative approaches to K-12 education.

New Mexico was among 35 states and the District of Columbia who applied for the second round of Race to the Top after failing to win in Round 1 back in March. Including the 36 applications for the second round, a total of 46 states and the District of Columbia applied for either the first or second rounds – or both.

New Mexico had hoped to win $75 million.

The second-round finalists announced on Tuesday were: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

Tennessee and Delaware were the only states that won money in the contest’s first round.

Scoring and feedback on New Mexico’s application won’t be available until after the winners of the second round are announced in late August or early September.

Race to the Top is a $4.35 billion federal education program that is the largest pool of discretionary education money in U.S. history. The grants reward school systems for finding ways to strengthen academic standards, recruit better teachers, collect data on student performance, and turn around failing schools that can be replicated across the country.

Innovate-Educate was a strong supporter of both applications.

The good news is that even though New Mexico didn’t win the money, the state is planning to continue pursuing the education reforms spelled out in its 200-page application, according to Gov. Bill Richardson’s new education secretary, Dr. Susanna Murphy.

Those reforms included “linking teacher and principal evaluations to student growth” and new “collaborations aimed at improving low-performing schools throughout the state.”

“While I am disappointed that we were not chosen as a finalist, we will not let up on our efforts to implement these education reforms,” said Murphy in a prepared statement. “Teacher unions and major stakeholders agreed when the application was submitted that we would continue with these reforms even if we did not receive the federal funds.”

Murphy also said the current administration has made education reform its number one priority, and as a result, New Mexico has seen consistent improvement over the past seven years. She added, “This process has only strengthened that commitment, and we will continue to build on those initiatives to benefit students and the state’s economy.”

The Race to the Top program, part of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus law, will funds to states that are implementing ambitious reforms aimed at improving struggling schools and closing the achievement gap. Many states also passed significant reform laws that allowed for the development of more charter schools and tightened teacher accountability and tenure requirements in order to increase their chances of winning a grant.

Nine of the states that submitted applications last time did not reapply in Round 2.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged that not all of the finalists would be awarded grants from the almost $3.4 billion remaining in Race to the Top. President Obama has requested 1.35 billion for the program in the administration’s fiscal 2011 budget.