Part of Georgia's Race to the Top Grant Put On High-Risk Status

Education Week July 3, 2012: Part of Georgia's $400 million Race to the Top grant is being put on high-risk status, the U.S. Department of Education told Gov. Nathan Deal in a letter dated July 2. The department is worried that the state, which has had a number of amendments to its plan in the tricky area of teacher evaluation, has strayed too far from the vision it originally outlined in its winning application.

The upshot? If Georgia is unable to address the department's concerns, it could lose roughly $33 million of its $400 million—the portion dedicated to implementing the state's teacher-evaluation plan. Why isn't the whole thing being put on high-risk status? Right now, Georgia has demonstrated sufficient progress on the rest of its plan, the department wrote.

Georgia isn't the first state to see its Race to the Top grant put on high-risk status because of tricky teacher-evaluation issues. Earlier this year, Hawaii came close to losing its grant, in part because its union hasn't yet embraced its teacher-evaluation plan. Hawaii was able to keep its grant, but it remains on high-risk status. And, unlike Georgia, Hawaii's entire grant was put on high-risk status because it was behind on other parts of its plan as well.

Also, plenty of other states have submitted amendments to their plans or are behind on their promises. Race to the Top, which offered states $4 billion for embracing certain reform priorities, is the Obama administration's signature K-12 initative.

Interestingly, peer reviewers gave Hawaii and Georgia the highest scores in the second phase of the Race to the Top program in the area of teacher evaluation.

At this time, the department isn't planning to put other Race to the Top states on high-risk status, said Ann Whalen, the director of policy and program implementation for the Implementation and Support Unit at the department….

What do Georgia's troubles mean for the future of Race to the Top, which has been under attack by Republicans in Congress? It's tough to say, but I'd expect Georgia to show up in a Government Accountability Office report, requested by U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee on states' implementation of the teacher quality portions of Race to the Top.

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