Our guest blogger is Theodora Chang, Education Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The Obama administration released its annual budget yesterday, and the proposed $2 billion increase in education funding has generated a sigh of relief for some. No shrieks of joy, though — the President’s budget is for fiscal year 2012. Before we get to 2012, however, we need to straighten out fiscal year 2011 funding, which begins with the House Republicans’ Continuing Resolution (CR) scheduled to go to floor debate today.

Both the President’s budget and the CR include rhetoric about doing what’s best for students and making effective use of government resources, but there are a couple of key differences in the two proposals:

Program	President’s Budget	House CR
Title I: Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged	Increases 2010 funding levels by $300 million to reward high-poverty schools making the most progress in closing the achievement gap.	Slashes 2010 funding levels by $693.5 million. This is a brutal mid-year cut to staffed-up districts and would hit high-poverty districts the hardest.
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems	Increases 2010 funding levels by $41.7 million to expand and improve state data systems that track student achievement and link it to teachers.	Eliminates the program, which is a key source of funding for states to focus on data-driven results, which ensure that other federal investments in education are good ones.
Race to the Top	Provides $900 million for competitive grants to districts that implement key structural reforms.	Effectively discontinues program by providing $0 in funding, thus discarding momentum for reform in states and districts.
Investing in Innovation (i3)	Provides $300 million in competitive ‘seed money’ grants for innovative ideas that address key problems in education.	Effectively discontinues program by providing $0 in funding, and ignores massive appetite in private sector for augmenting R & D infrastructure.

The lack of funding for RTT and i3 seems especially contradictory to Republican statements on innovation. House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) responded to the President’s budget by saying the following:

A recent hearing highlighted a number of innovative solutions underway at the state and local level that are producing real results on behalf of students and parents. It is time we asked why increasing the federal government’s role in education has failed to improve student achievement. I look forward to charting a new course in education that ensures Washington doesn’t stand in the way of meaningful state and local reforms.

RTT has triggered the most dramatic and meaningful state education reforms the country has seen in many years. At least 10 states changed their laws to make themselves more competitive for the competition’s first round before a single dollar was awarded, and 28 states in total reformed their education policies in 2009 and 2010 to prepare for the first two rounds of the competition.

The Investing in Innovation Fund, or the i3 Fund, is a competitive grant program that takes on the challenging mandate of improving achievement at low-performing schools. Instead of throwing dollars at the problem and hoping that something sticks, it adopts a focused plan that encourages schools to develop innovative solutions that, among other things, increase high school graduation rates and close achievement gaps.

Bottom line? While Republicans may be moved to tears when talking about how all kids should have the opportunity to live the American dream, they fall short on action. Education yields a lot of bang for the buck, and meaningful reform requires Republicans to put their money where their mouths are.

Our guest blogger is Robin Chait, Associate Director for Teacher Quality at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The Indiana Department of Education recently introduced a new evaluation system for principals that raises expectations for effective leaders in the state and will soon introduce a teacher evaluation system that raises standards for teachers as well. Even though Indiana is not a recipient of Race to the Top funding, it is still implementing one its core provisions.

This development is one of many that demonstrates that Race to the Top is having an effect that extends beyond the states that are receiving funds. Other examples include the fact that Colorado continues to implement the teacher and principal evaluation system that it proposed as part of its Race to the Top application, despite not receiving an award. Similarly, Louisiana continues to implement its new teacher evaluation system, despite not receiving an award.

Yet members of Congress and some practitioners are criticizing the value of the program:

[House Education Committee Chairman John] Kline (R-MN) repeated his concerns over reauthorizing the federal Race to the Top funding and his plans as chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee. “I’m supportive of reducing the federal presence from the federal government and fixing No Child Left Behind,” Kline said.

This is unfortunate since the program has gotten tremendous bang for its buck. RTTT only provided $4.35 billion in funding, yet many states have adopted reforms that would have been unimaginable two years ago. For example, 43 states so far have adopted a set of rigorous, common state standards in language arts and mathematics.

Congress should authorize another round of the Race to the Top when they consider the President’s budget this sprint. It’s hard to imagine a more productive use of federal education funds.

During his campaign, Governor-elect Rick Scott (R-FL) said that he would “refuse temporary funding from the federal government that creates permanent spending in Florida,” a seemingly veiled shot at the Race to the Top funds Florida was awarded by the Department of Education. And it seems like Florida may not be the only state at risk of losing its Race to the Top funding.

Race to the Top provides competitive grants to states to implement education reform measures, but receiving the money is contingent on a state actually following through on its submitted plan. And the Maryland legislature yesterday took a step toward dismantling its state’s blueprint:

A Maryland legislative committee voted Monday to reject a new regulation requiring that half of teachers’ evaluations be based on student progress, calling into question the future of a $250 million federal Race to the Top grant…The federal money was awarded in part because Maryland promised that student progress would be such a large component of the evaluations, and President Obama has encouraged such changes.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, Governor-elect John Kasich (R) may endanger his state’s grant, according to the Columbus Dispatch:

Ohio could lose more than $400 million in federal Race to the Top funds if Gov.-elect John Kasich follows through with his plan to dump outgoing Gov. Ted Strickland’s education overhaul…Although Kasich said during the campaign that he will scrap Strickland’s evidence-based model for distributing state aid to schools, a spokesman for the incoming governor said he is supportive of “concepts” included in Ohio’s Race to the Top plan.

There is some flexibility for tweaking Race to the Top plans, but wholesale changes could lead to funding being pulled. “If any state significantly changes the plan, it will be putting all Race to the Top funding in jeopardy,” said Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the Education Department, adding that “what was ‘significant’ would be determined on a case-by-case basis.”

As the New York Times editorial board put it, “the Race to the Top initiative won’t solve this country’s education problems by itself, but it is focusing attention on the right issues and moving them up the national agenda.” But it won’t work if state lawmakers backtrack when the political winds change.

Over the last year, eleven states and the District of Columbia won funding under the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, which awards competitive grants to states to implement education reforms that they design. In Tuesday’s election, nine of those eleven states held gubernatorial elections, and as the Quick and the Ed noted, “new Governors in the Race to the Top states will need to determine how, if at all, they will change their state’s implementation of their RTT application.”

One of these new governors is Florida’s governor-elect Rick Scott (R). And as Education Week noted, Scott’s campaign platform seemed to imply that he’s open to turning down Race to the Top money entirely:

In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, who narrowly lost to Rick Scott, had voiced strong support for her state’s winning, $700 million plan, which calls for increased graduation rates and for school districts to develop merit pay plans, among other steps. By contrast, Mr. Scott, vowed to “refuse temporary funding from the federal government that creates permanent spending in Florida” in his economic plan.

Scott never directly said that he would turn down Race to the Top funding, but his stance does imply hostility to grants of the sort upon which Race to the Top is built. Another potential stick in the spokes of his state’s Race to the Top plan is governor-elect John Kasich (R-OH), whose predecessor’s policies, which Kasich sharply criticized, were a key part of that state’s successful application.

There is some flexibility in the Race to the Top program to tweak applications without foregoing the money, and as Rob Manwaring pointed out, “it will be up to [Education Secretary] Arne Duncan to determine how many changes are too many, and whether he will threaten pulling the funding if the adjustments deviate too much from the original plans.” But while Kasich seems willing to just change education policy on the margins, Scott seems to buying into the stance adopted by conservative darlings like Govs. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Bob McDonnell (R-VA).

Remember, both Perry and McDonnell fashioned anti-government stances out of their refusal to apply for Race to the Top funds, making blatantly false claims about the program and scaremongering about federal takeovers of education. If Scott were to emulate those two and actually forego the funding, Florida would lose out on up to $700 million that school districts in the state are planning to put towards teacher training and implementing data systems for tracking student achievement.

A cornerstone of the House Republican pitch on economic policy — first introduced by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and reinforced in the Pledge to America — is immediately returning non-defense discretionary spending to its 2008 level. The GOP claims that this will reduce federal spending by $100 billion overnight, but flatly refuses to name specific programs that would come under the knife. “The line item would be across the board,” asserted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Pledge’s architect.

Taken at face value, as Dana Goldstein pointed out in the Daily Beast, these cuts would mean a significant reduction in federal Pell Grants and the complete elimination of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program:

With partisanship at record levels in the run-up to the midterm elections, Obama’s education-reform agenda — once the calling card for his commitment to bipartisan good governance — is under threat from both the left and right. Congressional Republicans, including those, like [Sen. Lamar] Alexander (R-TN), who once praised Obama’s education policies, are now calling for a return to 2008 levels of federal spending, which would stop the White House from funding additional Pell Grant student loans and cancel plans for another round of Race to the Top, Obama’s signature education-reform grant competition.

Let’s unpack the numbers here a bit. In 2009, Pell Grant funding was $25.3 billion. In 2008, it was about $16 billion. So cutting back to the 2008 level would mean $9 billion less in funding for students, even though demand is likely to go up as the effects of the Great Recession continue to be felt across the country.

Race to the Top, meanwhile, has been spurring education reform across the country. As the New Teacher Project put it, “Race to the Top has already accelerated education reform by decades in some states.” The ranking member on the House Education Committee has already threatened to cut the program’s funding, and actually implementing the GOP’s spending plan would be the official final nail in its coffin.

Of course, it’s extremely unlikely that Republicans would actually go through with reducing every non-defense discretionary program back to the 2008 level. After all, the Drug Enforcement Administration, food safety inspectors, federal highway funding, and the Secret Service are all on the discretionary side of the budget. But that just means, to get to $100 billion, they’d have to make even bigger cuts in other programs, with education funding providing one of the biggest potential pots.

And that, in the end, is why it would be folly to actually employ the sort of blunt budgeting apparatus that the GOP advocates. (A federal spending freeze also falls into this category.) Such a move has nothing to do with setting priorities, increasing funding for successful programs, or eliminating unsuccessful ones. It just provides a good sound bite. Here’s an actual attempt to cull the education budget for ineffective or duplicative programs.

Back in July, the Obama administration requested $1.4 billion to continue its Race to the Top program — which provides competitive grants to states to implement education reform — but the Senate and the House both refused to play along, with the former chopping funding for the program down to just $675 million. However, the full 2011 appropriations process has not been completed yet, so there is still time to fully fund another year of the program.

But if Rep. John Kline (R-MN) — the ranking member on the House Education and Labor Committee, who will take the gavel if the GOP gains a House majority — has anything to say about it, Race to the Top might not receive any more funding, period, as he told Dropout Nation:

I think it was irresponsible of Congress to give [Secretary of Education Arne Duncan] $5 billion with no strings attached. Race to the Top did some pretty bold things and some of them were in line with the Republican agenda like expanding charter schools. Other parts can be problematic. When you begin moving to a common assessment, if you’re only going reward states for adopting common standards, then you are moving into creating a common curriculum. Many of us are afraid that with common curriculum, are moving to a national curriculum. If you look at the second tranche of Race to the Top, only the states that adopted common standards would get Race to the Top money.

This year, President Obama asked for $1.3 billion more for Race to the Top this budget year. Why should Congress give more money to a program that hasn’t proven itself? Race to the Top money is just one-time money. A lot of states didn’t get it. And the states who got the money, I’m not sure that they would have done [undertaken the required reforms] if they didn’t need the money.

First, Kline seems willing to write off the program before giving it a chance to prove itself. And it’s undeniable that program has driven reforms, even in states that weren’t ultimately awarded grants. In all, 28 states put reform measures in place to compete in the program.

For instance, Delaware, a RTTT winner, passed a new law on teacher and principal effectiveness, along with financial incentives for teachers, with 100 percent support from the state’s teachers union. Colorado, which didn’t end up winning, put in place a new law raising the standards for teacher tenure and introducing meaningful teacher evaluations. As the New Teacher Project put it, “Race to the Top has already accelerated education reform by decades in some states.”

Kline’s fears about the common curriculum are also unfounded, as the effort was driven by the National Governor’s Association, under Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue (GA). Though supported by the Obama administration, it is a state-led initiative that sets a floor — not a ceiling — for academic standards and has the support of the American Federation of Teachers. “Imagine in football if one team made a first down in 7 yards and the other in 10 yards. That’s not fair,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “Once the states adopt this, that’s when the preparation really begins to take this from ‘should’ to ‘will.’”

As the New York Times editorial board put it, “the Race to the Top initiative won’t solve this country’s education problems by itself, but it is focusing attention on the right issues and moving them up the national agenda.” Kline and his allies in Congress seem to be ready to pull the plug on an effort that is making a difference and could pay big dividends if given the right amount of time and resources.

This week, Govs. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Rick Perry (R-TX) declined to participate in the second round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, a $4 billion initiative that provides competitive grants to states that implement education reforms. Both governors relied on the false argument that adoption of the National Governors Association’s common academic standards (which earns a state 40 points on its application, out of 500) would force them to lower their own state’s standards.

Common standards “would likely weaken the rigorous college- and career-ready standards and assessments already in place in our state,” Perry said. “They would require us to essentially reduce the quality of Virginia’s standards, and we just can’t do that,” McDonnell opined, adding that “we think those common standards ought to be a floor not a ceiling.”

As I’ve pointed out, according to the Race to the Top executive summary, the common standards are, in fact, a floor and not a ceiling. And Gov. Sonny Perdue (R-GA), who co-chairs the NGA’s education initiative, agrees, as evidenced by his statement yesterday at an event unveiling the final version of the standards:

Complacency can’t lead us into the doldrums, and our nation can’t afford to be second class in education…I see a direct link in education and economic development. What are the opportunities and the rightful responsibilities of our states to get students, not at a ceiling, but at a floor of expectations?

The new standards have also been met with praise by the American Federation of Teachers. “Imagine in football if one team made a first down in 7 yards and the other in 10 yards. That’s not fair,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “Once the states adopt this, that’s when the preparation really begins to take this from ‘should’ to ‘will.’” According to the New Teacher Project, Race to the Top “has already accelerated education reform by decades in some states.”

Perdue is right to frame the push for higher standards in terms of their economic benefits. According to research done by McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, if the educational achievement gap between America’s lowest and highest performing states had been narrowed “GDP in 2008 would have been $425 billion to $700 billion higher, or 3 to 5 percent of GDP.”

In addition, “if the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher.” “This represents 9 to 16 percent of GDP,” the firm found.

It’s been clear since McDonnell began making his claim that it simply isn’t true, but as Monica Potts pointed out, McDonnell “has a complicit press in helping spin this into an anti-federalist stand.” It’s good to see another Republican governor set the record straight.

Yesterday, applications for the second round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program were due. Several states chose not to participate in this round, after failing to approve the reforms necessary to be competitive for the $3.4 billion in grants that remain available.

One of those states is Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry (R) elected, once again, to not submit an application. Last time, he characterized his decision as a stand for states rights, and he’s reprised that rhetoric for this round. However, Perry, like Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) yesterday, also claimed that the application’s emphasis on adopting common academic standards designed by the National Governors Association would weaken his own state’s standards:

“This administration’s attempt to bait states into adopting national standards is an effort to undermine states’ authority to determine how their students are educated, and is clearly aimed at circumventing laws prohibiting national standards,” Gov. Perry said. “Abandoning state standards and adopting new nationalized standards would cost Texas taxpayers $3 billion, and would likely weaken the rigorous college- and career-ready standards and assessments already in place in our state.”

For one thing, Perry is still mischaracterizing a set of standards designed by governors as some sort of federal mandate. And if Texas wanted to go above and beyond the standards laid out by the governors, it would be free to do so, while still earning points on its Race to the Top application. The program’s executive summary makes that abundantly clear.

But also, as the Dallas Morning News noted, the standards that Perry is so quick to defend “are set by the elected State Board of Education, which just earned national attention for setting social studies curriculum that has been criticized by educators and others as being politically driven.” That criticism is well deserved, as the social studies curriculum includes emphasizing conservative figures like Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly, downplaying the contributions of the civil rights movement, playing up clashes with Islamic cultures, and even attempting to rehabilitate Joe McCarthy.

Texas is currently 49th in the country in percentage of adults who’ve completed high school and one-third of high school freshmen never make it to graduation. The Houston Chronicle took Perry to task for his stance on Race to the Top, saying that it “echoes Perry’s empty threat to secede from the U.S. and to turn down federal stimulus funds (without which Texas wouldn’t have been able to balance its last budget). Unfortunately, that sort of grandstanding seems to poll well among potential voters in the Republican primary. But it’s no good for Texas — or for the U.S.“

Today, applications for the second round of Race to the Top — a program pioneered by the Obama administration providing $4 billion in competitive grants to states that implement education reforms — are due to the Department of Education. Delaware and Tennessee won a collective $600 million in the competition’s first round, but that still leaves $3.4 billion to be dispersed.

At least nine states have opted out of the competition this time around, after they fared poorly in the first round and failed to enact the kind of reforms necessary to bolster their applications. But many other states are passing legislation lifting caps on charter schools, improving teacher evaluations, and adopting the National Governors Association’s common academic standards, in order to boost their chances.

One of the states looking to adopt the common standards and establish a new teacher evaluation system was Oklahoma, and the debate on the floor of the Oklahoma state House of Representatives took a turn for the absurd, with one member claiming that the Race to the Top program was designed by the United Nations:

Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, said she was concerned that some of the standards being proposed to win the federal government’s Race to the Top grant were developed by the United Nations. “These are standards that are not American standards,” she said.

Kern, a former teacher, said she also is leery about the program because it is developed by Democratic President Barack Obama. “Race to the Top is Obama’s baby,” Kern said. “With this money will come strings…I’m not willing to sell out our children.”

For the record, the common academic standards that are worth 40 points on the Race to the Top application were designed by the National Governors Association, not by the Obama administration or the United Nations. But Kern is not the only one making nonsensical claims about the program. This morning, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) falsely claimed that adopting common standards would actually make Virginia lower its academic standards.

After being subjected to such hysterical rhetoric, Oklahoma’s legislature initially voted down the reform package. However, to its credit, it quickly reversed course just one day later and voted to pass the package. One lawmaker who switched his position said that his first vote had been based on “bad information.” “I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt. We need these reforms,” said Rep. Paul Wesselhoft (R).

In addition to adopting the NGA’s common standards, the reform package passed in Oklahoma includes a new regimen for evaluating teachers that employs a number of criteria to rank teachers as superior, highly effective, effective, needing improvement or ineffective. Those judged to be ineffective for two consecutive years can be let go, while effective teachers will be eligible for bonuses.