Race To Goals 2000?
Today is Race to the Top day. The first round applications are due and the President is using that occasion to announce a budgetary expansion of the program. But unless the new money is tied in a meaningful way to requirements for reform — and integrated more generally into ESEA — this is likely to evolve into a state slush fund. Goals 2000 was hardly a failure, by the way, it laid the groundwork for states to get where they are on standards. Rather, today the feds have a chance to be even more ambitious about the foundational pieces they require from states.
