Race to Top Sets Stage for ESEA Reauthorization

Grant Program's Priorities Offer Template for Renewal

Some important clues to how the Obama administration intends to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act may be found in an indirect source: the detailed rules set out for states competing for $4 billion in grants under the economic-stimulus program’s Race to the Top Fund.

That competition offers an enticing carrot—grants ranging from an estimated $20 million to $700 million each—to states that make strides in four education redesign areas. Those priorities are: improving teacher effectiveness and distribution, ensuring rigorous collection and use of student and classroom-level data, turning around the lowest-performing schools, and bolstering academic standards and student assessments.

The four “assurances” states must make to qualify for the Race to the Top—echoed elsewhere in the stimulus law’s education provisions—are likely to form the basis for the U.S. Department of Education’s plans for the reauthorization of the ESEA, Secretary of Education...