Race to the Top Round Two: Not in the Cards for Louisiana

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced the winners in Round Two of the Race to the Top (RTTT) competition, and unfortunately, RTTT funding has escaped Louisiana for a second time. How did this happen you might ask? I am going to try to break it down based on the reviewers’ scorecards. But, first, I want to acknowledge, as I have written before, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) really did work hard to improve their second round application—through addressing many of the concerns from the first round of reviewers, building an interview team that could tackle their weaknesses and reaching out to knowledgeable education stakeholders for help. LDE was competing against 18 other finalists. They were working to get $175 million. Ten states won and Louisiana was ranked 13^th.

Let’s talk about why we were ranked 13th. First, I would like to address the intangible—the items that didn’t have a hard and fast score. Neither our governor nor our teachers union was a part of the team that went to DC to present the Round 2 application to the reviewers. In all 10 states that won, either the governor or the teacher’s union was present. Does this mean that the reviewers thought that we didn’t have enough buy-in by state leadership or on the ground? The interview is the final step of the application. By the time they interview the states, the reviewers have drafted their scores and comments. After the interview, the reviewers finalize their comments and submit them. So, impressions from the presentation could have had a profound effect on the outcome of the application.

This leads us to the more tangible—the reviewers’ comments and scores. Louisiana got 434 points out of a total of 500 points. We only needed 7 more points to win. There were 6 major categories of indicators included in the scorecard—State Success Factors, Standards and Assessments, Data Systems to Support Instruction, Great Teachers and Leaders, Turning Around the Lowest-Achieving Schools and General (state funding, facilities, etc.) Louisiana got all of the points in areas such as developing and implementing common, high-quality assessments; fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system; and turning around the lowest-achieving schools. We also scored points on making education funding a priority, revenues to support education, state funding policies that lead to equitable funding, having a charter school law that does not prohibit or inhibit charter schools, and emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Louisiana lost the most points on the following items:

• articulating the State’s education reform agenda and Local Education Agencies’ (LEA’s) participation in it;
• securing LEA’s commitment (47% of the student population was a part of the application);
• building a strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up and sustain plans;
• demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement gaps and closing gaps;
• improving student outcomes;
• improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance;
• providing effective support to teachers and principals; and
• intervening in the lowest-achieving schools and LEAs.

Lastly, we should consider the range of scores that Louisiana got.  After Round One, there was some discussion that Louisiana was hurt by one harsh reviewer; some people argued that the highest and lowest scores for each state should have been thrown out.  Even if you agree with that position, there is no reason to think that we lost in Round Two because of one overly harsh reviewer.  There were 5 reviewers for each state. If you took Louisiana’s final score (434) and the lowest score (400), there was a 34 point difference. Of all of the finalists, 11 states had a bigger difference than that. Of all of the winners, 4 had a bigger difference.  In fact, as this analysis shows, throwing out the highest and lowest scores would not have changed who the winners were.

The LDE did many things right in this application, but there are clearly some major themes related to reform efforts and increasing performance that must be improved as we move forward. Why did the reviewers think that Louisiana wasn’t providing effective support to teachers and principals, demonstrating progress in closing student achievement gaps and improving student outcomes based on teacher/principal effectiveness? And, how can we make sure that we start providing support to everyone involved to close the achievement gap? And, most importantly, how can we get more than 47% of the students in our state engaged in reform efforts? It is clear from the reviewers’ comments on our application that there is work to be done—we should not brush this off as a decision based on anything other than merit.

After the dust settles and we figure out where to go from here, perhaps it’s time to really dig deep and figure out what we have gained from this process and what reforms are the most effective to bring about real change. So, I hope we can all dig in, sooner than later, and get down to the business of starting some of the things we touted in RTTT and re-thinking other reforms that were not seen as particularly innovative. I know one thing—as Louisianians, we are resourceful and can figure it out if we take the time, value the feedback that was given to us and get down to work. The time is now—let’s get it done.