The following was reported by Sam Dillon of the NY Times on August 5, 2010. Last month, the Senate subcommittee that allocates federal education money weighed in on one such promising innovation, slicing, by more than 90 percent, the $210 million that President Obama requested for next year for his Promise Neighborhoods initiative. -Dr. Petrosino
Teach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits elite college students to teach in public schools, and the KIPP Foundation, which runs a nationwide network of charter schools, were big winners in a $650 million federal grant competition known as Investing in Innovation, theDepartment of Education said Wednesday.
Each group won $50 million. Two others won large awards for proposals the department said were backed by significant evidence of success with students.
The Success for All Foundation, a Baltimore group that helps to turn around struggling elementary schools, won $49 million. And Ohio State University, partnered with several other universities, was awarded $46 million to train some 3,750 teachers in the Reading Recovery approach, which focuses on struggling first-grade students.
The department awarded the remaining $455 million in smaller amounts to 45 other nonprofit groups and school districts. About 1,700 groups applied for grants, the department said.
Congress financed the innovation grant competition in last year’s economic stimulus, along with the larger, better-known, $4.2 billion competition known as Race to the Top, in which states have put forward proposals for shaking up their school systems.
The innovation competition, in contrast, was open to nonprofit organizations and local school districts.
The $650 million was given out in awards of three levels. The four largest awards of nearly $50 million each went to groups proposing to greatly expand programs, like Teach for America and the KIPP charters, that the department viewed has having been proved successful.
Fifteen second-tier awards of up to $30 million each went to groups with somewhat less-established programs, hoping to solidify their track record and expand. The winners of these so-called validation awards included the Smithsonian Institution, which won about $26 million for a proposal to advance “inquiry oriented” science education in hundreds of school districts, and Johns Hopkins University, which was given $30 million to advance its work in overhauling high schools with such dismal graduation rates that the university has identified them as dropout factories.
The smallest awards went to organizations proposing what were basically brainstorms: 30 groups that put forward reasonable ideas that sounded intriguing, however untested, won grants of up to $5 million. Winners included the Jefferson County Schools in Louisville, which proposed increasing the instruction time devoted to students in six low-performing high schools by 30 percent, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee, for a plan to provide extra literacy tutoring and after-school help to hundreds of struggling young readers.
As the department developed the innovation competition, it heard considerable criticism that rural school districts were at a significant disadvantage because developing a sophisticated grant proposal was said to be beyond the reach of tiny, remote districts with only a handful of administrators. Hundreds of remote districts have only one school. The department also heard complaints that as the innovation competition, Race to the Top, and other programs have unfolded, little attention has been given to early childhood education.
In the 105-point scoring rubric under which the department judged the innovation proposals, those that could benefit rural schools and those in the early childhood arena were given bonus points, officials said.
In a conference call on Wednesday evening, James Shelton, a deputy assistant secretary of education, defended the fairness of the competition with regard to rural schools and early learning initiatives. In a release, the department said that more than a third of the winning proposals were intended to serve rural schools and more than a quarter were in some way aimed at improving early learning.
Still, some early learning advocates were not impressed. Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, a nonprofit that advocates for early learning initiatives, said that although two groups that focus on early childhood won $5 million awards, she saw little else that advanced pre-kindergarten education.
“I see almost nothing for early ed,” Ms. Grumman said. “Despite a whole lot of talk that we’ve now heard for the last two years coming out of the administration and the Department of Education about integrating early education into K-12 for better student outcomes — once again it’s sounding like just so much empty rhetoric.”
In order to qualify for the awards, all the winning groups must obtain 20 percent matching pledges from foundations or other private sector donors by Sept. 8, the department said. Each of the groups that won $50 million, for instance, must persuade private donors to give an additional $10 million to support their projects.
In the first round of Race to the Top, Tennessee won $500 million and Delaware $100 million. The department says it will divide the $3.4 billion that remains next month among about a dozen states.
Picture: an unexpected development recently
