Along with others, I am surprised that Ohio was named a finalist in the federal Race to the Top sweepstakes.???? Not because of the caliber of the state's application ???????? despite its misgivings, the Buckeye State's surely is one of the top 16 submitted.???? But it's certainly not in the same league as top contenders like Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana.???? Most fair-minded observers don't think Ohio will win in the first round despite making the preliminary cut, unless Secretary Duncan goes back on his word and awards the dollars to most of the finalists or doles out grants based on political pressure.????????
The problem is that the Race to the Top isn't the Oscars.???? It's not an honor just to be nominated.???? Being invited to continue in the competition could have a negative impact on the round-two hopes of the less-stellar finalists like Ohio, a fact Duncan doesn't seem to have considered before inviting a full third of all applicants to make personal pitches in DC this month.
The states that didn't make the ???????sweet 16??????? are re-crafting their applications and considering legislation to make their second proposals more appealing. If Ohio loses the race in April, we will have lost a valuable month or more that could have been spent improving our proposal and our legislative landscape.???? Given the state's legislative schedule and the unprecedentedly slow pace of our legislature this session, there will be little to no opportunity to make changes in state law to aid our second-round proposal.????
Ohio could also use an extra month to build broader support for its application. The current application was crafted mainly behind closed doors with no real input from outsiders (other than the teachers unions). In fact, Republican lawmakers were not even shown the application prior to its public release. The reforms it should take to win the Race to the Top will be tough to enact here and will require support that extends across ideologies and from the Statehouse to the classrooms.
Instead, Ohio will spend the next month hoping for a win and sitting on its hands.???? If that win doesn't materialize, we'll head into round two with little time or space to do much differently beyond reworking our text.????????????
- Emmy Partin
Image courtesy of Alan Light at Wikimedia Commons.
