Ohio was one of 11 states and the District of Columbia that made big promises to win competitive grants in 2010 to reform their school systems. A full year of the four-year grants has been completed, which offers time enough to assess how well the states are delivering.
The federal government put up $4.3 billion for the Race to the Top initiative, $400 million of it coming to Ohio. The program challenged the winners to adopt rigorous content and assessment standards; staff schools with great teachers and principals; beef up data systems to track student and teacher performance; and turn around their lowest performance schools.
Ohio set specific goals. It promised among other things to increase high school graduation by 0.5 percent in each grant year; double the percentage increase in college enrollment and retention for high school seniors; reduce by 50 percent the achievement and graduation gaps among student groups; and close the gap between Ohio and the highest-performing states in math and reading (Massachusetts, for instance) by 50 percent.
The reckoning has begun, with the release this week of the first-year report by the federal Department of Education. Ohio already was building momentum for reform before the federal grant, for example, participating in and adopting the national Common Core Standards in language arts and math. The report gives the state credit, appropriately, for using the first grant year to continue building capacity for structural change.
Ohio has 473 school districts and charter schools participating in Race to the Top. As Stan Heffner, the state school superintendent, told the advocacy group KidsOhio, the challenge this first year has been “to create a shared understanding” among all the participants regarding “what we are going to do, when we are going to do it, and when we will accomplish the goals.” Soon, the challenges will get much more difficult. What matters at the start? Getting everyone on the same page.
