North Carolina has been named one of 12 applicants slated to receive a share of $4.35 billion in federal funding geared toward education reform.
As a winner of the administration of President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” competition, North Carolina is eligible to receive up to $400 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education over four years. Other winners include New York, Georgia and Massachusetts.
North Carolina has been named one of 12 applicants slated to receive a share of $4.35 billion in federal funding geared toward education reform.
As a winner of the administration of President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” competition, North Carolina is eligible to receive up to $400 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education over four years. Other winners include New York, Georgia and Massachusetts. Besides Hawaii, all the states that have received grants to date lie east of the Mississippi, the New York Times reported.
In its competition application, North Carolina proposed wide-ranging reforms that include removing principals from low-performing schools and creating a teacher training initiative modeled after the Teach for America program, according to The (Raleigh) News & Observer.
North Carolina’s application won approval in part by adopting national curriculum standards and setting targets for student improvement that include an increase in the graduation rate to 85 percent by 2016, the N&O reported.
“This grant will give us the resources to more aggressively implement our plan to ensure that all of our children graduate ready for a career, college or technical training,” said Gov. Bev Perdue in a statement.
The competition was crafted as part of Obama’s commitment to instituting fundamental school reform across the country. According to the New York Times, Obama’s goals for the competition include “expanding the number and quality of charter schools, updating the way school districts evaluate teachers’ effectiveness, improving student data-tracking systems to help educators know what students have learned and what must be retaught, and turning around thousands of the lowest-performing schools.”
In March, the competition’s first round produced only two winners: Delaware and Tennessee. Round two granted nine more states and the District of Columbia funds apportioned to each contestant’s number of students.
“We want to recognize and reward high-achieving and high-growth schools, offering them the carrots and incentives that we know drive reform and progress,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a speech announcing the competition’s finalists last month.
—from staff reports
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