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By guest blogger Catherine Gewertz:
The U.S. Education Department has chosen 62 applicants as winners of its Teacher Incentive Fund grant competition. The winning school districts, nonprofit groups, and state education organizations get a combined total of $442 million. That represents the first two years of funding in the five-year, $1.2 billion program. You probably recall that the TIF program supports performance-pay plans for teachers and principals in high-need schools.
Click here for the list of winners, and here for the department’s press release. (There is also a score sheet here that shows you how the various applicants stacked up in the judging by a peer review panel.)
Our intrepid Teacher Beat colleague, Stephen Sawchuk, has written boatloads about TIF. For a refresher, start with his recent stories here and here.
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Back before the Race to the Top Round One winners were announced, I wondered whether the Education Department would select winners from states with influential members of Congress, who might be able to help U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan move his agenda.
Of course, the selection process was set up in a way intended to assure that political influence was not a factor in determining who actually won—no state got extra points for being the home of a powerful member of Congress.
But politics could be part of the fallout, including the question of whether the Race to the Top program gets extended for another year and ultimately is authorized under the new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. (There’s money in two spending bills right now for it to continue for another year.)
In Round One, the winning states also happened to be home to two key Republicans in Congress, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Rep. M
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