USED to Offer Race to the Top Extensions
The United States Department of Education recently announced that the original 12 Race to the Top winners will be eligible for “no cost extensions” through 2015 and approved on a case-by-case basis. This decision comes as no surprise since each state has undertaken an enormous amount of work along with being slow to spend all of the available funds. And while no state will receive additional funds, each must provide a strong rationale for why they are requesting the increased time – especially around critical streams of work, such as teacher evaluations.
Here in Delaware, we’ve spent a total of $38.6 million – well below our total award amount of $119 million. And while the data is old and is no doubt lower than expected due to our year-long planning process in 2010-2011 and upcoming launch of certain programs (Delaware Talent Cooperative, etc.), we still have a lot of work left to do in order to meet the obligations we set forth in our application.