North Carolina finished well out of the money for the first round of education-reform grants from the federal government yesterday, setting back Gov. Bev Perdue's efforts to find other revenue sources to jump start her own public school initiatives.
North Carolina was one of the 16 finalists for the "Race to the Top" competition, but the U.S. Department of Education chose Delaware and Tennessee. Tennessee will receive $500 million and Delaware $100 million.
State schools superintendent June Atkinson said she was disappointed but said education officials would focus now on the second round of applications due in June. North Carolina had wanted $469.5 million over four years.
"We clearly made a strong showing, and with more than $3 billion up for grabs in June, we will be back," Perdue said in a prepared statement.
But North Carolina clearly has some work to do. Its final application score after an in-person presentation in Washington ranked 12th among the 16 finalists, according to an Education Department table.
The itemized scoring and comments by the five applicant reviewers -- posted on the department's Web site -- indicated that North Carolina's restrictive charter-school legislation contributed to its low ranking.
North Carolina's loss means it must delay several initiatives that were outlined in the application, Atkinson said. Many were part of Perdue's new "Ready Set Go!" initiative to prepare every child to graduate from high school with the skills to succeed in a career or attend a community college, university or technical training.
Perdue said in January that she also would shift money away from outdated or unnecessary state programs to find additional cash for "Ready Set Go!"
"That initiative will proceed with the widespread support of education leaders across the state, and while the Race to the Top money would have been helpful, the lack of it won't stop our momentum," Perdue spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson wrote in an e-mail.
Charter-school advocates said that North Carolina's grant proposal was handcuffed from the start because the state hadn't done enough to help the alternative schools succeed. North Carolina has limited the number of charter schools to no more than 100 since they began in 1996. A bill approved by the House last year would have raised the cap to 106, but it hasn't been considered in the Senate.
Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, a pro-charter-school group, said the state essentially "forfeited" $400 million by failing to encourage charter schools.
"We missed a big opportunity, but lawmakers have time during the upcoming short session to position North Carolina more competitively before the second round of applications are due," said Darrell Allison, the group's president.
Pearson acknowledged there are areas in the application that need improvement, but pointed to a comment by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan speaking to a North Carolina audience in February that charter schools weren't the only way to encourage innovative education.
The five reviewers who scored North Carolina's application deducted 17 points from the maximum 40 points it could receive in the area of charter schools and other innovative schools. Only one finalist -- Kentucky -- scored worse. North Carolina's low charter-school cap and charter-school funding issues were among the reasons why.
"It is evident (the 100-charter cap) is too limited a cap to provide enough charters in such a large state," one reviewer wrote. "There is no indication that more charters is a significant (Race to the Top) strategy in the future."
The state still wouldn't have recorded the highest score, however, even if it gained back all 17 points.
The reviewers gave mediocre marks for failing to make progress to narrow the achievement gap between students of different races and for a data system to track progress of students from kindergarten through college. Other reviewers gave high marks to North Carolina for turning around low-performing schools and developing high-quality student performance standards.
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