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United States Government Accountability Office: 
GAO: 

Report to Congressional Committees: 

June 2011: 

Race To The Top: 

Reform Efforts Are Under Way and Information Sharing Could Be Improved: 

GAO-11-658: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-11-658, a report to congressional committees. 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Congress 
required the U.S. Department of Education (Education) to make 
education reform grants to states. Education subsequently established 
the Race to the Top (RTT) grant fund and awarded almost $4 billion to 
12 states related to developing effective teachers and leaders, 
improving the lowest-achieving schools, expanding student data 
systems, and enhancing standards and assessments. 

This report, prepared in response to a mandate in the act, addresses 
(1) actions states took to be competitive for RTT grants; (2) how 
grantees plan to use their grants and whether selected nongrantees 
have chosen to move forward with their reform plans; (3) what 
challenges, if any, have affected early implementation of states’ 
reform efforts; and (4) Education’s efforts to support and oversee 
states’ use of RTT funds. 

GAO analyzed RTT applications for 20 states, interviewed state 
officials, visited 4 grantee states, analyzed states’ planned uses of 
grant funds, and interviewed Education officials. 

What GAO Found: 

State officials GAO interviewed said their states took a variety of 
actions to be competitive for RTT grants. Of the 20 states GAO 
interviewed, officials in 6 said their states undertook reforms, such 
as amending laws related to teacher evaluations, to be competitive for 
RTT. However, officials from 14 states said their reforms resulted 
from prior or ongoing efforts and were not made to be more competitive 
for RTT. While officials in all 20 states told us that applying for 
RTT took a significant amount of time and effort, several of them also 
said their state benefited from the planning that the application 
process required. 

Grantees plan to use RTT grant funds to implement reforms in four 
areas. (See figure.) The largest percentage of state-level RTT funds 
will be used to increase the effectiveness of teachers and leaders. 
GAO interviewed officials in 8 nongrantee states who said they expect 
to continue implementing parts of their RTT plans, though at a slower 
pace than if they had received a grant. 

Figure: Distribution of States’ RTT Grant Budgets, by Reform Area: 

[Refer to PDF for image: pie-chart] 

Developing effective teachers and leaders ($654.1 million): 33%; 
Improving the lowest-achieving schools ($478.5 million): 24%; 
Expanding student data systems ($353.4 million): 18%; 
Enhancing standards and assessments ($312.5 million): 16%; 
Other ($193.9 million): 10%. 

Source: GAO analysis of states’ approved RTT budgets. 

[End of figure] 

Most grantee states have faced a variety of challenges, such as 
difficulty hiring qualified personnel, that have delayed 
implementation. As a result, as of June 2011, about 12 percent of 
first-year grant funds were spent, and some projects were delayed 
several months. Some state officials said they expect to spend more 
funds soon and may seek Education’s approval to reallocate some first-
year grant funds into later years. 

Education has provided extensive support to grantee states and has 
begun monitoring. Education assigned a program officer to each state 
to assist with implementation and has developed ways for grantees to 
share information, such as hosting meetings on specific initiatives. 
Some officials from nongrantee states said they would find this 
information useful, but they were generally unaware of these resources 
or were unable to access them. 

What GAO Recommends: 

GAO recommends that the Secretary of Education (1) facilitate 
information sharing among grantees on additional promising practices 
and (2) provide nongrantee states with related information. Education 
agreed with the first recommendation and partially agreed with the 
second; GAO modified that recommendation to clarify how Education can 
provide that information to nongrantee states. 

View [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-658] or key 
components. For more information, contact George A. Scott at (202) 512-
7215 or scottg@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Background: 

States Reported Taking a Variety of Actions and Investing Considerable 
Resources to Be Competitive for Race to the Top Grants: 

Grantees Plan to Implement a Variety of Reforms and Selected 
Nongrantees Will Continue Some Reforms but at a Slower Pace: 

States Reported Facing a Variety of Challenges That Have Led to Some 
Implementation Delays: 

Education Provided Extensive Support and Is Monitoring States' 
Activities, but Its Efforts to Facilitate Information Sharing Are 
Somewhat Limited: 

Conclusions: 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology: 

Appendix II: Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation Grant Funds: 

Appendix III: Criteria Used to Guide the Selection of States to 
Receive RTT Grant Awards: 

Appendix IV: Comments from the U.S. Department of Education: 

Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

Related GAO Products: 

Tables: 

Table 1: Race to the Top Grant Awards, by Phase and Amount Awarded: 

Table 2: Reported Policy Changes States Took to Be More Competitive 
for Race to the Top: 

Table 3: RTT Grant Funds Drawn Down as of June 3, 2011: 

Table 4: States with RTT Applications That We Reviewed: 

Table 5: Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation Grant Funds: 

Table 6: Criteria for Race to the Top Grant Awards: 

Figures: 

Figure 1: Race to the Top Grant Timeline--Education's Actions to 
Facilitate States' Efforts to Apply for Grants and Begin 
Implementation: 

Figure 2: Distribution of RTT Grant Budgets: 

Abbreviations: 

Education: U.S. Department of Education: 

ESEA: Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965: 

IES: Institute of Education Sciences: 

K-12: elementary and secondary: 

NCLBA: No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: 

Recovery Act: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: 

RTT: Race to the Top: 

SFSF: State Fiscal Stabilization Fund: 

[End of section] 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

June 30,2011: 

Report to Congressional Committees: 

The U.S. Department of Education (Education) established the $4 
billion Race to the Top (RTT) grant fund to encourage states to reform 
their elementary and secondary (K-12) education systems and to reward 
states that have improved student outcomes, such as high school 
graduation rates. RTT, referred to in the American Recovery and 
Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) as State Incentive Grants, 
[Footnote 1] is the largest competitive grant fund ever administered 
by Education. RTT is also notable because it provides incentives for 
reform across multiple areas of K-12 education. Areas of reform 
include adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to 
succeed in college and the workplace and improving the lowest-
achieving schools. Reforms similar to those in RTT are included in 
Education's proposal for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act of 1965 (ESEA); the proposal also includes other 
competitive grants as a way to drive innovation in K-12 education. In 
addition to Recovery Act funding already awarded, in fiscal year 2011, 
Education can award up to $700 million in RTT grants to states with an 
emphasis on early childhood learning. The administration has proposed 
$900 million for fiscal year 2012 for RTT grants to be made directly 
to school districts. 

The Recovery Act requires GAO to evaluate the RTT grant fund.[Footnote 
2] This report, prepared in response to the requirement, examines (1) 
actions states took to be competitive for RTT grants; (2) how grantees 
plan to use their grants and whether selected nongrantees have chosen 
to move forward with their reform plans; (3) what challenges, if any, 
have affected early implementation of states' reform efforts; and (4) 
Education's efforts to support and oversee states' use of RTT funds. 

Because our review was conducted primarily during the first year of 
the 4-year grant period, we focused on states' experiences during the 
application process, their initial efforts to implement reform 
activities, and their plans for the next several years. We analyzed 
RTT applications for 20 of the 47 states that applied for RTT grants 
in the first, second, or both phases of the RTT grant competition: the 
12 states (including the District of Columbia)[Footnote 3] that 
received the grants and 8 selected states that did not receive grants. 
We interviewed officials in these 20 states about their efforts to 
apply for the RTT grant. In addition, we selected 4 grantee states--
Delaware, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee--for in-depth data collection; 
we conducted site visits to those states and a total of 12 of their 
school districts.[Footnote 4] During these visits, we interviewed 
officials in states and districts about their planned uses for RTT 
grant funds, their perspectives on the benefits of their planned uses, 
challenges they have experienced in beginning to implement grant 
activities, and support provided by Education. We also reviewed 
relevant federal laws, regulations, and guidance and interviewed 
Education officials. See appendix I for a more detailed description of 
our scope and methodology. 

We conducted this performance audit from April 2010 to June 2011 in 
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

Background: 

Education Reform Areas and Application Criteria: 

As part of the Recovery Act's State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF), 
Congress required Education to make grants to states that reform their 
education systems. Education subsequently created the RTT grant fund 
[Footnote 5] and gave states the opportunity to compete for grants 
based on reforms specified in the act: 

1. recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers 
and principals, especially where they are needed most; 

2. turning around states' lowest-achieving schools, which can include 
interventions such as replacing school staff, converting the school 
into a charter school, or closing the school; 

3. building data systems that measure student growth and success and 
inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction; 
and: 

4. adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed 
in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy. 

Based mostly on these reform areas, Education identified 19 primary 
criteria--such as adopting common content standards or using 
performance data to improve teacher effectiveness--to guide the 
selection of states to receive the grants. Education divided the 
criteria into two groups: (1) "reform conditions criteria," referring 
to the state's history of and current status in implementing reforms 
and (2) "reform plan criteria," referring to the state's plans to 
implement new reforms. States were required to provide a narrative 
response for each criterion and provide performance measures and other 
information for selected criteria. The applications also had to 
include budgets and timelines for implementing certain proposed reform 
efforts. In short, states were to provide information not only on the 
extent of their experiences implementing reforms in these areas, but 
also on their plans for moving forward. 

In addition, states could demonstrate that a sufficient number of 
their school districts were committed to participating in their RTT 
reform plans by having a memorandum of understanding signed by 
district superintendents, school board presidents, and local union 
representatives.[Footnote 6] The Recovery Act requires that districts 
in each grantee state must receive at least 50 percent of the state's 
total grant,[Footnote 7] and, according to Education, only 
participating districts receive these funds. States could also 
describe how they would work with participating districts to use RTT 
funds to improve student outcomes, such as increasing the rates at 
which students who graduate from high school are prepared for college 
and careers. See appendix III for more information on the criteria 
used to help select states for grant awards.[Footnote 8] 

RTT Grant Application Process and Awards: 

Education conducted the RTT grant competition in two phases. Education 
issued proposed requirements for the RTT grant fund in July 2009, and 
in November 2009, the department issued final requirements and a 
notice inviting state governors to apply for Phase 1 of the grant. 
[Footnote 9] For a state to have been eligible to receive an RTT 
grant, Education must have previously approved the state's 
applications in both rounds of SFSF grant awards.[Footnote 10] In 
addition, at the time they submitted their RTT applications, states 
could not have any legal, statutory, or regulatory barriers to linking 
data on student achievement or growth to teachers and principals for 
evaluation purposes. States had the option to apply in either phase of 
the competition but were only able to reapply in Phase 2 if they did 
not receive a grant in Phase 1. 

Forty-one states applied for RTT funds in Phase 1 of the competition, 
and all applications were reviewed and scored by external reviewers 
using Education's grant award criteria.[Footnote 11] Sixteen states 
passed the initial review and were deemed "finalists" for the grants. 
In March 2010, Education announced that Delaware and Tennessee would 
receive grants of approximately $100 million and $500 million, 
respectively. Education posted all Phase 1 applications and reviewers' 
scores and comments on its Web site. In April 2010, Education issued a 
notice inviting applications for Phase 2 of the RTT grant competition, 
and in August, Education announced that 10 states received Phase 2 RTT 
grants ranging from $75 million to $700 million. (Education was 
required to award all RTT grant funds by Sept. 30, 2010.) The size of 
each state's award was based in part on the size of the state, among 
other factors. Table 1 lists RTT grantees and their award amounts. As 
in Phase 1, all applications and reviewers' scores and comments were 
posted on Education's Web site. 

Table 1: Race to the Top Grant Awards, by Phase and Amount Awarded: 

Phase 1: 

State: Tennessee; 
Total amount awarded: $501 million; 
State grant: $250 million; 
School district subgrants: $250 million. 

State: Delaware; 
Total amount awarded: $119 million; 
State grant: $60 million; 
School district subgrants: $60 million. 

Phase 2: 

State: Florida; 
Total amount awarded: $700 million; 
State grant: $350 million; 
School district subgrants: $350 million. 

State: New York; 
Total amount awarded: $697 million; 
State grant: $348 million; 
School district subgrants: $348 million. 

State: Georgia; 
Total amount awarded: $400 million; 
State grant: $200 million; 
School district subgrants: $200 million. 

State: Ohio; 
Total amount awarded: $400 million; 
State grant: $194 million; 
School district subgrants: $206 million. 

State: North Carolina; 
Total amount awarded: $399 million; 
State grant: $199 million; 
School district subgrants: $200 million. 

State: Maryland; 
Total amount awarded: $250 million; 
State grant: $125 million; 
School district subgrants: $125 million. 

State: Massachusetts; 
Total amount awarded: $250 million; 
State grant: $125 million; 
School district subgrants: $125 million. 

State: District of Columbia[A]; 
Total amount awarded: $75 million; 
State grant: $33 million; 
School district subgrants: $42 million. 

State: Hawaii[B]; 
Total amount awarded: $75 million; 
State grant: $75 million; 
School district subgrants: 0. 

State: Rhode Island; 
Total amount awarded: $75 million; 
State grant: $38 million; 
School district subgrants: $38 million. 

State: Total; 
Total amount awarded: $3.941 billion; 
State grant: $1.997 billion; 
School district subgrants: $1.944 billion. 

Source: Education. 

Notes: Because of rounding, state and school district funds do not sum 
to the total amount awarded in some states. 

[A] In addition to the District of Columbia public school system, the 
District of Columbia has 31 charter schools that operate as 
independent school districts participating in its reform plan. The 
Office of the State Superintendent of Education, created in 2007 as 
the state education agency for the District of Columbia, administers 
RTT throughout the District. This office subgrants RTT funds to the 
District of Columbia public school system and to the participating 
charter schools. 

[B] Because the Hawaii Department of Education serves as both the 
state educational agency and the state's only local educational 
agency, the approved grant budget for Hawaii does not have funds for 
participating school districts. 

[End of table] 

Following Education's announcement of grant recipients, states were 
given access to 12.5 percent of their award. This amount is 
approximately equal to the state portion of the first year grant 
amount for state-level activities only. To receive the rest of their 
grant funds, states had to submit, and the department had to approve, 
documents known as scopes of work, which were more streamlined 
implementation plans that updated and aligned timelines and budgets in 
the states' approved applications. Education also required states to 
submit scopes of work from each of their participating school 
districts 90 days after the grants were awarded. Education reviewed 
and approved the state scopes of work and also reviewed the extent to 
which district scopes of work aligned with their respective state's 
plans. Education granted states access to grant funds on a rolling 
basis as they approved their key documents. (See figure 1 for a 
timeline of key RTT grant activities to date.) 

Figure 1: Race to the Top Grant Timeline--Education's Actions to 
Facilitate States' Efforts to Apply for Grants and Begin 
Implementation: 

[Refer to PDF for image: timeline] 

July 2009: Issued proposed requirements for Race to the Top and 
provided a comment period. 

Phase One Application: 

November 2009: Issued final requirements and notice inviting 
applications. 

January 2010: Received applications from 41 states. 

March 2010: Named 16 state finalists and announced that Delaware and 
Tennessee would receive grants. 

Phase One Implementation: 

April 2010: Approved Tennessee state scope of work. 

June 2010: Awarded grant to Delaware, finalized state’s budget, and 
gave the state access to 12.5 percent of its grant award; received 
Delaware and Tennessee school district scopes of work. 

July 2010: Approved Delaware state scope of work and gave the state 
access to all grant funds; awarded grant to Tennessee, finalized 
state's budget, and gave state access to all grant funds. 

Phase Two Application: 

September: Awarded grants to Phase Two states, finalized state 
budgets, and gave states access to 12.5 percent of grant funds. 

April 2010: Issued notice inviting applications. 

June 2010: Received applications from 36 states. 

July 2010: Named 19 state finalists. 

August 2010: Announced that the District of Columbia, Florida, 
Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, 
Ohio, and Rhode Island would receive grants. 

Phase Two Implementation: 

September 2010: Awarded grants to Phase Two states, finalized state 
budgets, and gave states access to 12.5 percent of grant funds. 

November 2010: Received school district and state scopes of work. 

January-April 2011: For 9 of 12 grantee states: reviewed school 
district scopes of work, approved state scopes of work, and gave 
states access to all grant funds. 

April 2011: Issued plan to monitor state use of grant funds; received 
state plans to monitor school district uses of grant funds. 

Source: GAO analysis of Education RTT documents. 

[End of figure] 

Additional Grant Requirements, Monitoring, and Evaluation: 

Grantee states must meet additional requirements throughout the 4-year 
RTT grant period. Grantees must obligate all funds by the end of their 
4-year grant period and must liquidate all obligations no later than 
90 days after their grant term ends. Education, however, may grant 
extensions for states beyond the 90 days on a case-by-case basis. Any 
funds not obligated and liquidated by September 30, 2015, will revert 
to the U.S. Treasury, according to Education officials. Also, 
Education required RTT grantee states, school districts, and schools 
to identify and share promising practices--with the federal government 
and the public--that result from implementing RTT projects. This 
requirement includes making RTT data available to stakeholders and 
researchers and publicizing the results of any voluntary evaluations 
they conduct of their funded activities. 

Education's policy is to monitor grantee states to ensure they meet 
their goals, timelines, budgets and annual targets, and fulfill other 
applicable requirements. According to Education officials, the 
department's monitoring plan for states emphasizes program outcomes 
and quality of implementation, while also ensuring compliance with RTT 
program requirements. They said the monitoring process for RTT 
grantees builds on the process that the department uses to monitor all 
discretionary grants. This process includes, among other things, (1) 
establishing working partnerships with grantees in order to 
effectively administer and monitor awards, (2) reviewing and approving 
administrative changes to grants, (3) monitoring projects for 
performance and financial compliance, (4) providing technical 
assistance and feedback to grantees on their progress, and (5) 
reviewing final outcomes and disseminating information about 
successful results. In addition, Education requires states to monitor 
how school districts use RTT funds. 

Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is conducting a 
series of national evaluations of RTT state grantees as part of its 
evaluation of programs funded under the Recovery Act. In September 
2010, IES awarded two contracts to evaluate RTT implementation, 
outcomes, and impacts on student achievement. One evaluation will 
examine multiple Recovery Act programs, including RTT, and the other 
evaluation will focus on RTT and the School Improvement Grants 
program. Several briefs and reports are expected from these studies 
and, according to Education, the first one may be available in the 
summer of 2011. 

States Reported Taking a Variety of Actions and Investing Considerable 
Resources to Be Competitive for Race to the Top Grants: 

Officials in 6 of the states we interviewed--including 2 states that 
received an RTT grant and 4 states that did not receive one--reported 
making policy changes to reform their education systems in order to be 
more competitive for RTT. Those policy changes included new state 
legislation and formal decisions made by executive branch entities, 
such as the governor or state board of education (see table 2). For 
example, New York officials told us that their state enacted several 
new education reform laws to be competitive for RTT, including a law 
that allows school districts to partner with state-approved 
organizations to manage their lowest-achieving schools. California 
officials also told us that their state passed several laws to be 
competitive for RTT. California's Governor called a special session of 
the legislature, during which it passed a variety of laws--such as 
adopting the Common Core State Standards and repealing an existing law 
that prohibited the use of student achievement data in decisions such 
as setting a teacher's pay or deciding whether a teacher should be 
promoted. 

Table 2: Reported Policy Changes States Took to Be More Competitive 
for Race to the Top: 

Policy change: Adopted new academic standards and joined a multistate 
assessment consortia; 
CA: [Check]; 
IL: [Empty]; 
LA: [Empty]; 
ME: [Empty]; 
NY: [Empty]; 
NC: [Empty]. 

Policy change: Expanded or linked student data systems; 
CA: [Check]; 
IL: [Empty]; 
LA: [Empty]; 
ME: [Empty]; 
NY: [Check]; 
NC: [Empty]. 

Policy change: Removed prohibition of linking student and teacher data 
for teacher evaluations; 
CA: [Check]; 
IL: [Empty]; 
LA: [Empty]; 
ME: [Check]; 
NY: [Empty]; 
NC: [Empty]. 

Policy change: Required teacher or principal evaluations be based on 
student academic growth; 
CA: [Empty]; 
IL: [Check]; 
LA: [Check]; 
ME: [Empty]; 
NY: [Check]; 
NC: [Empty]. 

Policy change: Increased the state's ability to improve its lowest- 
achieving schools; 
CA: [Check]; 
IL: [Empty]; 
LA: [Check]; 
ME: [Empty]; 
NY: [Check]; 
NC: [Check]. 

Source: GAO summary of interviews with selected states. 

[End of table] 

In contrast, officials in the other 14 states we interviewed said that 
their states made education policy changes during the RTT application 
period, but those changes were not made specifically to be competitive 
for an RTT grant. State officials explained that the changes their 
state made reflected the culmination of education reform efforts that 
began prior to the RTT competition.[Footnote 12] For example, Ohio 
enacted legislation in 2009 that required the state to set more 
challenging statewide academic standards, created new ways for 
teachers to earn their teacher's license, and required college 
readiness examinations for high school students. Ohio officials said 
that the legislation was introduced before RTT was announced and was 
not an action that Ohio took to be competitive for the grant. However, 
they also told us that RTT being aligned with existing state policies 
influenced their decision to apply for the grant. Arizona officials 
told us that their state enacted legislation in 2010 that required a 
variety of changes to their K-12 education system. These changes 
included developing a new teacher evaluation system based on growth in 
student achievement and establishing a commission to set guidelines 
for student data collection and reporting. Arizona officials said 
these legislative changes would have been made regardless of RTT. 

In addition to making policy changes, officials in all 20 states we 
interviewed said they conducted outreach to a variety of stakeholders--
including school district officials, state legislators, and 
representatives from the business community--to build support for the 
state's RTT application. To demonstrate a state's ability to implement 
reforms statewide, the RTT application allowed states to submit signed 
memoranda from school districts that agreed with the state's reform 
plans. Officials in 10 states--4 grantee states and 6 nongrantee 
states--told us they made significant efforts to secure the 
participation of their school districts. For example, officials in 
Ohio--a state with over 1,000 school districts (including more than 
300 charter school districts)--said they met with district leadership, 
traveled to districts for in-person meetings, and attended teacher 
union meetings and training sessions on RTT to build consensus around 
the reforms. In addition, officials in all 20 states we interviewed 
told us they held meetings with education stakeholder groups, such as 
state legislators, and members of the business community to discuss 
the state's education reform plan and stakeholder roles in it. States 
received letters of support from many organizations and state 
legislators for their applications. For example, Pennsylvania reported 
receiving over 270 letters of support for its Phase 2 RTT application 
from a wide variety of individuals and groups, including some elected 
officials, teacher unions, and businesses. 

Officials in the 20 states we interviewed also told us that applying 
for RTT required a significant amount of time and effort. Many 
officials we interviewed estimated spending thousands of hours to 
prepare the RTT application; however, they generally did not track the 
total costs associated with their efforts. One state official 
estimated that her state spent at least 4,000 hours preparing their 
RTT application. Also, all 20 states we interviewed received grants to 
hire consultants who helped prepare the RTT applications. For example, 
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation reported funding technical 
assistance providers who assisted 25 states in developing their RTT 
applications.[Footnote 13] Each of these 25 states, including 14 of 
the 20 we interviewed, received consulting services worth $250,000 
with these funds. With grants such as these, states hired consultants 
who provided a range of services, including drafting material for the 
application and conducting background research and analysis. State 
officials told us that consulting firms received between $75,000 and 
$620,000 for their services. According to Education officials, states 
commonly receive external support to apply for federal grants, such as 
the Teacher Incentive Fund,[Footnote 14] in an effort to leverage 
their resources more effectively. However, Education officials also 
explained that the RTT competition was more comprehensive in scope 
than other federal discretionary grants, which may have prompted 
states to seek out a greater level of external support. Many state 
officials reported that high-level staff from multiple state offices 
helped prepare the application. For example, officials in North 
Carolina told us that the State Superintendent of Public Instruction 
and the Chairman of the State Board of Education led the team that 
wrote the state's application and that the Governor presented part of 
the state's application to a group of peer reviewers during the 
application review process. While state officials told us that they 
had to invest a significant amount of time and effort in applying for 
RTT, several officials in both grantee and nongrantee states also 
noted that their state benefited from the collaboration and 
comprehensive planning that the RTT application process required. 

Grantees Plan to Implement a Variety of Reforms and Selected 
Nongrantees Will Continue Some Reforms but at a Slower Pace: 

Grantee States Plan to Use the Largest Share of Their Funds to 
Increase Teacher Effectiveness: 

Education awarded over $3.9 billion in RTT grants to states that 
implement reforms in four areas: (1) developing effective teachers and 
leaders, (2) improving the lowest-achieving schools, (3) expanding 
student data systems, and (4) enhancing standards and 
assessments.[Footnote 15] States collectively plan to use the largest 
share of their $2 billion in RTT funds--nearly one-third, or $654.1 
million--to improve the effectiveness of teachers and leaders. States 
plan to use the next largest share--nearly one-quarter, or $478.5 
million--to turn around their lowest-achieving schools. The remaining 
funds will be spent in multiple areas in their reform plans. Officials 
from several states said that RTT funds will allow them to implement 
reforms more quickly, to serve a greater number of students, or to 
leverage related federal grants, such as those awarded through the 
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant program,[Footnote 16] to 
implement their reforms. See figure 2 for the distribution of RTT 
funds between states and school districts and, for states, by primary 
reform area. 

Figure 2: Distribution of RTT Grant Budgets: 

[Refer to PDF for image: pie-chart and subchart] 

School district subgrants ($1.9 billion): 49%; 
State-level grants ($2.0 billion): 51%; 
Of those 51%: 
Developing effective teachers and leaders ($654.1 million): 33%; 
Improving the lowest-achieving schools ($478.5 million): 24%; 
Expanding student data systems ($353.4 million): 18%; 
Enhancing standards and assessments ($312.5 million): 16%; 
Other[A] ($193.9 million): 10%. 

Source: GAO analysis of states’ approved RTT budgets. 

Notes: We did not analyze school district spending because it was 
outside the scope of our review. However, Education officials told us 
that they reviewed school district scopes of work to ensure that they 
aligned with their state's RTT plans. 

School district subgrants total to 49 percent because the Hawaii 
Department of Education serves as both the state education agency and 
the state's only local educational agency; therefore, the state's 
approved grant budget does not have funds for participating school 
districts. 

[A] Other includes funds used for charter schools and funds used in 
multiple areas. 

[End of figure] 

Developing Effective Teachers and Leaders: 

Several states and selected school districts plan to implement one or 
more of three activities under the teachers and leaders reform area, 
including (1) training teachers to use student performance data to 
improve their instruction, (2) developing systems to evaluate teacher 
and principal effectiveness, and (3) providing professional 
development to improve the skills of incoming and current teachers and 
school leaders.[Footnote 17] The following examples illustrate planned 
uses of RTT funds for these activities: 

* Training teachers to use student performance data to improve 
instruction. Delaware plans to spend about $7 million to hire 29 data 
coaches to work with small groups of teachers to improve instruction 
using student performance data. These teachers will use technology- 
based tools called instructional improvement systems[Footnote 18] to 
guide them through this process. Under Delaware's new academic 
assessment system, teachers will be able to make instructional changes 
with real-time data from student assessments that will be administered 
several times a year. Delaware state officials said that RTT will 
provide funds for data coaches in schools with limited numbers of high-
need students and that they would not be able to provide these 
resources without the funds. (Prior to RTT, the state had been using 
data coaches in schools with the greatest number of high-need 
students.) According to Delaware state officials, the first five 
coaches were scheduled to start working with teachers as a pilot 
program in March 2011 in five districts, and by July 2011 each school 
in the state will have access to a data coach for two full school 
years. After 2 years, state officials expect that data coaches will 
have built enough capacity in each school district, so that district 
leaders can independently provide support to teachers in using the 
data. 

* Developing systems to evaluate teacher and principal effectiveness. 
New York plans to spend approximately $2.6 million to develop and 
adopt a new value-added student growth model, which will measure 
annual changes in individual student academic performance and tie the 
performance to teacher evaluations. According to state officials and 
their RTT application, a new state law requires all classroom teachers 
and principals to be evaluated based in part on student data, which 
will include assessment results and other measures of achievement. The 
law also establishes annual teacher evaluations as a significant 
factor for employment decisions such as promotion and retention. 

* Providing professional development to improve the skills of incoming 
and current teachers and school leaders. North Carolina plans to spend 
approximately $37 million on professional development. The state plans 
to work with contractors with expertise in professional development 
and information technology to develop, maintain, and support Web-based 
training on the transition to the new standards, analyzing student 
data, and using an instructional improvement system. North Carolina 
officials plan to develop training in the coming months and complete 
it by October 2013. According to North Carolina state officials, Web-
based training will eventually be available in every school district 
and will help ensure that professional development materials are 
consistent. These officials told us that without RTT funds, they would 
not have been able to provide this training in every district. In 
addition, the state plans to spend $18.6 million to create Regional 
Leadership Academies that, according to North Carolina state 
officials, are a major part of their professional development plan. 
These academies will recruit and prepare principals to serve in and 
improve the state's lowest-achieving schools. 

Improving the Lowest-Achieving Schools: 

Several states plan to use RTT funds to give the state more authority 
to turn around their lowest-achieving schools, provide additional 
resources to those schools, or both. In particular, officials we spoke 
with in Tennessee are creating a statewide school district (governed 
by the state), and officials in Delaware, Massachusetts, and New York 
are working with external partners to improve their lowest-achieving 
schools. The states plan to provide these districts with additional 
resources and more flexibility in how they operate. For example, 
Tennessee plans to use approximately $45.6 million to create a new 
entity known as the "Achievement School District" to improve the 
state's persistently lowest-achieving schools. According to the 
state's application, to be selected for the new state-run district, 
schools must be (1) persistently low-achieving, as defined by the 
state, and (2) have attempted to restructure for at least 1 year in 
accordance with the state's accountability plan under ESEA.[Footnote 
19] The state will remove selected schools from governance by their 
home districts and appoint a district superintendent to oversee the 
schools. Also, Tennessee will work with consultants to determine which 
one of the four intervention models outlined in the RTT application--
turnaround, restart, closure, or transformation--will be applied to 
each school in the Achievement School District in the 2011-2012 school 
year and to help implement the selected models. One Tennessee state 
official said that although the state would have created the 
Achievement School District without RTT funding, RTT accelerated the 
implementation of this reform effort. 

Expanding Student Data Systems: 

Several states plan to improve their data systems to increase access 
to and use of data. For example, Maryland plans to use $5 million on a 
3-year project to design, develop, and implement a data system that 
links data on individuals as they progress from preschool through 
higher education and into the workforce. The data system will allow 
the state to conduct analyses on topics such as K-12 educational 
readiness and remediation and to provide this information to 
policymakers. The data system will also allow Maryland state officials 
to study key research and policy issues, such as the effect of the 
prekindergarten through 12th grade curriculum in preparing students 
for higher education, and the effectiveness of higher education in 
preparing students for careers after college. Maryland state officials 
told us they are using a combination of contractors and additional 
staff to implement their data projects, as well as to ensure their 
long-term sustainability. 

Enhancing Standards and Assessments: 

Several states plan to implement activities under the standards and 
assessments reform area to support improvements in classroom 
instruction. The states will (1) train teachers on the Common Core 
State Standards and develop curricula that are aligned with these 
standards, (2) develop assessments to measure instructional 
improvement and evaluate student knowledge and skills throughout the 
year, or both. The following examples illustrate planned uses of RTT 
funds for these activities: 

* Training on Common Core State Standards and developing related 
curricula. Rhode Island plans to spend $5 million to provide 
professional development to teachers and principals to ensure that 
they understand the newly adopted common standards and how standards, 
curriculum, and assessments align with one another. Specifically, 
during the summers of 2011 and 2012, state officials plan to train 85 
percent of the core teachers in urban districts and selected teachers 
in nonurban districts. In addition, some teachers in selected school 
districts, especially those with diverse student populations, will 
learn to develop activities that align with the common standards and 
use them in their schools. State officials told us that teachers will 
be more likely to use the assessment activities if the teachers are 
involved in the activities' design. 

* Developing assessments to improve instruction and to evaluate 
student knowledge and skills throughout the year. Florida plans to 
spend approximately $81.5 million to develop and use assessments to 
guide improvements in reading and mathematics instruction and to 
evaluate student knowledge and skills throughout the year in multiple 
content areas. The goals of these assessments are to enhance student 
learning and support the transition to more rigorous K-12 standards 
that build toward college and career readiness. Florida state 
officials said this project may also help prepare the state and 
districts to use assessments being developed as part of the 
Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers. 
[Footnote 20] 

Nongrantee States Expect to Continue Implementing Some of Their 
Planned Reforms: 

In addition to our interviews with grantee states and review of their 
plans, we interviewed officials in 8 selected states that applied for--
but did not receive--RTT grants to find out whether they plan to 
continue their reform efforts. Officials from the 8 nongrantee states 
we interviewed expect to implement some of their planned reforms, even 
though they did not receive RTT grants; however, they told us that 
implementation would be slower than if they had received an RTT award 
and would involve using other funds: 

* Officials in 5 of the nongrantee states reported moving ahead with 
plans to implement teacher evaluation systems, but at a different 
scale or pace than stated in their RTT applications. For example, 
officials in California decided to allow districts to implement the 
new teacher evaluations on a discretionary basis rather than 
implementing the evaluations statewide. Officials in Illinois told us 
they are moving ahead with a requirement for districts to include 
student academic growth in teacher evaluations. However, they noted 
that if the state had received the RTT grant, they would have 
accelerated the implementation of that requirement by two to three 
school years. 

* Officials in all 8 nongrantee states we interviewed reported having 
to scale back or delay plans to expand state data systems, 
particularly those designed to provide teachers with real-time 
assessment data on students. For example, officials in Maine reported 
they are developing assessments that teachers can use to improve 
instruction, but without RTT funds, the assessments will not be 
developed as quickly. 

* Officials in the 8 nongrantee states we interviewed told us that 
they still plan to implement the Common Core State Standards, but 
officials in 6 nongrantee states mentioned having to scale back plans 
to offer professional development supporting this transition. 

State officials in the 8 nongrantee states said they planned to 
implement selected reforms indicated on their RTT applications, 
although with a combination of other federal, state, local, and 
private funds. For example, a Louisiana official said the state will 
seek private funds to help school districts recruit new teachers and 
principals, as well as retain and train effective teachers and 
principals, particularly in the lowest-achieving schools. 

States Reported Facing a Variety of Challenges That Have Led to Some 
Implementation Delays: 

Officials in 9 of the 12 grantee states reported facing a variety of 
challenges--such as difficulty identifying and hiring qualified staff 
and complying with state procedures for awarding contracts--that led 
to several implementation delays. State officials in Massachusetts, 
New York, North Carolina, and Ohio encountered difficulties hiring 
qualified personnel to administer RTT projects. For example, officials 
from Ohio said they had difficulty hiring qualified people for their 
state-level RTT positions. They explained that when Education approved 
their RTT grant application in September 2010, many of the most 
qualified staff had already been employed in several school districts. 
Ohio officials added that many individuals with the skills and 
abilities to manage RTT activities and projects can earn higher 
salaries in some school districts than they can working for the state. 
In addition, officials in Florida, New York, and Ohio told us they 
encountered delays in awarding contracts. For example, New York is 
using $50 million of its RTT grant to develop a data system that will 
provide teachers with data on areas where their students may be 
struggling in order to help the teachers improve their instruction. 
The state planned to issue a Request for Proposals in December 2010 to 
help identify a contractor who could help develop part of the system. 
However, state officials told us they needed more time to develop the 
request because the project was complicated and required input from 
multiple stakeholders. State officials said they planned to issue the 
request by the spring of 2011, but at the time of our review, the 
proposal had not yet been issued. 

Officials in the states we visited--Delaware, New York, Ohio, and 
Tennessee--said they experienced other challenges that led to months- 
long delays in implementing 13 of 29 selected RTT projects.[Footnote 
21] For example, Delaware adjusted its plan for hiring data coaches, 
individuals who assist teachers with understanding the results of 
student assessment data and help them modify their instruction. 
Initially, the state planned to hire 15 data coaches in January 2011 
and an additional 20 beginning in September 2011, assuming the cost 
for each coach was $68,000. However, as they started the process of 
hiring coaches, state officials determined their cost estimate was 
insufficient to hire qualified personnel. Instead, they determined 
they needed about $80,000 per coach and lowered the number of total 
coaches to 29. Also, state officials determined it would be too 
disruptive to hire 15 coaches in the middle of a school year. The 
state decided to hire coaches between February and May 2011, with the 
goal of having all 29 coaches in place by September 2011. Improved 
planning on the part of the RTT grantees could have minimized the 
timeline delays that resulted from complicated state-level procurement 
processes or hiring challenges. Officials from three states 
acknowledged that at least some of their timelines were overly 
optimistic. Nonetheless, challenges such as these are not entirely 
unexpected given the amount of planning needed to assemble a 
comprehensive reform plan that involves numerous local entities and 
stakeholders. 

In addition to the challenges cited, Education's review of state 
documentation has taken longer than anticipated, in part because of 
the department's need to review changes to state plans. According to 
Education officials, when Phase 2 grantee states submitted their 
scopes of work in November 2010, they included changes to their 
original RTT budgets and timelines, which Education had to review and 
approve.[Footnote 22] For example, Education approved Massachusetts's 
request to reschedule two activities in the teacher and leaders reform 
area from year 1 to year 2, due to hiring delays. For these reasons, 
Education has taken longer than it anticipated to approve state scopes 
of work. As of April 28, 2011, Education had approved scopes of work 
for 9 of the12 RTT grantee states. Department officials said they 
continue to work with the remaining states to complete the approval 
process for their scopes of work. 

As a result of these challenges, states have been slow to draw down 
their RTT grant funds. As of June 3, 2011, states had drawn down about 
$96 million, or 12 percent, of the year 1 total RTT grant funds 
totaling almost $800 million (see table 3), although Delaware and 
Tennessee have had access to their funds for about a year, and the 
other grantees have had access to their funds for several months. 
[Footnote 23] 

Table 3: RTT Grant Funds Drawn Down as of June 3, 2011: 

Phase 1: 

State: Delaware; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: July 22, 2010; 
Year 1 budget: $21,393,680; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $10,607,438; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 50%. 

State: Tennessee; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: April 12, 2010; 
Year 1 budget: $120,315,068; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $43,169,124; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 36%. 

Phase 2: 

State: District of Columbia; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: February 2, 2011; 
Year 1 budget: $19,296,358; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $2,033,867; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 11%. 

State: Florida; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: Not yet approved; 
Year 1 budget: $127,952,874; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $14,499,739; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 11%. 

State: Georgia; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: Not yet approved; 
Year 1 budget: $94,138,298; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $1,662,320; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 2%. 

State: Hawaii; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: March 22, 2011; 
Year 1 budget: $17,384,801; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $205,616; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 1%. 

State: Maryland; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: April 8, 2011; 
Year 1 budget: $73,070,933; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $2,329,394; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 3%. 

State: Massachusetts; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: January 12, 2011; 
Year 1 budget: $34,923,353; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $3,778,260; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 11%. 

State: New York; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: Not yet approved; 
Year 1 budget: $88,948,722; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $854,565; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 1%. 

State: North Carolina; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: January 31, 2011; 
Year 1 budget: $80,596,382; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $8,774,268; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 11%. 

State: Ohio; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: January 28, 2011; 
Year 1 budget: $97,044,195; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $7,239,399; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 7%. 

State: Rhode Island[A]; 
Date Education approved state scope of work: April 8, 2011; 
Year 1 budget: $24,812,514; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $1,009,411; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 4%. 

State: Total; 
Year 1 budget: $799,877,178; 
Grant funds drawn down: Amount: $96,163,401; 
Grant funds drawn down: As a percentage of year 1 budget: 12%. 

Source: Education. 

Notes: States had access to 12.5 percent of their total award when 
their grants were announced and prior to the deadlines to submit their 
scopes of work. All Phase 2 states submitted their scopes of work to 
Education on November 22, 2010. States received the rest of their 
grant funds, including funds for school district activities, once 
their scopes of work and other key documents were finalized and 
approved. 

Year 1 budgets include revisions based on changes to state plans as 
approved by Education through May 23, 2011. 

[A] The Year 1 budget for Rhode Island includes $12,406,257 for state- 
level activities and an equal amount for school district activities; 
however, the amount for district activities is only an estimate. 
Education officials clarified that Rhode Island does not have a 
specific amount set aside for district funding on a year-by-year 
basis. Instead, funds will be disbursed to districts as services are 
provided according to district-level scopes of work. The state's 
proposed budget provides a 4-year total to ensure that districts 
receive at least 50 percent of the total grant by the end of four-year 
grant period (as required by law). 

[End of table] 

Education officials told us that states have the full 4-year grant 
period to draw down their entire grant funds. They said states that 
anticipate not drawing down the full amount of their year-1 budgets 
have requested changes to their reform plan that would allow them to 
make additional expenditures in later years. For example, Florida 
officials plan to request that Education allow them to revise their 
budgets and allocate some year-1 funds in their budget for year 2. In 
addition, some states have spent less of their grant funds than 
originally anticipated, to ensure that sufficient internal controls 
and cash management procedures were in place before requesting 
reimbursement. For example, an official from the District of Columbia 
told us that they can only make drawdowns after a payment has been 
made. This is due in part to the District's status as a "high-risk" 
grantee, a designation applied by Education to grantees that, among 
other things, have experienced significant challenges administering 
their grants in the past. The official explained that, as of March 
2011, the District had spent almost $13 million of its own funds for 
activities related to its RTT grant and that he expected the District 
to spend funds at a faster pace in the future. 

Education Provided Extensive Support and Is Monitoring States' 
Activities, but Its Efforts to Facilitate Information Sharing Are 
Somewhat Limited: 

Education Provided Extensive Support and Guidance to States during 
Early Implementation: 

Education provided support to states as they have begun to implement 
their reform plans. For example, Education assigned program officers 
to each state to help determine how the department could support the 
grantee states as they implement their RTT plans. According to 
Education and several state officials, program officers talk with 
state officials by telephone at least once a month and review the 
state's monthly progress reports to determine if the state is on 
schedule and on budget and to provide assistance with any state-
reported issues. Program officers identify and provide support or 
direct state officials to appropriate sources of support for any 
issues associated with implementing funded activities. Program 
officers also answer state officials' questions and provide guidance 
and support on an as-needed basis, seeking assistance from department 
officials when necessary. For example, Education officials told us 
that, after Delaware approved their school districts' scopes of work 
for year 1, they approved Delaware's request for an additional year to 
work with districts to update and improve their plans for years 2 
through 4 of the grant period. Officials from most grantee states told 
us that Education generally provided helpful support after their 
initial grant awards. 

In addition to the support provided by program officers, Education 
created a process to allow states to make changes to their reform 
plans and issued and updated written guidance and other documents to 
help states implement RTT activities. For example, Education posted on 
its Web site a "frequently asked questions" document, as well as state 
scopes of work, award letters, final budget summaries, and amendment 
decision letters. Several state officials we spoke with said that 
having these materials on Education's Web site is helpful. Education 
has also provided additional guidance on specific challenges. For 
example, the department helped Tennessee officials correct their 
indirect-cost calculations and submit a revised budget after being 
selected as a grantee in Phase 1.[Footnote 24] After working with 
Tennessee officials to make the needed changes, Education provided 
additional guidance on calculating indirect costs for Phase 2 
applicants and made this information available for all applicants on 
the department's Web site. 

Education Has Begun to Monitor State Implementation of RTT-Funded 
Activities: 

Education has begun its process to monitor states' progress in meeting 
program goals. Since the grants were awarded, the department has been 
tracking states' activities and challenges by regularly communicating 
with states, reviewing their monthly progress reports, and reviewing 
other documentation, such as state scopes of work. Education's 
monitoring protocol uses a common set of questions to oversee state 
progress and to address specific needs and challenges of each grantee. 
This protocol requires states to submit a progress update each month 
that provides information on activities selected in consultation with 
Education and based on their state scope of work and application. In 
addition, Education will hold discussions with states twice a year. 
Prior to these discussions, states are to provide additional 
information, such as any updates needed to their monthly progress 
reports and their assessment of the extent to which they are on track 
to reach their performance goals. In addition, Education plans to 
conduct annual, on-site reviews of RTT program operations and 
activities in each state and to require states to submit an annual 
performance report that documents their progress in achieving planned 
education reforms. The department plans to finalize these reporting 
requirements in the summer of 2011. According to Education officials, 
the agency plans to issue various reports based on RTT monitoring: (1) 
annual state-specific progress reports on RTT starting in late 2011 
that will include information on implementation and performance; (2) 
an annual report on the progress of all 12 states collectively; and 
(3) a report to be issued at the end of the 4-year grant period on the 
overall experience, including lessons learned. 

In addition to federal monitoring, states will monitor school district 
implementation of grant activities. Education initially required state 
grantees to submit their school district monitoring plans within 6 
months of their grants being announced. However, Education officials 
told us that state officials wanted to review the department's 
monitoring plan before designing their own plans for school districts. 
In February 2011, Education informed states that their plans for 
monitoring districts would not be due until Education finalized its 
state monitoring plan. Education finalized its plan in April 2011, and 
all states subsequently submitted their plans. 

Education Facilitates Information Sharing, but Grantees Want More 
Information, and Nongrantees Are Unaware of Plans to Share Lessons 
Learned: 

Education has taken steps to facilitate information sharing and 
collaboration among states. Specifically, Education is working with a 
contractor to provide technical assistance, such as developing a Web 
site through which RTT states can collaborate and hold meetings--known 
as communities of practice--on topics of common interest. Education 
officials said the secure Web site allows states to share ideas, 
documents, and other information. Communities of practice will address 
topics such as implementing new teacher evaluation systems. Education 
conducted two webinars in November 2010 on teacher evaluation, and in 
December 2010, Education convened officials from grantee states in 
Washington, D.C., to share guidance and challenges on the topic. 
Additional topics that have been covered include measuring academic 
growth in nontested subjects, such as music and art. Education 
officials said that in the future, the communities of practice will 
include a combination of in-person and online gatherings and will be 
flexible and responsive to state needs. Education is planning another 
meeting in the fall of 2011 for states to discuss strategies to turn 
around low-achieving schools. 

In addition, while grantee states told us they contact each other to 
exchange information, they said they would like more opportunities to 
share promising practices. According to education officials from 
Delaware, for example, they shared information with Rhode Island and 
other states about providing technical assistance to school districts 
to help them implement reforms at the district level. Tennessee 
officials told us they shared their state-level plans and their 
template for school district scopes of work with several Phase 2 
grantees before Education published examples on its Web site. However, 
grantee states expressed interest in additional opportunities to share 
promising practices. North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island plan to 
develop statewide data systems to improve instruction, which state 
officials expect will help teachers analyze their students' 
performance data to better address academic material that students 
find difficult to understand. Officials from these states said they 
are interested in working with other states on developing and 
implementing these systems. In addition, Tennessee officials told us 
that once they begin implementing models to turn around low-achieving 
schools with their Achievement School District, they could share their 
experiences. They said doing so could be helpful since most states do 
not have experience with turning around low-achieving schools on the 
scale that Tennessee plans to attempt. 

Many nongrantee states continue to implement key reforms. However, 
officials from most (6 of the 8) nongrantee states we spoke with told 
us they were not able to access the Web site and were not aware of the 
Education-sponsored communities of practice. For example, an education 
official from Arizona said that he receives many e-mails from 
Education, but the department has not notified him of any plans to 
share practices or information about RTT. He added that he would 
appreciate having the opportunity to gain knowledge from grantees. 
Because Arizona has other federal grants, such as the School 
Improvement Grant for turning around low-achieving schools, he would 
like to know how RTT states and school districts are leveraging other 
federal funding sources to implement activities that align with the 
RTT reform areas.[Footnote 25] 

In addition to states' interests in sharing information, Education has 
certain policies that support information sharing and collaboration. 
Education generally requires states and their subgrantees to make 
information about their RTT-funded projects and activities available 
to others by, for example, posting that information on a Web site 
identified or sponsored by Education. Education also requires all 
program officers responsible for administering discretionary grant 
programs to share program results and information about significant 
achievements, including the best available research and practices that 
could inform other projects with the public. As mentioned earlier, 
Education's technical assistance network has provided grantees, but 
not other states, with opportunities to collaborate on topics, such as 
teacher evaluation. 

Conclusions: 

The RTT grant competition prompted a robust national dialogue about 
comprehensive education reform and the role of competitive grants to 
support these reforms. It led some states to undertake new initiatives 
and others to accelerate their existing and planned educational reform 
efforts. While it is too soon to know whether these initiatives will 
help close achievement gaps or significantly improve outcomes for K-12 
students, the broader impact of RTT's reform efforts may be more 
evident over time through, for example, Education's impact evaluation 
study and other related studies. Whether the momentum around the 
reform initiatives and efforts to implement them can be sustained over 
time may depend on a number of factors, including the progress that 
states make as they begin to implement their reform initiatives. In 
addition, if state funding for K-12 education declines, states might 
face challenges sustaining RTT reform efforts once grant funds are no 
longer available. 

The overarching goal of RTT is to foster large-scale education reform. 
Sharing information with nongrantee states carrying out similar 
initiatives can accelerate the pace and scope of reform efforts and is 
a sound investment of resources. And if states are to get the greatest 
possible return on investment, efforts to facilitate sharing of 
information should begin soon. Information sharing among grantees is 
also important. Without opportunities for grantees to share 
information and experiences, states may miss opportunities to learn 
from each other and leverage their experiences. 

Although Education provided support to grantees as they began 
implementing their initial activities, most grantees have faced 
challenges meeting some interim deadlines. While states might have 
done a better job of anticipating some of their challenges, they were 
tasked with developing comprehensive reform plans requiring extensive 
planning and coordination with a broad array of stakeholders. Missing 
interim deadlines has not yet derailed states from their original 
reform plans. However, short-term delays could eventually lead to 
longer-term delays, and grantees may risk falling short of their 
ultimate goals. While Education has begun monitoring grantee progress, 
it is important that Education ensure that states meet their required 
timelines and receive assistance to stay on track. It is also 
important that Education continue to gather information from states on 
their challenges and respond in a timely manner. 

Recommendations for Executive Action: 

To ensure that the lessons learned from RTT are shared with all 
states, and not only grantees, we recommend that the Secretary of 
Education take the following two actions: 

1. Facilitate grantees' sharing of promising practices on key topics 
of interest that the department has not yet addressed, such as the 
design and implementation of data systems to improve instruction. 

2. Provide nongrantee states with information from the department's 
existing mechanisms, including the secure grantee Web site and 
communities of practice. 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation: 

We provided a draft of this report to the Secretary of Education for 
review and comment. Education's comments are reproduced in appendix 
IV. Education agreed that it should facilitate information sharing 
among grantee states on topics that the department has not yet 
addressed, and the department said it will do so beginning in August 
2011. However, while the department agreed that sharing information 
with nongrantees is important, it did not agree that nongrantees 
should have access to the secure grantee Web site or the communities 
of practice. As noted in its response, the department believes 
grantees should have more time to work together on common problems 
before providing access to specific information-sharing mechanisms to 
other states. Education also noted that it plans to make the resources 
and lessons learned from grantee states available to all states at 
some point in the future. We maintain that nongrantee states that are 
implementing reforms similar to those funded by RTT could benefit from 
the discussions grantees have and related documents they may develop. 
However, we modified our recommendation to acknowledge that Education 
can provide information from the Web site and communities of practice 
to nongrantees without necessarily giving them direct access to those 
mechanisms. 

Education said that it does not believe that the rate at which states 
are drawing down their grant funds is a reliable indicator of 
progress. However, we continue to believe that the relatively low 
amount of funds drawn down at this point is a result of challenges 
states have experienced to date. We highlight this issue to 
acknowledge the implications of--and provide context for--some of the 
challenges faced by grantee states as they implement the largest 
competitive grant program that Education has administered. 

Education provided us with additional information about its program 
review process and clarified some information related to reasons that 
states may have delayed spending their first year grants. We modified 
our report to reflect these clarifications and incorporated the 
department's technical comments, where appropriate. 

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional 
committees and the Secretary of Education. In addition, the report is 
available at no charge on GAO's Web site at [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov]. 

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please 
contact me at (202) 512-7215 or scottg@gao.gov. Contact points for our 
Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on 
the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions 
to this report are listed in appendix V. 

Signed by: 

George A. Scott: 
Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues: 

List of Congressional Committees: 

The Honorable Tom Harkin:
Chairman:
The Honorable Michael B. Enzi:
Ranking Member:
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions:
United States Senate: 

The Honorable Daniel K. Inouye:
Chairman:
The Honorable Thad Cochran:
Vice Chairman:
Committee on Appropriations:
United States Senate: 

The Honorable Joseph I. Lieberman:
Chairman:
The Honorable Susan M. Collins:
Ranking Member:
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:
United States Senate: 

The Honorable John P. Kline:
Chairman:
The Honorable George Miller:
Ranking Member:
Education and the Workforce Committee:
House of Representatives: 

The Honorable Harold Rogers:
Chairman:
The Honorable Norman D. Dicks:
Ranking Member:
Committee on Appropriations:
House of Representatives: 

The Honorable Darrell E. Issa:
Chairman:
The Honorable Elijah Cummings:
Ranking Member:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:
House of Representatives: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology: 

To address our first objective about actions states took to be 
competitive for Race to the Top (RTT) grants, we reviewed proposed and 
final requirements for the RTT grant competition, as well as documents 
from the U. S. Department of Education (Education), including the 
grant application template, scoring guidelines, and guidance 
materials. We reviewed RTT applications for 20 of the 47 states that 
applied for RTT grants, as listed in table 4. 

Table 4: States with RTT Applications That We Reviewed: 

States that received an RTT grant: 
Delaware; 
District of Columbia; 
Florida; 
Georgia; 
Hawaii; 
Maryland; 
Massachusetts; 
New York; 
North Carolina; 
Ohio; 
Rhode Island; 
Tennessee. 

Selected states that applied for but did not receive an RTT grant: 
Arizona;
California;
Illinois;
Indiana;
Louisiana;
Maine;
Pennsylvania;
West Virginia. 

Source: Education. 

[End of table] 

The 8 nongrantee states we selected varied in several respects, 
including the phase in which the state applied, the number of 
elementary and secondary education students in the state, and the 
geographic location of the state. We interviewed state education 
agency officials from the 20 states to review information in their RTT 
applications and to discuss state efforts to apply for the grant. We 
identified several policy decisions or legislative actions states took 
to be competitive for RTT grants in the four major reform areas-- 
enhancing standards and assessments, expanding data systems, 
developing effective teachers and leaders, and improving states' 
lowest-achieving schools. We also identified other actions states took 
to apply for RTT grants. To determine whether a state changed a 
certain policy or law to be competitive for RTT, we used the following 
criteria: (1) the change in law or policy occurred within the RTT 
application period, (2) state officials attributed the change or the 
effort to being a factor in applying for the RTT grant, and (3) state 
officials reported that the change would not have happened without the 
RTT competition. To describe state laws or policy changes, we relied 
on interviews with state officials and documentation they provided, 
but did not independently analyze or otherwise review state laws or 
policies. 

To describe how grantee states planned to use their RTT grant funds, 
we reviewed states' RTT applications, RTT grant budgets, and scopes of 
work. We reviewed narrative statements in the applications in each 
grantee state in each of the four reform areas. We analyzed RTT grant 
budgets by calculating the total planned expenditures for all projects 
by reform area, as well as total planned expenditures for different 
types of budget categories. Major budget categories included personnel 
expenses, contracts, or state allocations to school districts. We 
reviewed grant draw-down amounts provided by Education. We interviewed 
state education officials from all 12 grantee states, including 
telephone interviews with 8 grantee states and site visits to 4 
grantee states--Delaware, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee. We selected 
site visit states to provide variation across several criteria, 
including the grant phase in which the state applied, the number of 
elementary and secondary education students in the state, the 
geographic location of the state, and the percentage of school 
districts participating in the RTT application. During our site 
visits, we interviewed state officials and officials from three to 
four school districts per state. To provide a range of perspectives, 
we selected school districts that varied across several criteria, 
including the extent to which the district was mentioned in the state 
RTT application; whether the district was in an urban, suburban, or 
rural area; the percentage of high-minority schools in the district; 
and the percentage of high-poverty schools in the district. In total, 
we interviewed officials from 15 school districts, including three 
interviews by telephone. We interviewed officials in grantee states 
and districts about their planned uses for RTT grant funds, their 
perspectives on the benefits of their planned uses, challenges they 
have experienced in beginning to implement grant activities, and 
support provided by Education. To summarize the extent to which 
nongrantee states have chosen to implement reforms planned in their 
RTT applications, we reviewed the relevant RTT applications and 
interviewed state education officials from the 8 selected nongrantee 
states by telephone. We chose major policy actions outlined in their 
RTT applications and asked the nongrantees about the status of those 
actions. 

To summarize challenges that grantee states faced when implementing 
the RTT grants, we interviewed state education officials from all 12 
grantee states, including the four site-visit states. Across the four 
site-visit states, we selected 29 projects for in-depth review. The 
projects were selected based on the amount of funding planned for the 
project and to ensure variation across the four reform areas. To 
assess how Education was responding to states' challenges and 
otherwise providing support to states and planning to monitor states, 
we interviewed officials from the Office of Elementary and Secondary 
Education and the Implementation and Support Unit. We also interviewed 
officials in the Institute of Education Sciences about its RTT 
evaluation and officials in the Risk Management Service about their 
role in monitoring high-risk RTT states. We also reviewed relevant 
federal laws, regulations, and Education guidance documents, including: 

* the notice inviting applications for RTT, 

* the final rule for the competition, 

* the RTT application template, 

* an internal handbook for administering discretionary grants, 

* a document describing Education's process for making amendments to 
RTT applications, 

* documentation related to Education's RTT monitoring plans, 

* a "frequently asked questions" document, and: 

* technical assistance presentation slides and meeting transcripts. 

We also reviewed selected states' monthly reports submitted to 
Education. These documents helped us determine the extent to which 
Education provided support and guidance to states during the 
application process and as states began to implement their grant 
activities. 

We conducted this performance audit from April 2010 to June 2011 in 
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 
sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 
that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our 
findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation Grant Funds: 

The following table provides a description of RTT, RTT Assessment 
Program, and the Investing in Innovation grant funds. 

Table 5: Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation Grant Funds: 

Grant fund: Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation grant funds; 
Funds authorized through the Recovery Act: $5 billion. 

Grant fund: Investing in Innovation grant fund; 
Description of grant program: Education provided grants to 49 school 
districts and nonprofit organizations to implement and expand a 
variety of education reform efforts; 
Funds authorized through the Recovery Act: Up to $650 million; 
Funds awarded by Education: $646 million. 

Grant fund: Race to the Top grant fund; 
Description of grant program: Education awarded grants to 12 states 
related to four reform areas: developing effective teachers and 
leaders, improving the lowest-achieving schools, expanding student 
data systems, and enhancing standards and assessments; 
Funds authorized through the Recovery Act: Remainder of funds; 
Funds awarded by Education: $3.9 billion. 

Grant fund: Race to the Top Assessment Program; 
Description of grant program: Education awarded grants to two 
consortia of states--including all states that received grants through 
the RTT grant fund--to develop advanced academic assessment systems; 
Funds authorized through the Recovery Act: not applicable; 
Funds awarded by Education: $362 million. 

Source: Recovery Act and Education. 

[End of table] 

[End of section] 

Appendix III: Criteria Used to Guide the Selection of States to 
Receive RTT Grant Awards: 

The following table provides the criteria Education identified for 
application reviewers to use as part of the process to make RTT grant 
awards. 

Table 6: Criteria for Race to the Top Grant Awards: 

Reform area: State success factors; 
Criteria: 
* Articulate state's education reform agenda and school district 
participation in the state's reform efforts; 
* Build strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up, and sustain 
proposed plans; 
* Demonstrate significant progress in raising achievement and closing 
gaps. 

Reform area: Standards and assessments; 
Reform conditions criteria: 
* Develop and adopt common standards; 
* Develop and implement common high-quality assessments; 
Reform plan criteria: 
* Support transition to enhanced standards and high-quality 
assessments. 

Reform area: Data systems; 
Reform conditions criteria: 
* Fully implement a statewide longitudinal data system; 
Reform plan criteria: 
* Access and use state data; 
* Use data to improve instruction. 

Reform area: Teachers and leaders; 
Reform conditions criteria: 
* Provide high-quality pathways for aspiring teachers and principals; 
Reform plan criteria: 
* Improve teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance; 
* Ensure equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals; 
* Improve the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation 
programs; 
* Provide effective support to teachers and principals. 

Reform area: Lowest-achieving schools; 
Reform conditions criteria: 
* Intervene in the lowest-achieving schools and school districts; 
Reform plan criteria: 
* Turn around the lowest-achieving schools. 

Reform area: General criteria; 
Reform conditions criteria: 
* Make education funding a priority; 
* Ensure successful conditions for high-performing charter schools and 
other innovative schools; 
* Demonstrate other significant reform conditions; 
Reform plan criteria: None. 

Source: 74 Fed. Reg. 59,688, 59,801-59,804 (Nov. 18, 2009). 

Note: In addition to these criteria, Education gave states the option 
to include other proposals in their plans, such as proposals to 
prepare more students for advanced study and careers in science, 
technology, engineering, and mathematics fields and proposals for 
states to work together to develop joint longitudinal data systems. 

[End of table] 

[End of section] 

Appendix IV: Comments from the U.S. Department of Education: 

United States Department Of Education: 
Washington, DC 20202: 
[hyperlink, http://www.ed.gov] 
[The Department of Education's mission is to promote student 
achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering 
educational excellence and ensuring equal access.] 

June 6, 2011: 

Mr. George A. Scott: 
Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
441 G Street, NW: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

Dear Mr. Scott: 

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Government 
Accountability Offices's (GAO's) draft report on "Race to the Top: 
Reform Efforts Under Way, Information Sharing Could Be Improved." The 
draft report includes "Recommendations for Executive Action," which 
read as follows: 
 
To ensure that the lessons learned from RTT are shared with all 
states, not only grantees, we recommend that the Secretary of 
Education: 

* facilitate grantees' sharing of promising practices on key topics of 
interest that the department has not yet addressed, such as the design 
and implementation of data systems to improve instruction; and 

* provide non-grantee states with access to existing tools to receive 
information, including the secure grantee Web site and communities of 
practice. 

We appreciate the time that your office devoted to this study and, in 
particular, the efforts that were made to obtain the views of both 
Race to the Top grantee States and States that applied but were not 
awarded a Race to the Top grant. The views of both grantee and non-
grantee States are important in understanding the impact of the Race 
to the Top program and its overall goal of driving States to implement 
bold reforms to ensure that every child has access to a high-quality 
education. 

Every State that applied to Race to the Top showed a tremendous amount 
of leadership and commitment to education reform. That the non-grantee 
States in your study acknowledged the benefits from the collaboration 
and comprehensive planning that the Race to the Top application 
process prompted illustrates that the benefits of the Race to the Top 
program extended well beyond the grantee States. We were especially 
pleased that officials in the non-grantee States in your study said 
that they are implementing some of the reforms they proposed in their 
applications using other federal, State, local, and private funds We 
want to support these States and ensure that all States continue to 
benefit from Race to the Top. 

With regard to your first recommendation, that the Department 
"facilitate grantees' sharing of promising practices on key topics of 
interest that the department has not yet addressed," please note that 
the Department conducted a number of webinars, conference calls, and 
meetings for grantee States beyond the two webinars and one meeting on 
teacher evaluation that are mentioned in your report. These webinars, 
conference calls, and meetings focused on a variety of topics: 
stakeholder engagement, school turnarounds, and teacher and leader 
effectiveness. Enclosed is a list of these activities (see Enclosure 
A). In response to grantee States' requests that we not hold any 
technical assistance activities in the months of June and July due to 
their heavy workloads during these months, we will begin an additional 
series of activities in August 2011, that will focus on key topics of 
interest that the Department has not yet addressed and provide grantee 
States with additional opportunities to share promising practices and 
lessons learned. 

We agree with your report that grantees are eager to share information 
with their counterparts in other States. At their suggestion, in 
February we began monthly conference calls with the Race to the Top 
leads in each State to provide a forum for them to discuss issues and 
topics of their choice, including promising practices and lessons 
learned. We loosely focus the calls on the successes and challenges 
identified by those States. In addition, on March 29 and 30 of this 
year, we brought together the Chief State School Officer from each 
grantee State to discuss amongst themselves and with the Secretary and 
senior Department officials the support they need to be successful in 
their reform efforts. 

Race to the Top grantees also share information using the secure Web 
site that we launched last October. As noted in your report, the Web 
site allows grantees to share ideas, documents, and other information. 
Grantees post both documents and links on the Web site to share with 
their grantee colleagues, and our technical assistance contractor 
populates the Web site with relevant information as well. In addition, 
the Web site includes a shared calendar and permits grantee States to 
identify colleagues in similar roles (e.g., the teacher and leader 
evaluation lead, the turnaround lead), so that grantees can 
collaborate with each other on specific topic areas. In April, we 
launched an enhanced Web site to provide grantees with many more tools 
with which to collaborate (e.g., enhanced document sharing and 
navigation, discussion forums, subscriptions and notifications, and 
member profiles). 

It has always been our intention to share lessons learned from Race to 
the Top grantees with all States. In this first year of 
implementation, we believe we have appropriately focused our efforts 
on helping the Race to the Top grantee States make progress in 
achieving their goals and objectives. As your report notes, we are 
using a combination of technical assistance strategies, including 
communities of practice, that bring the grantee States together with 
experts in the field in order to collaborate on topics of common 
interest, such as the development of new teacher and leader evaluation 
systems. We plan to make the resources and lessons learned from these 
communities of practice, which are currently in the development stage, 
available to all States. In addition, we plan to bring all States 
together in annual meetings to help support their work implementing 
reforms in the areas of adopting college- and career-ready standards, 
building data systems to support instruction, increasing teacher 
effectiveness and achieving equity in teacher distribution, and 
turning around our lowest achieving schools. However, we do not intend 
to provide non-grantees with access to the secure grantee Web site or 
the communities of practice, at least in this initial development and 
implementation phase. With forethought, we determined that it was 
important for grantees to be able to share information and work 
together on common problems, before we open up the community to all 
States. Therefore, while we agree with your second recommendation to 
"provide non-grantee states with access to existing tools to receive 
information," we respectfully disagree that such tools should include 
access to the secure grantee Web site and communities of practice at 
this time. Of course, the Department will continue to provide all 
States and local educational agencies with valuable technical 
assistance opportunities that focus on a variety of topics, including 
topics related to implementing educational reforms that improve the 
quality of education for all students. For example, the Department 
recently completed a series of four regional conferences for school, 
district, and State leaders who are working to turn around their 
lowest-performing schools. 

Aside from these responses to the report's recommendations, there are 
three discussions in the report that we believe would benefit from 
more clarity. We discuss each of these areas below. In addition, we 
are enclosing a list of suggested technical edits (see Enclosure B). 

Description of the program review process. We appreciate that the 
report highlights that our monitoring plan for States "emphasizes 
program outcomes and quality of implementation, while also ensuring 
compliance with RTT program requirements." However, we believe that 
the authors of the draft report may have been confused about the 
actions taken by a State versus a district in the review process. For 
your consideration and convenience, we have enclosed a suggested 
revised version of the paragraph under the heading, "Education Has 
Begun to Monitor State Implementation of RTT-Funded Activities," which 
we believe clarifies and more accurately describes our program review 
process (see Enclosure C). Our edits to this paragraph are provided in 
tracked changes. 

Description of the implementation delays. The draft report describes 
the variety of challenges that States faced in implementing their 
large and comprehensive reform plans. We agree that delays in State 
implementation resulted for a variety of reasons, including 
difficulties States had in hiring qualified personnel and addressing 
State procedures for issuing Requests for Proposals and awarding 
contracts. However, we do not agree that the Department's 
establishment of the Implementation and Support Unit (ISU) contributed 
to the delay. The administrative processes required to establish this 
new unit to assist States in implementing Race to the Top and other
Recovery Act grants were managed by staff who were not involved in the 
day-to-day work of the Race to the Top program. The ongoing work of 
our program officers and technical assistance staff and contractors 
continued uninterrupted, and no delay was caused by the establishment 
of the ISU. 

In addition, although the report contends that States have been "slow" 
to draw down their grant funds, it is not clear to us that the rate of 
draw-downs in this program is slow. Given that this is the first year 
of a unique discretionary grant program with awards of unprecedented 
size, we do not have a basis on which to judge the rate of draw-downs 
as being slow or fast. It is also important to note that if grantees 
have obligated funds for contracts, these obligations might not be 
reflected in the draw-down data in Table 3 of the report. As 
contractors provide services and payments for contracted services are 
provided, the expenditure of these funds will be reflected in the draw-
down data. We are carefully monitoring grantees' progress toward 
meeting their goals and ensuring that funds are properly used, and we 
do not believe that rates of drawing down funds are a reliable 
indicator of progress. 

Example of how funds are being used. In the "GAO Highlights" section 
of the report, under the heading, "What GAO found," the report 
provides "professional development" as an example of a way that Race 
to the Top funds will be used to increase the effectiveness of 
teachers and leaders. We believe that a better example would be 
"developing systems to evaluate and improve teacher and principal 
effectiveness." Professional development is only a part of the systems 
that States are developing to evaluate and improve teacher and 
principal effectiveness, and we believe that using "professional 
development" as the example will lead some to conclude that the
Department's or the States' main strategy for increasing the 
effectiveness of teachers and principals is professional development 
in isolation, which is clearly not the case. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to comment on the draft report. 
Please let us know if you have any questions or would like to discuss 
our comments. We look forward to receiving the final report. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Ann Whalen: 
Director, Policy and Program Implementation: 

Signed by: 

Joseph Conaty: 
Acting Director, Technical Assistance and Support: 

Enclosures: 
Enclosure A: Community of Practice (CoP) Webinars, Conference Calls, 
and Meetings; 
Enclosure B: Suggested Technical Edits; 
Enclosure C: Track Changes of Program Review Paragraph; 
Enclosure D: Updated Information for Table 3. 

[End of section] 

Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments: 

GAO Contact: 

George A. Scott, (202) 512-7215 or scottg@gao.gov: 

Staff Acknowledgments: 

Elizabeth Morrison, Assistant Director, and Jason Palmer, Analyst-in- 
Charge, managed this assignment and made significant contributions to 
all aspects of this report. Jaime Allentuck, Corissa Kiyan, and 
Rebecca Rose also made significant contributions. Additionally, James 
E. Bennett, Alexander G. Galuten, Bryon Gordon, Kirsten B. Lauber, 
Steven R. Putansu, Kathleen van Gelder, and Sarah Wood aided in this 
assignment. 

[End of section] 

Related GAO Products: 

Department of Education: 

Department of Education: Improved Oversight and Controls Could Help 
Education Better Respond to Evolving Priorities. [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-194]. Washington, D.C.: February 
10, 2011. 

Grant Monitoring: Department of Education Could Improve Its Processes 
with Greater Focus on Assessing Risks, Acquiring Financial Skills, and 
Sharing Information. [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-57]. Washington, D.C.: November 19, 
2009. 

Student Achievement: Schools Use Multiple Strategies to Help Students 
Meet Academic Standards, Especially Schools with Higher Proportions of 
Low-Income and Minority Students. [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-18]. Washington, D.C.: November 16, 
2009. 

No Child Left Behind Act: Enhancements in the Department of 
Education's Review Process Could Improve State Academic Assessments. 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-911]. Washington, D.C.: 
September 24, 2009. 

Teacher Quality: Sustained Coordination among Key Federal Education 
Programs Could Enhance State Efforts to Improve Teacher Quality. 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-593]. Washington, D.C.: 
July 6, 2009. 

No Child Left Behind Act: Improvements Needed in Education's Process 
for Tracking States' Implementation of Key Provisions. [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-734]. Washington D.C.: September 
30, 2004. 

Recovery Act: 

Recovery Act: Opportunities to Improve Management and Strengthen 
Accountability over States' and Localities' Uses of Funds. [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-999]. Washington, D.C.: September 
20, 2010. 

Recovery Act: One Year Later, States' and Localities' Uses of Funds 
and Opportunities to Strengthen Accountability. [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-437]. Washington, D.C.: March 3, 
2010. 

Recovery Act: Status of States' and Localities' Use of Funds and 
Efforts to Ensure Accountability. [hyperlink, 
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-231]. Washington, D.C.: December 
10, 2009. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] Pub. L. No. 111-5, §14006, 123 Stat. 115, 283. 

[2] Pub. L. No. 111-5, §14009, 123 Stat. 115, 285 (2009). The mandate 
requires GAO to evaluate the programs under sections 14006 and 14007 
of the Recovery Act. These programs include not only the RTT grant 
fund, which is the subject of this report, but also the RTT Assessment 
Program (a separate grant fund created by Education) and the 
Innovation fund. GAO plans to evaluate these additional programs in 
the future. 

[3] Throughout this report, we identify the District of Columbia as a 
state. 

[4] We use the term school districts to refer to local educational 
agencies. 

[5] In the Recovery Act, Congress authorized funds for the RTT and 
Investing in Innovation grant funds. Grants awarded through the RTT 
and two related programs (the RTT Assessment Program and the Investing 
in Innovation funds) total almost $5 billion, to be spent over 
multiple years. Appendix II provides a description of these grant 
programs and a summary of their award amounts. By comparison, the 
federal government spent about $48 billion on K-12 education programs 
in the 2007-2008 school year alone (the most recent data available). 

[6] Within grantee states, school districts that are not receiving RTT 
grants may work with the state to implement specific portions of the 
RTT plan that are being implemented statewide, such as academic 
content standards. States vary in terms of the proportion of their 
districts that are receiving RTT funds. In Delaware and Tennessee, all 
school districts are receiving RTT funds, compared with 86 percent of 
school districts in New York and about half of the districts in Ohio. 

[7] Pub. L. No. 111-5, §14006(c), 123 Stat. 115, 284 (2009). 

[8] For a discussion of the criteria, see 74 Fed. Reg. 59,688 (Nov. 
18, 2009). 

[9] The proposed requirements can be found in 74 Fed. Reg. 37,804 
(July 29, 2009). The final requirements and notice inviting 
applications can be found in 74 Fed. Reg. 59,688 and 59,836 (Nov. 18, 
2009), respectively. 

[10] The Recovery Act provided $53.6 billion (including funds for RTT 
grants) in appropriations for SFSF to be administered by Education. 
The act specifies that most of the funds were to be distributed to 
states to support education programs. To receive SFSF awards, each 
state had to assure it would, among other things, maintain state 
support for education at least at 2006 levels and make progress in the 
same four areas of education reform emphasized under the RTT program. 

[11] At Education's invitation, over 1,500 prospective reviewers 
applied or were nominated to review RTT applications, and Education 
ultimately chose 58 reviewers. Education's Inspector General conducted 
a review of Education's process for screening and selecting external 
reviewers of Phase 1 RTT applications. The report found that the 
department's process was generally appropriate but recommended the 
department improve the timeliness with which it verifies eligibility 
of reviewers in order to ensure the integrity of the review process. 
See U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General, The 
Department's Process for Screening and Selecting Peer Reviewers for 
the Race to the Top Grant Program (August 2010). ED-OIG/A19K0006. 

[12] For example, in 2009, 49 states and territories joined the Common 
Core State Standards Initiative. This effort, led by the states 
through the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National 
Governors Association, established a single set of academic standards 
for English-language arts and mathematics that states can voluntarily 
adopt and share. 

[13] The 25 states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, 
Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, 
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, 
North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, 
Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. 

[14] Through the Teacher Incentive Fund, Education awards competitive 
grants to states and school districts to support efforts to develop 
and implement performance-based teacher and principal compensation 
systems in high-need schools. 

[15] The Recovery Act required states to use at least 50 percent of 
their RTT grants to make subgrants to school districts based on the 
district's relative share of ESEA Title I, Part A allocations for the 
most recent year. Approximately 2,000 school districts in the 12 RTT 
grantee states are participating in their state's RTT plan and will 
receive subgrants. 

[16] Through its Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program, 
Education awards competitive grants to states to develop data systems 
that track student progress over time, based on individual student 
records. 

[17] States included some activities, such as professional 
development, in more than one reform area. We report the 
implementation of activities consistent with how states organized them 
in their RTT applications. 

[18] Instructional improvement systems are technology-based tools and 
other strategies that provide teachers, principals, and administrators 
with support and data to manage continuous instructional improvement. 
These systems include activities such as instructional planning and 
using information for instructional decision-making. They may also 
incorporate other types of data, such as attendance, discipline, and 
grades. For more information on instructional improvement systems, see 
74 Fed. Reg. 59,688, 59,805 (Nov. 18, 2009). 

[19] Under ESEA, as amended, schools that do not make adequate yearly 
progress--a measure in the ESEA used to determine whether schools have 
met state academic proficiency targets--in 5 consecutive years must 
implement one of a variety of school turnaround models. 

[20] Florida is a member of the Partnership for Assessment of 
Readiness of College and Careers, which received a grant through the 
RTT Assessment Program to develop advanced assessment systems aligned 
with the Common Core State Standards. These assessments will be ready 
for states to administer by the 2014-2015 school year, according to 
current timelines. 

[21] As part of their RTT applications, states had to identify 
specific projects through which they would implement their reforms. 
From the four states we visited, we selected 29 projects--based on the 
amount of funding planned for the project and to ensure variation 
across the four reform areas--for more in-depth review. 

[22] Education created a process to review states' requests to make 
changes to their plans by submitting amendment requests to revise 
goals, activities, timelines, budgets, or annual targets. Although 
Education allows states to change specific parts of their plans, the 
overall scope and objectives of states' approved plans cannot be 
changed. 

[23] State grant funds remain in the U.S. Treasury, and states receive 
their funds by submitting electronic fund transfer requests known as 
drawdowns. 

[24] Indirect costs represent the expenses of doing business that are 
not readily identified with a particular grant project function or 
activity, but are necessary for the general operation of the 
organization and the conduct of activities it performs. For example, 
indirect costs may include maintenance and operations of space, data 
processing, and communications. 

[25] School Improvement Grants, authorized under section 1003(g) of 
the ESEA, as amended, are grants made by Education to improve student 
achievement in Title I schools identified for improvement, corrective 
action, or restructuring so as to enable those schools to make 
adequate yearly progress and no longer be identified for improvement. 
The Department of Education Appropriations Act, 2010, provided around 
$546 million for School Improvement Grants in fiscal year 2010. 

[End of section] 

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