By Betsy Yagla 

For the second time, Connecticut lost out on millions of dollars in competitive federal grants for education reform. Connecticut was not one of the 19 finalists announced in July. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced 10 winners, among them Connecticut’s neighbors Massachusetts ($250 million), New York ($750 million) and Rhode Island ($75 million).

The competitive grant money, dubbed Race to the Top, is designed to help close the achievement gap by motivating states to create more progressive education policies. Connecticut has the highest gap in the nation. In May, the state legislature passed a sweeping reform bill just one month before the state’s grant application was due.

Clearly the feds think Connecticut didn’t go far enough.

Why did Connecticut miss out?

A 66-page analysis of Connecticut’s application, recently released by the U.S. Department of Education, says the state wasn’t specific enough, didn’t plan to implement reforms quick enough and didn’t go far enough.

Reviewers used the term “weak” when analyzing Connecticut’s plans to use student achievement to measure teacher performance, saying there was little to no actual commitment to do so.

Alex Johnston, who heads Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN) and sits on New Haven’s Board of Education says teacher evaluations are the first thing that jumped out at him when comparing Connecticut’s scores with winning scores.

“We made real progress: Student achievements needs to be incorporated into the teacher evaluation process,” he says. “But other states did more. We gather data but we are we going to do with it?”

By contrast, in Rhode Island, teachers will be evaluated and rated. No student will be assigned to an “ineffective” teacher two years in a row. Those teachers will have a limited amount of time to improve their ranking.

In New Haven, which is undergoing its own school reform plan, student achievement will be clearly linked to teacher reviews. Johnston believes New Haven has a good shot at winning grant money if school districts (instead of states) are allowed to compete for a third round of funding, which has yet to be approved.

The other problem Johnston saw was charter schools. This year, the legislature didn’t change the way the state funds charter schools and Connecticut still limits the number of kids who can attend those schools. Again, Rhode Island upped Connecticut by changing the way the state funds schools and implementing a “money follows the child” formula.

According to ConnCAN, Connecticut is only one of three states that funds charters differently than traditional public schools. Each school receives funding based on how many students it serves. Charters only receive 75 percent of that money.

Was Connecticut counting on the money?

Yes and no. Connecticut could have received up to $175 million if the state had won the Race to the Top grant. That’s not a lot in context of the state’s overall Department of Education budget of $3 billion. The grant money would have been used to help implement the reforms.

Will this impact reform?

Possibly.

Many of the reforms passed by the legislature in May aren’t expensive.

The bill included a provision to require districts to create teacher and principal evaluations that take student achievement into account; raises the number of credits needed to graduate high school from 20 to 25; create a data system to track student achievement; allows the state to take over Boards of Education in low-performing schools; requires poorly performing schools to create a “council of parents and teachers” who would be given the authority to overhaul the school; and set up alternative pathways to certification for school leaders.

“Some of those reforms are not expensive and can proceed regardless,” says ConnCAN’s Johnston. Alternative certification and the data system, for example shouldn’t be expensive, especially since the state has been working for years to create the data system. Teacher evaluations shouldn’t be expensive either. Districts already do them, in the future they just need to change how they do them.

Statewide, one big ticket item that Johnston isn’t sure how will be implemented is high school reform. He speculates that it could cost “tens of millions.” “We’ll have to see what legislature does with that,” he says.

“There will be some costs [associated with high school reform] that may require us to approach things differently,” says State Department of Education spokesman Tom Murphy. High school reform involves refocusing curriculum on math, science and technology, among other things.

Either way, the law is the law and the districts will be required to move forward with the reforms.

State Rep. Jason Bartlett (D-Bethel), who sits on the legislature’s education committee, isn’t so optimistic. Bartlett complains that the education reform bill presented by the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus was watered down.

For example, he says his bill clearly tied student achievement to teacher evaluations, making students’ performance 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.

“That was totally taken out and watered down to something close to incoherent,” he says. “That cost us a number of points. To get teachers unions and total buy-in, things were watered down too much.”

Like Johnston, Bartlett believes the changes to high school graduation requirements (which aren’t scheduled to start until 2014) will be watered down or pushed off.

He thinks the fact that Connecticut lost out on the grant will further erode reforms.

Is competing for grant money the best way to spur reform?

That depends on who you ask.

“The idea that competition is hurting kids strikes me as ludicrous,” says ConnCAN’s Johnston. “What this has done is spur policy change across the country that’s to the great benefit of kids.”

Rep. Bartlett agrees. “I still think it was a good process and I’m glad the state participated. I think reform is necessary and this got us talking.”

Others have said that competing for grants creates “winner” states and “loser” states.

State Sen. Andy Fleischmann (D-West Hartford), who co-chairs the legislature’s education committee told the online-only Connecticut Mirror that he doesn’t believe in the concept of competing for grant money.

“It does not make sense to pit states against one another,” he told the Mirror last week.

State Commissioner of Education Mark McQuillan has also been outspoken against the competition.

His spokesman, Murphy, adds that the competition was a way to get states to conform with the Obama Administration’s view on how to improve education.

“It comes down to who sets education policy?” Murphy says. “Is it the states or is it Washington?”