The race to the top fund

This study examines the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" (RTTT) education reform competition, offering the first insider account of how the initiative was conceived and developed in 2008 and 2009. It also analyzes how RTTT spurred education reform in Massachusetts – the state that scored highest in the RTTT competition – resulting in a $250 million award. Specifically, the study examines the "Achievement Gap Act," 2010 legislation pursued to make Massachusetts competitive for RTTT, and Massachusetts' two RTTT applications. It applies Kingdon's "policy streams" model, new institutionalism theory, and Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition Framework to analyze how RTTT altered the political and institutional dynamics surrounding public education in Massachusetts in order to facilitate new reforms, and how existing political and institutional dynamics surrounding education in Massachusetts affected its response to RTTT. The study makes five major findings. First, contrary to common understanding, RTTT was designed with the fairly modest aim of encouraging states – particularly those with higher-capacity education systems – to undertake education reforms they already may have been planning. Second, unlike most major federal education initiatives, RTTT was developed almost entirely by executive branch officials, with limited substantive input from members of Congress, especially Republicans. Third, although RTTT spurred Massachusetts to pass the Achievement Gap Act, state education actors used the law opportunistically to advance pre-existing policy agendas, rather than policies that responded directly to RTTT's priorities. However, legislators preserved certain aspects of the Act, such as aggressive school turnaround provisions, because of their perceived need to pass a law strong enough to make Massachusetts competitive for RTTT.

Fourth, RTTT did not alter political dynamics surrounding education in Massachusetts in a way that led state actors to adopt the RTTT criteria's preferred reforms. Rather, Massachusetts used the applications largely to advance measures it already wanted to pursue, and did not advance proposals that were particularly controversial. Finally, Massachusetts pursued the RTTT competition primarily to win millions for the state's schools, not because of RTTT's specific policy priorities. The study concludes that insofar as RTTT's purpose was to help states advance reforms they already wanted to pursue, RTTT achieved this goal in Massachusetts.