With the passage of HB 1061 yesterday and the discussion of it the day before at the House Education Committee, we heard some rumblings and worries about the Race To The Top grant. This worry we will have to pay back funds unused is a Red herring, people.

Get up to speed first – see what the deal is and how our education leaders committed us to the brand name Common Core in our grant BEFORE the standards were even released:

1. About that RTTT Grant – PT I
2. About that RTTT Grant – PT II

Once you are up to speed, now hit this article at Breitbart entitled, “NC Nervous About Ditching Common Core Standards“.  

The main thrust of the article is some legislators are worried about having to return Race To The Top Funds. I think Rep. Holloway’s remarks were meant to stem the worries about it, not necessarily that he believes we would have to give it back.  From the Breitbart piece, emphasis added:

Despite the bill’s emphasis on North Carolina’s “sovereign right” to have its own standards,WRAL.com reports that state Rep. Bryan Holloway (R) said the bill would not allow an immediate transition away from Common Core because North Carolina does not want to have to return $400 million in federal Race to the Top (RttT) education grants it accepted that were tied to the nationalized standards.

“We’re telling them not to move down the Common Core road. We want them to take another direction,” Holloway said. “We’re not trying to weaken standards. We actually would prefer to have even stronger standards.”

Dr. Sandra Stotsky, however, nationally recognized academic standards expert who has testified in numerous states about the Common Core, wrote at Breitbart News in March:

Can the U.S. Department of Education (USED) demand repayment from states that got RttT funds? Can it withhold Title I money from a state that loses its waiver? It is important to recall that Congress didn’t pass legislation requiring Common Core’s standards or tests. All it authorized in 2001 was a re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). ESEA hasn’t been re-authorized since then, so there are no new or different education policies passed by Congress. A variety of conditions have been attached to the recent waivers issued by USED, but they may have no constitutional legitimacy since Congress didn’t approve them. States can certainly raise that objection.

“If a state received RttT money and spent it, it most likely doesn’t have to pay it back if it now seeks to opt out of using Common Core’s standards (by any name) and any tests aligned to or based on these standards,” Stotsky continued. “Neither the RttT application nor the grant award from USED contained a repayment penalty for withdrawing from a commitment. Moreover, the Grant Award Notification from USED implied withholding of future RttT funds, not repayment of RttT funds already expended.” 

She concluded:

In other words, there seem to be no likely penalties if a state accepted a USED award of RttT funds and now chooses to withdraw from the agreement. States can justify their withdrawal on the grounds that the Common Core standards do not meet the original requirements of “common standards” outlined in the RttT application. These standards were supposed to be “supported by evidence that they are internationally benchmarked.” But they are not. The Common Core Validation Committee never received any evidence.

Nor has evidence been provided by two post hoc attempts to provide such evidence: the 2011 report by David Conley at the University of Oregon and the 2012 report by William Schmidt and a colleague at Michigan State University, Richard Houang. Conley’s report, funded by the Gates Foundation, contradicted the findings in his 2003 pre-Common Core report on college-readiness standards, while Schmidt and Houang’s report has been severely criticized on methodological grounds. It is unclear who funded it.

Moreover, RttT was a three-year program extended to last four years. It expires in the fall of 2014. Whatever changes states make after 2014 cannot affect the grant. In addition, no state committed itself explicitly to maintain forever the new policies required by RttT. Once RttT grants expire, it is unclear how the USED could demand repayment for an expired program.

I would add that if the Department of Education wants to come after states for not implementing laws the way they wanted them to, go for it. Not only are they admitting they likely illegally and unconstitutionally used monetary strings to force Common Core, the optics of such are horrifying.

Related Read:  Common Core and NC: Pt. 2 – An Assault on Federalism

UPDATE:  This comes from DPI’s newsletter. It would appear that DPI has gone and requested a “no cost”extension for the Race To The Top

Race to the Top Updates Highlight Latest Program News

Race to the Top Updates feature the latest program information for curriculum, professional development and more. The updates for April 30 and May 14 are available at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/rttt/reports/weekly/?year=2014. If you know someone who would like to receive the updates, please contact Michael Yarbrough, RttT communications specialist, at michael.yarbrough@dpi.nc.gov.

The link above takes you to a webpage where you can access a PDF which then directs you to yet another link in order to view the no-cost information. In a nutshell, NC now has an extra year to finish up their projects. The grant end date would now be September 24th 2015.

The relevant portion of the DPI PDF:

Race to the Top No-Cost Extension Info Online
The US Department of Education has awarded a no-cost extension for North Carolina’s Race to the Top grant. The Race to the Top team has developed a quick “Points of Note”
sheet that features fingertip information about what this means for the state, along with local districts and charter schools.

The document can be accessed by visiting the RttT Frequently Asked Questions page  http://www.ncpublicschools.org/rttt/faq/, and clicking on the pdf link under Race to the Top Year 5 No Cost Extension Points of Note.

For those of you seeking greater detail around the no-cost extension, your questions may be addressed by listening to a webinar recorded last month. It can be found at
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/rttt/webinars/
MORE INFO: Michael Yarbrough, Communication and Information Services, michael.yarbrough@dpi.nc.gov

* Cross Posted at StopCommonCoreNC.org