U.S. Education's 'Race to the Top'

Race to the Top was made to be an attention-grabber. Competition plus money equals attention. Add in America’s cash-starved schools, and you’ve got a real race.
The Obama administration has used Race to the Top to focus the country on education reform. Four and a half billion dollars to be won and 40-plus states in the running. There were sixteen finalists and, this week, two states in the winners’ circle: Delaware and Tennessee.
How did they do it? How did they win? We’ll ask.
This hour, On Point: the governor of Tennessee and top Delaware educator on what it took to win.

Guests:

Joining us from Dover, Del., is Daniel Cruce, Deputy Secretary of Education for Delaware. The state won approximately $100 million in the first round of Race to the Top.

From Nashville, we're joined by Phil Bredesen, Governor of Tennessee, which won approximately $500 million in this round of Race to the Top.

And from Washington we're joined by Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. From 2002 to 2008, he was director of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.