he U.S. Department of Education confirmed Tuesday morning that New York won part of the $3.4 billion that the federal government had set aside to award states who could document that they would use the money to implement certain overhauls. Those changes include greater teacher accountability, the use of data systems and support for the growth of charter schools.
"That will just make a huge difference in the long term," said Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the New York Board of Regents. New York stands to win as much as $700 million in the contest. Ms. Tisch said New York won "pretty close" to what it had requested.
The Education Department is expected to name the other winners of the second round of its Race to the Top competition Tuesday afternoon.
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were named finalists in July. Tennessee and Delaware were awarded $600 million in the first round of the competition in March.
Ms. Tisch said the prize money will allow the state to build a robust data system to help track student progress, transform the lowest performing schools and create a teacher evaluation and certification system that will help identify and reward top teachers, but also move weaker teachers out of the system. She said the money will also help New York come up with a statewide curriculum based on the common core standards.
New York recently acknowledged that it had for years grossly inflated the number of children proficient in math and English and adjusted its standards to better reflect true proficiency. Those new numbers show the state has a long way to go to overhaul its education system.
New York's win comes three months after a hard-fought battle in Albany to pass legislation that increased the number of charter schools in the state, and also set parameters for a teacher evaluation system that takes student test scores into account.
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