The Secretary of Education has set aside up to $350 million of Race to the Top funds for the potential purpose of supporting States in the development of a next generation of assessments. As an important next step in contemplating and designing a competition for these funds, and as a means of providing technical assistance to States, the Department of Education is pleased to release a notice for public meetings announcing a series of expert and public input meetings. (Please click here to view the executive summary of the notice.) Our objective in planning these input meetings is simple: to learn and facilitate sharing of information. Given the highly technical nature of this work, the vast body of knowledge that exists around how to best develop assessments, and the many promising practices currently employed across the country and world, we will solicit a wide range of input from assessment practitioners and researchers as we prepare to take important next steps.

Below you will find a list of topic areas we expect to explore in these meetings, along with the cities, dates and times of our meetings, and information on how you can participate. Please check back here and on our resources page for updates, as well as for postings of transcripts from our meetings and any written input that we receive.

 

11/12/09 Race to the Top Fund Update

The rules for the Race to the Top competition have now been finalized! Thank you to the 1,161 people and organizations who sent us comments on our draft rules—your collective outpouring of thoughtful input prompted us to make numerous changes and improvements to the final application. But just as important, the overwhelming volume of comments demonstrates the potential for Race to the Top to propel the transformational changes that students and teachers need.

You can now find:

• The Press Release announcing the final application
• The Race to the Top Application MSWord (784K)
• The key policy details, summarized in the Executive Summary PDF (370K)
• A Summary of the Major Changes we made based on the comments we received PDF (376K)
• More details for applicants in the Notice Inviting Applications PDF
• The full details on Race to the Top, including our responses to comments, in the Notice of Final Priorities PDF (1.3M)