The woman overseeing Race to the Top for the Obama administration said Monday that federal Department  of Education officials have been “stunned” by the impact of the program.

Before even a dollar has been handed out, states competing to win a share of the $4.3 billion program have enacted reforms on a level not seen before, Joanne Weiss, director of Race to the Top, told a conference at Stanford on turning failing schools around.

To boost the chances of winning money, states have eliminated limits on charter schools, changed methods for evaluating teachers and principals and enacted aggressive rules on intervening in failing schools. By removing the ban on using standardized test data for teacher evaluations, California took care of a prerequisite to applying for the money. Only Nevada, of 40 states that indicated an intent to apply, has eligibility problems, Weiss said.

The department will use five-person teams of independent evaluators to rate each state’s application on a 500-point scale. Secretary Arne Duncan hasn’t decided how many states will be awarded money in the first of two rounds of funding. Applications are due Jan. 19 with a decision in April.

All of the states’ applications and evaluators’ comments will be made public after the first round of funding. Weiss said she doubts a failure to win would end a state’s commitment to school change. Race to the Top has “changed the conversation.” Many states now have a reform agenda, she said.

Weiss spoke at “Driving Dramatic School Improvement: Strategies for Turning Around our Nation’s Failing Schools,” which was hosted by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The Obama adminstration announced plans to spend $5 billion to transform the nation’s 5,000 worst schools over the next five years – an ambitious – and some believe, unrealistic – commitment.

Turning around failing schools is a big part of Race to the Top, too. The approach is different from the No Child Left Behind law passed under the Bush administration, Weiss said. It overidentified failing schools, with sanctions for so many that the law has become useless.

In Race to the Top, states must commit to turn around the worst 5 percent of low-achieving schools, through one of four prescribed methods: closing down  the school, bringing in a charter operator, replacing the principal and at least half of the staff and adopting a range of strategies, including replacing the principal in many instances.

“We have tight requirements, because we have been tinkering around the edges for a long time. It’s incumbent on us to give political cover” to state and local school officials who face the unpopular decisions of replacing staff and closing schools, she said.

By John Fensterwald on January 12th, 2010