Race to the Top
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Search complete. 7 mentions across 4 episodes found for "Race to the Top".
Sep 18, 2026
Derek ThompsonHOST
There was, if you recall, No Child Left Behind, with its obsession with testing and accountability.
Derek ThompsonHOST
There was Race to the Top under Obama.
Derek ThompsonHOST
There was Common Core.
Derek ThompsonHOST
There were charter schools, and teacher evals, and personalized learning, and how about those laptops in every classroom? It's not as if all of these ideas failed everywhere.
Rachel CanterGUEST
But it's most likely there's not one single cause, that there's a variety of causes that are both contributing, um, to this decline and making it difficult for students to recover.
Derek ThompsonHOST
Big problems attract big ideas, and American education has spent the last 25, 30 years cycling through a bunch of big ideas.
Derek ThompsonHOST
You've got No Child Left Behind, there's Race to the Top under Obama, there's Common Core, charter schools, teacher accountability, personalized tutoring.
Derek ThompsonHOST
It feels like every few years somebody announces that we finally figured out how to fix schools, and then inevitably, that revolution disappoints.
Bill WhalenHOST
So, Rick, Barack Obama comes to office in 2009, and he rolls out an education initiative.
Bill WhalenHOST
It's called Race to the Top.
Bill WhalenHOST
And if you look deep inside Race to Top, what do you find? There is actually merit pay involved.
Bill WhalenHOST
He wants to do merit pay.
Eric HanushekGUEST
They want to have all their members that are good dues-paying union members and so forth.
Eric HanushekGUEST
And so they have generally opposed it.
Eric HanushekGUEST
Everybody got really excited about Race to the Top when it came out.
Eric HanushekGUEST
It was actually a fairly small amount of money.
Peter HambyHOST
Labor front, on the teachers union front, you've obviously butted heads with them in, in recent years.
Peter HambyHOST
The Democratic Party, you know, Obama had Race to the Top.
Rahm EmanuelGUEST
Yeah.
Peter HambyHOST
You had Arne Duncan in the Cabinet.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
That's how we'll make progress in education, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And that's the guiding principle of the Race to the Top competition my administration started two years ago.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
The idea is simple.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
If states show that they're serious about reform, we'll show them the money.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
In Tennessee, where I met those students, they've launched an innovative residency program so that new teachers can be mentored by veteran educators.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
In Oregon, Michigan, and elsewhere, grants are supporting the work of teachers who are lengthening the school day, offering more specialized classes, and making the changes necessary to improve struggling schools.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Our challenge now is to allow all 50 states to benefit from the success of Race to the Top.
Barack ObamaSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
We need to promote reform that gets results while encouraging communities to figure out what's best for their kids.