Opinion: $4.35 billion "poorly spent" on Race to the Top

"That was another $4.35 billion poorly spent," says Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the forthcoming book, The Same Thing Over and Over.

In a posting on NPR, he continues: "Last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the winners of the second and final round of the administration's heavily promoted and widely cheered Race to the Top school-reform program. Unfortunately, after all the headlines and hullabaloo, the results were so dismal they threatened to bring the entire exercise into disrepute. Heralded education-reform states Colorado and Louisiana were left out in the cold, while Duncan bizarrely found himself naming Ohio, Maryland, New York, and Hawaii among the ten round-two winners. (Tennessee and Delaware had been named round-one winners this spring.)"

Read the rest of his commentary at NPR online.