School Funding Decision in the Hands of the Few

Over at California Watch, Louis Freedberg has a smart post that looks inside California's application for $700 million in federal funds from the Race to the Top program championed by President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The application is reviewed by an obscure panel that deserves more scrutiny, Freedberg says. He makes a good case. California got turned down in the first round of funding by reviewers, who provided the state no opportunity to answer their questions. The state also struggled to tell its story in the limited number of pages provided for by the application.

In short, California has a lot of money riding on how it negotiates these strange bureaucratic rapids.

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