With the recent release of Governing to Win: Enhancing National Competitiveness Through New Policy and Operating Approaches, Chuck Prow has compiled some 13 insightful essays by leading thinkers and practitioners that can contribute to laying out that long-term strategy. “Given today’s fiscal realities,” Prow explains, “the nation must explore alternative policy approaches and ways for government to do business.” He notes that the alternatives outlined in his new book can catalyze national competitiveness in an environment where major new investments will be difficult.

Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene began writing for the IBM Center for The Business of Government on their blog covering the

Standardized tests are praised by some as a rational route to evaluating individual teachers or districts, while others vilify the technique as an outright attack on the entire educational profession. This debate, highly politicized, has emerged in many press articles as the beginning and the end of discussions about teacher evaluation.

The Recovery Board is taking an important step today by launching a new website to track the $10 billion in new federal education jobs fund aid that was authorized by Congress in August.

The Obama administration seems genuinely concerned with education (as opposed to just paying lip service).  In fact, in order to get their portion of the budget stabilization funds for education, governors had to agree to pursue four significant areas of education reform.  The four: 1) Increase teacher effectiveness 2) move toward common standards and assessments 3) turn around low-performing schools and 4) set up longitudinal data systems, ultimately designed to track individual student progress from early education to career.

We find ourselves feeling just a bit queasy about the press coverage of the education portion of the stimulus over the last six months. We know you've heard a lot about the $4.3 billion Race to the Top competitive grant program. But the persistent attention to that contest has often obscured the other $90 billion plus that the Recovery Act bestowed on other aspects of education. We are as guilty as the next journalists for, perhaps, over-emphasizing the aspect of the education stimulus that was the easiest to write about and explain. Everyone loves a horse race.

Just about an hour ago, Arne Duncan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, announced the names of the finalists for the second wave of Race to the Top grants. The 19 finalists – which will all get the opportunity to buttress their case in coming weeks, in hopes of actually receiving cash: Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

There are lots of ways to skin a cat (an image we’ve always thought to be a bit gory). In the case of stimulus dollars going to education funding there are at least two strategies under consideration. One is to keep the Race to the Top program intact, as currently structured. The other – a Congressional proposal – would reallocate $500 million in Race to the Top funds to the Education Jobs Fund.

Christina Samuels (photo at left) is a reporter who has covered education for a dozen years and has written about special education for Education Week since 2004. We enjoy her blog on the topic as well as her insightful articles. Recently, we talked with her about the impact of the Recovery Act on that field.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we’ve been pretty enthusiastic about the potential  of the Recovery Act’s Race to the Top program for schools (see here, for example). But we thought it was only fair to give some space to a well-respected authority who has a different point of view.