Department of Education introduces billion-dollar achievement program

The Department of Education on Thursday unveiled final details of a $4.35 billion plan to boost states' education spending and improve public school performance.

First previewed this summer, the "Race to the Top" program offers federal cash to states that complete and submit aggressive education reform proposals to the Department of Education.

Not every state will receive federal dollars, the Obama administration has stressed, making it one of the most competitive programs lawmakers included in the $787 billion recovery act they passed earlier this year.

"This is a huge, huge opportunity, unprecedented resources to invest in states and districts and nonprofits that are willing to challenge the status quo and lead the country where we need to go educationally," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Thursday.

"We want better results for students. We want more students not just graduating from high school but going on to college," he told CNN. "We want to close the achievement gap. We want to create more learning opportunities for students."

Although academic achievement is both the ultimate goal and the metric by which the Department of Education will evaluate states' applications, the White House pushed for the "Race to the Top" program mostly to encourage states to stop cutting education spending when their budgets proved insolvent.

However, that motivation has led critics to contend the White House's latest effort will not produce lasting education reform. Instead, they argue, the money will function only as a stopgap that prevents education cuts this and next fiscal year, but inevitably does nothing to improve achievement or raise education spending over the long term.

Nevertheless, Duncan on Thursday stressed the new program had great promise, not only for the country's public schools but for American businesses and industries too.

"We have to educate our way to a better economy," he said. "There are no good jobs out there for high school dropouts, as you know, and we want to make sure many more of our high school graduates are actually prepared for either college or the world of work."