January 27th, 2011 - In the first hour of President Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address over 100,000 tweets were posted, and of those tweets public education accounted for the highest percentage (report courtesy of Tweetbeat). The 16.7%, which beat out other categories like government spending and job creation, clearly showed that fixing education is on the top of American’s lists. Luckily, along with investing in innovation and infrastructure, education was communicated as a top priority for this administration. Funding for education reform will continue to be awarded to states through Race to the Top grants. The grants are given to the states with the most comprehensive, innovative plans to reform not only how students are educated in science, engineering, technology and math, but also how teachers and principals are evaluated, how states plan to turn around their lowest-performing schools, and even more importantly, how states are going to use data to track and report on their progress.
Since inception, ConnectEDU has been investing in building the technology that gives states the tools for exactly what Race to the Top demands of them. Our statewide efforts with Massachusetts, Michigan and Texas are proof that we are moving forward with this movement. Our president had a clear message that if we don’t support innovation in our education system we will continue to fall behind. At ConnectEDU, we're focused on supporting states in their efforts to increase students’ college and career readiness and capture more Race to the Top dollars to accelerate their plans.
