MA and RI to Receive Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge Grants

The White House announced that Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and seven other states will receive grant awards from the $500 million Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge fund, a competitive grant program jointly administered by the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services.

"A strong educational system is critical not just for our children but also for our nation's economic future," said U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in a prepared statement. "The Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge takes a holistic approach to early education, promotes innovation, and focuses on what it takes to help put young children on the path of learning, opportunity, and success.”

The Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge is designed to support the work of the state grantees to develop new approaches to raising the bar across early learning centers and to close the school readiness gap. Awards will invest in grantees' work to build statewide systems of high-quality early learning and development programs. These investments are to impact all early learning programs, including Head Start, public pre-Kindergarten, childcare, and private preschools. Key reforms are to include: aligning and raising standards for existing early learning and development programs, improving training and support for the early learning workforce through evidence-based practices, and building robust evaluation systems that promote effective practices and programs to help parents make informed decisions.

For more information about about the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, please visit:

U.S. Dept. of Education: Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge