A Vote for Agency Contests

Nextgov posted an article on Thursday reporting that two Republicans have criticized the Obama administration for wasting taxpayer money on its initiative to create contests in which the public, businesses or even public agencies submit ideas to solve a long-standing national problem. The winner takes home either a cash prize or just the recognition that his or her idea won.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, by far not the most liberal writer on the Times' Op-Ed page, took a different tack in his column dated Thursday. He had this to say about a contest the White House set up to have states compete for federal money to reform their education systems:

Obama and the education secretary, Arne Duncan, set up a contest. They put down $4.5 billion in Race to the Top money. They issued some general guidelines about what kind of reforms states would have to adopt to get the money. And then they fired the starting gun.

Reformers in at least 23 states have passed reform laws in hopes of getting some of the dough. Some of the state laws represent incremental progress and some represent substantial change. The administration has hung tough, demanding real reform in exchange for dollars. Over all, there's been a tremendous amount of movement in a brief time.

This is not heavy-handed Washington command-and-control. This is Washington energizing diverse communities of reformers, locality by locality, and giving them more leverage in their struggles against the defenders of the status quo.