Texas Shuts Door on Millions in Education Grants

Mr. Perry’s decision, days before a Jan. 19 deadline, interrupted months of work by Texas officials and a consulting company financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to prepare the application for the federal grant competition, known as Race to the Top. Texas had been eligible to win up to $700 million of a total of $4 billion the department will award for encouraging charter schools, improving teacher instruction, overhauling schools and joining an effort to adopt common academic standards.

“We would be foolish and irresponsible,” Mr. Perry said, “to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special-interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington.”

Mr. Perry, who is seeking re-election in November, is locked in a tough Republican primary battle with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and both candidates have been trying to appeal to conservative voters.

Texas is one of two states, (Alaska is the other) that last year refused to participate in a nationwide effort, supervised by the National Governors Association and encouraged by the Obama administration, to write common curriculum standards. That posture had put Texas at a disadvantage in the federal competition. But the state education commissioner, Robert Scott, argued in an interview in the fall that Texas was well-positioned to win because of what he characterized as his state’s pioneering work in school reform. In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Scott said that his views had evolved and that the potential payoff for Texas had been too small to justify giving up state control.