¹ú²úÊÓƵ

Laura Bornfreund
This post originally appeared on .

Today the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services five winners for the second round of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge: Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin. These states join nine others that received grants in 2011: California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington.

The purpose of the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge is to improve quality and expand access to early learning programs. In , additional weight was placed on the development of states’ Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS), which give parents and the public information about the quality of child care and pre-K programs in their geographic area.

When the RTT-ELC application was first released in August 2011, we released a state-by-state analysis and made some predictions on likely winners. Two of the new grantees, Colorado and New Mexico, were among our .

Be sure to check out our compiling our ongoing coverage of the RTT-ELC competition and its .

In the new year, we will continue our coverage of RTT-ELC by delving into the new winners’ specific plans.