Race to the Top Boondoggle Results

After all the criticism President Obama and Secretary Duncan have taken over Race to the Top, there was no way they weren't going to make sure that New York was on the list of winners.

That way, the ed deform shills at the Times, Post, and News (as well as NBC and MSNBC) can wave their pom-poms and talk up the "extra" money New York received for education and how it is going to make things so much better for students.

Good public relations for the Obama agenda, especially going into the fight over the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind after the November midterms.

So - surprise, surprise - New York is a "winner."

It will be interesting to see if the "award" the state received covers the price of all the changes school districts had to make to "win" it - including adding new standardized tests to every grade at every level in order to get "value added assessments" of teachers, track that data, and fire supposedly "bad" teachers using it.

Creating all those tests, adding them to every subject at every level AT LEAST twice a year, buying computer programs to track the data - that will cost a pretty penny.

The rest of the money will be used to close schools, fire teachers and principals and reopen the schools as for-profit charters with non-unionized staff.

Seems like the real winners in the RttT boondoggle were the states that stayed out of it.

When this year's midterm elections come around, make sure you remember the changes brought as a DIRECT result of Obama's RttT program - teacher evals tied to test scores, additional standardized added to every subject at every grade twice a year or more, teachers fired and schools closed as a result of test scores - AND VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

UPDATE: Looks like one politician is saying pretty much the same thing I'm saying:

President Obama's education initiative, "Race to the Top," has been criticized by some who say it unwisely requires states to follow specific educational reforms, rather than letting them set their own agenda. Now, Georgia's two Republican gubernatorial candidates are taking opposing views over whether their state -- facing massive budget shortfalls -- should accept potential funding from the program.

Former Rep. Nathan Deal said today that if elected governor he would decline Race to the Top money, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

"Race to the Top has standardized curriculum," Deal said. "I do not agree with anything that has strings attached."

...

Deal reportedly said that implementing the Obama administration's preferred reforms is "probably not worth the money."

"In the overall scheme of things it's not that much money," he said. "It sounds big, but when you distribute it across every level of the education system, it's not that big."

Indeed, the award is NOT that much money when you take into account the entire education budget of the state of New York and the strings that are coming attached TO the award.

Yet the shills at the Times, Post, News et al. will write this thing up like it is a huge deal.

The only thing huge about the deal is all the changes Obama and Duncan got states, districts and unions to agree for cash awards that amount to chump change when you take into account the entire education budgets of the states.