It's like buying a fancy dress but having no date to the prom—dozens of states that crafted new education policies to compete for a share of the $3.4 billion "Race to the Top" school reform grant prizes were shut out.
Now, as the 11 winning states and the District of Columbia set about spending their awards, the losing states are left wondering what to do with ambitious reform plans they planned to fund with the money.
In Colorado, for example, lawmakers had the prize in mind earlier this year when they adopted a contentious plan to pay teachers based on student performance. Now, state educators are obligated to come up with a new evaluation for teachers—with no new money to pay for it.
"There was no Plan B for paying for these changes when they were rushing to get them for 'Race to the Top,'" said Henry Roman, an elementary school teacher in Denver and head of the city's teachers union.
"People have great ideas for reforming education, and we welcome that, but these great ideas need to be matched by resources," Roman said. "Our principals are really exhausted, and now they're being required to do more—with no support."
Many states are in the same boat. Almost 30 states tried to make themselves more attractive to federal "Race to the Top" judges by highlighting new laws or policies on charter schools, teacher evaluations and how to turn around low-performing schools.
Great more unfunded, poorly-thought out mandates!
More change we can believe in from the Change We Can Believe In guy that is EXACTLY like the Bush guy before him.
This idea that everything should be a competitive grant these days is disastrous on so many levels.
Here in New York Little Andy Cuomo plans to turn state aid into a Race to the Top kind of competition so that only the most reformy of districts get the money.
If Rahm Emanuel wins the mayor's race in Chicago, he would like to make everything in the Chicago school system a competition like Race to the Top.
And the Obama administration wants to make the Title 1 money the federal government grants to states into a competitive grant as well rather than base it on the demographics and poverty of each school district.
Zombie Ayn Rand politicians with the mantra of "Free Markets Solve Everything!" usually come from the Republican Party.
But these days, the Democratic Party Establishment is loaded with them.
And public education is slowly being destroyed by the zombies.
Knowing what I know about these corporate whores like Emanuel, Cuomo, and Obama, I suspect that's the point.
Here in MN, the Education MN stood strong and lobbied against signing on Race to the Bottom.I think it it worked because Dems controlled both chambers in the state. Pawlenty went bombastic on the union leader.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are lucky. In NY, our evals are now tied to test scores. They have to add tests at every level in every subject in order to evaluate teachers.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a swell education.