77% Of The Race To The Top Award Money In NYC Went To Pay For Consultants, Central Office Work, And Support Staff

Remember when they told us we had to win Race to the Top because that money was so desperately needed for the kids?

Yeah, turns out that was NOT what they planned on spending the RttT cash on:

Less than a quarter of the $107 million that the school system received in federal Race to The Top funds last year was sent directly to school principals.

The decision on how to spend most of the money — $83 million — was made by the central Department of Education, which channeled the federal funds to support staff, consultants and fringe benefits, according to a study by the Independent Budget Office.

This isn't a surprise to those who were paying attention to what was happening around the RttT reforms - they were NEVER supposed to help children or teachers.

Rather, RttT was always about the consultants, the accountability measures and data tracking programs - in short, a lot of the stuff the NYCDOE spent the RttT cash on.

Obama administration hacks and RttT supporters say that stuff DOES help children and teachers, but those of us working in schools and parents with children in the schools know better.

RttT brought CCSS, the Endless Testing regime, APPR teacher evaluations that mandate so many extra tests so that the scores can be used to fire teachers, and the data tracking programs that were meant to account for all this stuff.

If the politicians in charge really wanted to help children and teachers in schools, they would have used the money to lower class sizes, build new facilities, get the kids out of the mold-infested trailers, etc.

But education reform isn't about helping children or teachers.

It's about making it look like they're trying to help children and teachers while really spending billions on the pet projects run by their friends and cronies.

Obama Doubles Down On Test Scores, VAM

Some people like to blame Arne Duncan for all the fetishization of test scores and value-added measurements that have come from the Obama administration over the past six years, but as this Stephanie Simon article from Politico makes clear, the impetus comes from Obama:

The formulas for measuring how much “value” a teacher adds to a student’s test scores are complex and often carry a sizable margin of error.

Earlier this month, the American Statistical Association warned that such formulas must be used with caution because teachers generally account for less than 15 percent — and in some studies, as little as 1 percent — of the variability in student test scores. Value-added models spit out precise-sounding numbers that purport to quantify a teacher’s impact on her students, but in fact the formulas “typically measure correlation, not causation,” the group concluded.

A recent study funded by the Education Department found that value-added measures may fluctuate significantly due to factors beyond the teachers’ control, including random events such as a dog barking loudly outside a classroom window, distracting students during their standardized test. A 2010 study, also funded by the Education Department, found the models misidentify as many as 50 percent of teachers — pegging them as average when they’re actually better or worse than their peers, or singling them out for praise or condemnation when they’re actually average.

Yet another challenge: Calculating scores for educators who do not teach subjects or grades assessed with standardized exams. Nationally, some 70 percent of teachers — including most high school and early elementary teachers, plus art, music and physical education teachers — fall into that category. 

Despite such complications, Muñoz made clear in a call with reporters on Thursday that Obama wants student test scores, or other measures of student growth, to figure heavily into states’ evaluations of teacher prep programs. 

“This is something the president has a real sense of urgency about,” she said. “What happens in the classroom matters. It doesn’t just matter — it’s the whole ballgame.” So using student outcomes to evaluate teacher preparation programs “is really fundamental to making sure we’re successful,” Muñoz said. “We believe that’s a concept … whose time has come.”

Using student test scores and value-added measurements - an exercise that is riddled with error and uncertainty - is nonetheless "a concept...whose time has come."

That's the official Obama administration line.

This despite the study funded by the Duncan USDOE that found that found VAM misidentifies as much as 50% of those its used to evaluate.

And according to the Obama administration spokesperson, this use of student performance data to gauge teacher effectiveness is "something the president has a real sense of urgency about" despite the high margins of error and problems inherent in the system.

The next time you see somebody blame Arne Duncan for the educational malfeasance that emanates from the Obama administration, remember that Duncan serves the president and something this president has a real sense of urgency about is using junk science to evaluate teachers, schools and teacher preparation programs.

That's why we got the carrot of Race to the Top dangling out money for states to change evaluation systems to test score metrics, that's why we got the stick of the NCLB waivers that forced states to adopt teacher evaluation systems tied to test scores or lose their waivers and have all of their schools declared "failing" (as is happening right now to Washington State.)

Because Obama - and the rich plutocrats behind him - want it that way.

10 of 17 Turnaround High Schools Off Closure List

So last year the education reform criminals at the NYCDOE and their enablers in City Hall wanted seventeen high schools shut down as part of the Race to the Top "turnaround process."

You see, these schools were so bad, and the teachers in these schools were so bad, that the schools just couldn't be saved and the teachers just needed to be fired.

That was last school year.

Here's this year:

The Bloomberg administration has abandoned a controversial plan to close 10 struggling city high schools.

Just seven of 17 troubled high schools that the city tried to close this spring ended up on the chopping block in 2012 after many posted gains on city progress reports.

The city had sought to close the schools this summer and immediately reopen them with new instructors, a turnaround plan the teachers union opposed in court.

A court battle that lasted six months, ending with a judge’s ruling in the union’s favor.

Now it appears the city has reversed plans to close 10 of those schools.

 Students and teachers were thrilled at schools that were spared the axe.

 “It’s amazing,” said Alan Lerner, a social science teacher at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, which the city tried to close in 2011.

“Now we’re ready to build on our progress.” Dewey earned a B on the city’s high-stakes progress report this year, after four years of straight C’s.

The school’s impressive performance on the college readiness section of the progress report helped push its overall grade higher.

Newtown High School in Queens also jumped from a C to a B on its progress report this year and made it off of the city’s hit list.

One student at Newtown put this whole thing into perspective:

“I’m just glad we could stick it to Mayor Bloomberg,” said Newtown senior Christyan Gordon, 18. “I’m delighted we could prove how well this place can work.” 

 Indeed.

This school closure movement, which has swept New York and Chicago and most famously came to Rhode Island when both the Secretary of Education Privatization and the President of the United Drone Bomb States agreed that firing teachers and closing Central Falls High School was the only way to "save" the students, is now enshrined in federal education policy.

And yet, at least 10 of the seventeen schools slated for closure by Bloomberg and his education reform criminals last summer have posted improvement to the very data these people cherish above every other piece of qualitative evidence.

In other words, they "turnarounded" without the Bloomberg/Cuomo/Obama/Duncan turnaround process.

If many of the other schools on these "turnaround lists" were granted the support and resources they need to help their students, the outcome would be the same as at Newtown and John Dewey.

But the education reform criminals aren't interested in improving schools, supporting teachers or helping students.

They're interested in closing schools, firing teachers, and privatizing the entire school system.

You cannot "compromise" with dishonest brokers and the majority of so-called education reformers are not honest about their intentions.

If they would just come out and say "Look, we think the free market fairy will lift all boats and that's why we want to close so many schools and sell them off to for-profit charter operators and quasi non-profit operators like Mistress Eva Moskowitz and Geoffrey "Where's The Real Estate!" Canada, I would have more respect for them.

But many of them are not honest.

Instead they talk about being for "students first" even as they reject education reforms that actually do put students first - like small class sizes and a rich curriculum that is more than just test prep.

There has been a lot of damage that has been done to public schools over the last decade and part of the remedy to this is to drop the political niceties about the education reformers and call them what they are - predators, privatizers, vultures and criminals.

The predators, privatizers, vultures and criminals wanted these ten schools on the turnaround list last year.

They didn't get them.

Unfortunately, they may get the other seven that were on that list.

Now it's our job to stop that from happening this year.

We can start by calling that process what it is - education reform crime.

Who's Biden Kidding?

From the soon-to-be closed New York Post:

WASHINGTON — Vice President Biden yesterday accused Mitt Romney of carrying out a “full-blown assault” on educators, telling the nation’s largest teachers union that the Republican Party thinks they’re “selfish.”

The spirited defense of educators came as President Obama hopes to fire up working-class and union support in a bus tour that kicks off in Ohio right after the Fourth of July.

“There’s a pretty uniform view held by Mr. Romney and the Republicans in the majority in Congress today — they criticize and they blame you, they make you the fall guy,” Biden told the National Education Association’s annual convention in DC.

“They should be thinking of ways to make your job easier, not more difficult. Instead, they hector, they lecture, and they blame you,” he continued. “I can’t think of a candidate for president who’s ever made such a direct assault on such an honorable profession.

“They don’t understand why you chose to teach in the first place. Honest to God, I don’t think they get it,” he said, claiming that the Republican plan for public education “is to let the states use [federal] Title I dollars to boost enrollment in private schools.”

Has there been any administration that has used teachers as scapegoats more than this one?

The Obama administration's signature education program, Race to the Top, is all about a "full-blown assault" on teachers, making teachers' jobs more difficult, blaming them for all the ills of the education system (and society, for that matter), scapegoating them in public (the Secretary of Education endorsed the publishing of bogus teacher ratings in the LA Times) and firing them (both Arne Duncan and Barack Obama celebrated the firing of the Central Falls teachers.)

Biden isn't wrong in his "assessment" of Mitt Romney's attitude toward teachers or Romney's education policies.

But he must assume teachers are the dumbest people on the planet to sit and listen to the shit he was slinging at the NEA yesterday without calling him and his corporate-whore boss on it.

Every accusation he made against Romney is true of Obama as well.

The sell-outs in the leadership suites at the NEA and the AFT (and the UFT and the NYSUT) have decided to endorse Obama out of political expediency and cynicism.

Sure, Obama sucks, goes the notion, but at least he's not a Republican. At least he's not Romney.

Sorry, that argument doesn't hold water.

Barack Obama is the most anti-teacher president ever.

His Race to the Top program has transformed public education so that by 2014 nearly every child in this nation is going to take 35+ standardized tests a year in math, ELA, social studies, science, art, music, foreign language, and physical education not for diagnostic purposes but simply to evaluate, grade and fire their teachers.

In addition, this administration has bragged about how easy they are making it for testing vendors to sell their wares nationwide because they have standardized the nation's curriculum via the untested Common Core "State" Standards.

Was the Common Core promoted to improve public education for students or vending opportunities for Barack Obama's corporate education backers?

Dunno, but I do know that teachers all across the nation will be evaluated on how well they teach this untested curriculum, or at least, how well their students test on it.

Moreover, the administration has promoted the use of value-added voodoo on teachers, with Arne Duncan hailing the publication of bogus value-added data of teachers that was generated by the LA Times that led to the suicide of one veteran LA teacher.

No one at the USDOE or the Obama White House ever took responsibility for that.

The administration has made teacher evaluation systems that use value-added measurements a "must" for states to get a waiver from No Child Left Behind Regulations.

If states fail to evaluate their teachers using a VAM, they fail the NCLB waiver process.

This has all been put into place because Barack Obama believes there are hundreds of thousands of "bad" teachers across this country that need to be fired.

That's why both Duncan and Obama not only cheered the firing of the teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island, they have put in place policies that ensure teachers all across this nation will be scapegoated and fired in the next few years.

On Teacher Appreciation Day, Barack Obama ignored unionized teachers and instead cited the greatness of charter schools.

He couldn't be bothered to visit the NEA convention to sling his own shit and instead sent Biden.

The policies this administration imposes, the words this president uses and the treatment of teachers that he exhibits tells you everything you need to know about the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on education.

There ain't a damned bit of difference between the two that matters in the long run and if you care about public education and care about schools and teachers, you would best serve the cause by calling up the Obama White House and telling them how full of shit you think Biden and his corporate-whore boss are.

Oh, and vote for somebody other than Obama/Biden/Duncan/Gates/Broad/Walmart/Bloomberg in November.

Because if you pull the lever for Obama/Biden in November, you're getting the policies of Duncan/Gates/Broad/Walmart/Bloomberg as well.

Cuomo - Another Free Market Fetishist Bringing "Competition" To A Collaborative Enterprise

Oh, boy, another free market fetishist who plans to bring those wonderful business ethics that brought us the tech bubble of the early 2000's the real estate bubble of the middle 2000's and the credit crisis/financial crisis of the late 2000's to public education:

In his first State of the State speech today, Cuomo proposed creating two new competitive grant funds for state school districts, worth $250 million each.

The first grant would reward districts that boost students’ academic performance. The second would go to districts that find ways to cut costs that don’t affect the classroom.

It’s not yet clear if the addition of the grant competitions would alter the state’s current formula-based education model. But the governor was critical of the model, which he said gives districts no incentives to improve.

“Competition works,” Cuomo said, pointing to the state legislature’s passage of a charter cap lift bill as part of its (eventually successful) bid to win Race to the Top funds.

Cuomo’s plan would follow the lead of the federal government, which the governor said has “actually been more innovative in this area.”

Actually schools work best when there is collaboration between government, staff, parents and students to bring the best possible education to children.

Why so many American political leaders seem to be so enamored of Reaganesque slogans about the wonders of free markets, performance-based pay and competition after unfettered free markets, pay based upon bonuses and ill-regulated competition that encourages monopolies brought us three bubbles and two financial crises in the last ten years is beyond me.

I can only assume that the politicians who hawk this crap are themselves as corrupt as the "competition" they hawk as the solution to everything in society.

Obama, Duncan: Will Veto Teacher Jobs If Money Taken From Race to the Top Boondoggle

As an update to the story where we learned the Obama administration wanted to cut food stamp subsidies in order to use the money for an education jobs bill instead of cutting $500 million from Secretary Arne's FIRE TEACHERS/CLOSE SCHOOLS Race to the Top competition, I present you with a post from David Dayen at Firedoglake who was on a Thursday reporter conference call with Arne:

I just got off one of the stranger conference calls of my conference call career. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and White House Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes joined others on a call to argue for an immediate education jobs fund to save the careers of teachers facing layoffs. They laid out all the reasons why teachers must stay in the classroom and why we risk failing our students without this funding. They were very passionate about this. They rejected the notion that the White House has been unclear or aloof on the issue, noting in painstaking detail all the times that the President on down have advocated to save teacher jobs.

And then, Barnes said, “We don’t have to make a choice between reform and making sure teachers are able to stay in the classroom,” and that if the education jobs fund got paid for with a sliver of stimulus money dedicated to the Race to the Top program, they would recommend a veto.

Then I got whiplash.

There are actually three stimulus programs that would get a cut in funding under the bill passed in the House as part of the war supplemental: Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund (which is about performance pay and encouraging teachers to work in hard-to-staff, low-income areas) and the Charter Schools Fund. Barnes and Duncan want to find other means of offsetting the jobs fund. The Education Secretary said that he would “work with Congress” on that. “I’m happy to have skin in the game,” Duncan said. But he gave no specifics of potential offsets, likely to come from the Education Department.

It’s important to recognize what the Race to the Top program is. It’s a pot of money. The Education Department dangles it in front of the states to get them to change their education policies to what they prefer. And then it slowly dribbles it out. $4.3 billion dollars was appropriated in the stimulus for RTTT. Only $600 million has gone out, to two states (Tennessee and Delaware), 18 months later. So Arne Duncan has already cost teacher jobs by holding back $3.7 billion for a year and a half to try and entice more desperate states to change their policies.

Incidentally, increased class size, which comes with the firing of teachers, LOWERS THE AMOUNT OF MONEY states can be eligible for under the RTTT program. So denying the education jobs fund by vetoing the bill over a $500 million cut to RTTT (less than a 20% decrease) actually lowers the amount states can receive. It’s a cut EITHER WAY, and arguably a larger one if the education jobs money doesn’t go through.

Barnes and Duncan could not explain why a $3.8 billion dollar Race to the Top program would somehow be less successful than a $4.3 billion dollar program. He said that 36 states are applying for Round 2, and the cut in funding would mean “a couple states would lose out.” Um, 48 states lost out in Round 1, and as a result lost money for their education budgets that led to worse outcomes for students. I cannot fathom how a sliver of reform money is seen as more important than the biggest reform to schools you can make, namely “giving them enough teachers.”

Some of Barnes and Duncan’s willing minions have a Wall Street Journal op-ed today that makes a similar case, and I can’t make heads or tails out of it either.

Barnes said that cutting RTTT is a “decision we don’t have to make.” Well, they can come up with something tangible, then. But I don’t see any logic to holding a slush fund to blackmail states when we’re in the middle of a state budget crisis.

Indeed.

And I like how Daven calls RttT what it is - a slush fund for Arne to blackmail states in the middle of the worst budget crisis since the 70's.

I'm going to go with that terminology from now on.

Obama Loses In Nearly Every Match-Up Against GOP

Looks like people want change:

With President Obama's approval rating hitting new lows, a new Public Policy Polling survey shows him trailing several Republicans in a 2012 presidential match ups.

Mitt Romney (R) leads 46% to 43%, Mike Huckabee (R) is ahead 47% to 45% and Newt Gingrich (R) is in front 46% to 45%. Sarah Palin (R) and Obama are tied at 46% each.

Key takeaway: "There are two things driving these strong poll numbers for the Republican candidates. The first is a lead with independents in every match up... The other thing causing the Republicans to do so well is that their party is unified around them to an equal or even greater extent than Democrats are around Obama.

You can see from the Sistah Souljah strategy currently being employed (Obama and company vilify traditional "liberal" allies like teachers unions) that they are trying to win back some independent voters while they're pretty confident that the liberal allies, although vilified, will vote for Democrats anyway in 2010 and 2012.

I say, do NOT let them take us for granted.

Call you reps, call you senators, call the White House and let them know: WE WILL NOT BE SISTAH SOULJAHED.

Yes, the words "president" and "Palin" together are pretty scary.

But so is a current "Democratic" president who wants to lift his political boat from sinking waters by demonizing teachers.

And so is a current "Democratic" president who has created a federal education policy that encourages the firing of teachers, the closing of schools, and the use of test scores to fire teachers and close schools.

So is a current "Democratic" president who "applauds" the firing of teachers.

Don't let them use the words "President Palin" to scare you into voting for these anti-teacher/anti-union corporate whore Demoflaks.

If the education policy stays as it currently it is, then no votes for any Dem who supports it and no votes for President Hopey/Changey.

That's how we're doing it at my house, at any rate.

The Future of Public Education

Here it is:

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee plans to significantly expand the use of standardized tests so that, eventually, every D.C. student from kindergarten through high school is regularly assessed to measure academic progress and the effectiveness of teachers.

The plan, to be phased in beginning in the spring, is certain to reignite debate about what some D.C. parents and teachers already regard as a test-happy culture.

...

Tests would be given about every six to eight weeks and at the end of the year, allowing teachers to identify student weaknesses and adjust classroom strategies. Administrators would also be better able to spot shortcomings in teaching, officials said.

"It's been a priority for a long time," said Rhee, who is preparing to ask outside firms to submit proposals for developing the tests. "We want to have a much more robust set of assessments, not just in math and reading, but different subjects. As a parent, I want to know on a regular basis how my kids are progressing or not, and have my teachers take a pulse not once a year or four times a year."

School officials declined to discuss the potential cost of the expanded testing before negotiating with vendors.

Rhee, who frequently talks up the virtues of "data-driven" decisions, also wants more testing data to expand the reach of the school system's IMPACT teacher evaluation system. As it stands, only reading and math teachers in grades four through eight -- fewer than 20 percent of the District's 3,800 classroom instructors -- can be assessed on the basis of growth in test scores. Student "value-added" will account for half of their annual evaluation. Educators with low IMPACT scores -- the rest of the appraisal is based on a series of five classroom observations and other criteria -- can face dismissal.

All the money that Obama is putting toward education is going to go for these batteries of new tests and the data tracking systems.

Then they will be used for merit pay and firing "bad teachers."

And of course there is no disclosure from the Washington Post - owned by Kaplan Test Prep - that they will make a shitload of money from the Rhee "reforms."

Or the Obama "reforms."

Ruh-Roh

Dow futures are up 100 this morning, so we probably don't have to worry about this happening to day, but still:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is repeating a pattern that appeared just before markets fell during the Great Depression, Daryl Guppy, CEO at Guppytraders.com, told CNBC Monday.

“Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it…there was a head and shoulders pattern that developed before the Depression in 1929, then with the recovery in 1930 we had another head and shoulders pattern that preceded a fall in the market, and in the current Dow situation we see an exact repeat of that environment,” Guppy said.

The Dow retreated 457.33 points, or 4.5 percent last week, to close at 9,686 Friday. Guppy said a Dow fall below 9,800 confirmed the head and shoulders pattern.

The Shanghai Composite is seeing a very rapid collapse, falling below 2,500, which suggests the major fall in the Dow, he added.

In the European markets, Guppy says Frankfurt's Dax is witnessing a different pattern to London's FTSE.

Guppy uses the broad trading band as measurement- giving the Dax a downsize target of 1,500. The same head and shoulders pattern seen in the Dow can also being seen in the FTSE, he added.

(H/T Digby)

If that doesn't have you concerned, how about this story from the NY Times over the weekend:

WITH the stock market lurching again, plenty of investors are nervous, and some are downright bearish. Then there’s Robert Prechter, the market forecaster and social theorist, who is in another league entirely.

Mr. Prechter is convinced that we have entered a market decline of staggering proportions — perhaps the biggest of the last 300 years.

In a series of phone conversations and e-mail exchanges last week, he said that no other forecaster was likely to accept his reasoning, which is based on his version of the Elliott Wave theory — a technical approach to market analysis that he embraces with evangelical fervor.

Originating in the writings of Ralph Nelson Elliott, an obscure accountant who found repetitive patterns, or “fractals,” in the stock market of the 1930s and ’40s, the theory suggests that an epic downswing is under way, Mr. Prechter said. But he argued that even skeptical investors should take his advice seriously.

“I’m saying: ‘Winter is coming. Buy a coat,’ ” he said. “Other people are advising people to stay naked. If I’m wrong, you’re not hurt. If they’re wrong, you’re dead. It’s pretty benign advice to opt for safety for a while.”

His advice: individual investors should move completely out of the market and hold cash and cash equivalents, like Treasury bills, for years to come. (For traders with a fair amount of skill and willingness to embrace risk, he suggests other alternatives, like shorting the market or making bets on volatility.) But ultimately, “the decline will lead to one of the best investment opportunities ever,” he said.

Buy-and-hold stock investors will be devastated in a crash much worse than the declines of 2008 and early 2009 or the worst years of the Great Depression or the Panic of 1873, he predicted.

For a rough parallel, he said, go all the way back to England and the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, a crash that deterred people “from buying stocks for 100 years,” he said. This time, he said, “If I’m right, it will be such a shock that people will be telling their grandkids many years from now, ‘Don’t touch stocks.’ ”

The Dow, which now stands at 9,686.48, is likely to fall well below 1,000 over perhaps five or six years as a grand market cycle comes to an end, he said. That unraveling, combined with a depression and deflation, will make anyone holding cash “extremely grateful for their prudence.”

(H/T Barry)

Yikes - and what is President Hopey/Changey doing about any of this?

Nothing.

Bullshit financial reform that wouldn't have stopped the 2008 crash from happening, let alone stop the next one.

No meaningful jobs bill or work bill.

Failed mortgage program.

And a refusal to cut his education "reform" program to keep teachers all around this country employed.

Let's be frank - President Hopey/Changey didn't create this mess, but he has done NOTHING to mitigate it, has done little to ease the pain caused by it, and has made sure the people who brought about the '08 collapse are still sucking up punch at the Wall Street punch bowl (and handing him campaign cash for 2010 and 2012.)

So when the collapse comes, if it comes, Hopey/Changey will be blamed for it, as will Dems.

It will be mildly unfair, as Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2 all helped bring this about with decades of de-regulation and fetishization of the private sector as the cure for all social ills.

But if the above two predictions are even close to correct, people will be living in Obamavilles and Obama will go down with Herbert Hoover in the category of worst presidents ever.

Which won't be a bad thing.

Except for all the pain suffered by people, of course.

Not that Hopey/Changey gives a shit about that.

Race to The Top Funds To Be Cut

Gotta love this:

House Democrats have attached a provision to a war financing bill that would spend $10 billion to help school districts avoid teacher layoffs, paying for it, in part, with cuts to Education Department programs previously financed by last year’s stimulus bill. One program facing trims would be Race to the Top, the competition that rewards states promising to create more charter schools and carry out other initiatives. The department has been planning to give $3.4 billion to winners this year, but the jobs provision would reduce that to $2.9 billion.

So after changing state law and tying teacher evaluations to test scores, raising the charter cap and doing all the other "reforms" the administration and Bill Gates wanted (including spending millions on "data systems" to track test scores), NY State may actually get less money than anticipated.

That's if NY State actually gets any money at all.

Remember, if Arne and Obama decide no, then it's no.

Gee, what a great deal.

This is why the UFT and the NYSUT needed to combat all the clamor over RttT by pointing out that the money was a one time thing, that it could not be used to stem layoffs, and that the "reforms" needed to win the grant competition could actually cost more than the grant award.

But the UFT and the NYSUT didn't do that.

Instead they let Obama and Duncan and the eduwankers and hedge fund managers funding all the ads on NY1 frame the debate.

Now it looks like states, including NY, could get less money than they thought anyway.

Does that mean teachers get evaluated a little less by test scores?