{"id":390203,"date":"2010-03-04T19:27:19","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T00:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/i-m-washington-i-m-here-disappoint-you-40377\/"},"modified":"2010-03-04T19:27:19","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T00:27:19","slug":"i%c2%92m-from-washington-and-i%c2%92m-here-to-disappoint-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/390203","title":{"rendered":"I\u0092m from Washington, and I\u0092m Here to Disappoint You"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 03.04.10 03:04 PM posted by Lindsey Burke<\/p>\n

The Department of Education <ahref="http:\/\/blogs.edweek.org\/edweek\/campaign-k-12\/2010\/03\/xx_states_are_named_race_to_th.html ">today released the names of the 16 finalists in the competition for federal Race to the Top (RttT) grants. The finalists include the District of Columbia and 15 states: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In all, 40 states had applied for the grants. In March, state leaders will come to Washington to deliver presentations on why their states merit a slice of the $4.35 billion in grants. Winners will be announced in April.<\/p>\n

The more than $4 billion RttT initiative is the largest discretionary fund an education secretary has ever had the opportunity to work with. As part of the overall $100 billion allocated to the Department of Education as part of the economic \u0093stimulus\u0094 plan passed last year, RttT was supposed to be a means of spurring states to implement the types of innovative education reforms that the administration thought would spur academic achievement. Yet, the group of states that made the first cut on the way to a grant was a numerous one \u0096 conventional wisdom was that far fewer states would make the first cut.<\/p>\n

<spanid="more-28106"><\/span>In addition, the few, true reform measures that conservatives were applauding \u0096 namely charter schools \u0096 already appear to be on the chopping block. Andy Smarick over at Fordham writes today in a blog post entitled <ahref="http:\/\/www.edexcellence.net\/flypaper\/index.php\/author\/asmarick\/ ">Major Disappointment:<\/p>\n

The US Department of Education had the opportunity today to send a clear signal\u0096that the Race to the Top is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that very good wouldn\u0092t be good enough, that only the biggest and boldest plans would merit consideration. Instead, the administration accepted 15 states and Washington, DC\u0096nearly 1\/3 of all applicants\u0096as finalists.<\/p>\n

The list includes Kentucky, a state with no charter law and New York, which brashly rejected reform legislation\u0096including a critical cap lift provision\u0096in advance of the deadline. It includes Colorado, which backed off of important reforms related to teachers, and Ohio, whose proposal was weak in a number of areas\u0085 I was preparing to heap praise on the administration for doing as they had suggested\u0096only shining a spotlight on the very best of the best. I expected a finalist list of 5 and was quietly hoping for 3. My worst-case scenario was 12. I never would have imagined 16.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Amanda Farris over at the Republican Policy Committee echoes that sentiment, writing:<\/p>\n

Secretary Duncan has repeatedly said that in order to qualify for Race to the Top funding states will need to meet \u0093a very, very high bar.\u0094 It is therefore surprising that despite the fact that \u0093ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charters and other innovative schools\u0094 was a selection criteria, New York and Kentucky were chosen as finalists. As you may recall, earlier this year New York refused to pass an education reform bill that would have expanded their charter school caps, and Kentucky does not even have a charter school law.<\/p>\n

\u0093Is this an indication that Secretary Duncan is not really all that serious about expanding quality charter schools and rewarding only the most reform-minded states? This lengthy list of finalists does not inspire much confidence.\u0094<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And, over at <ahref="http:\/\/www.edspresso.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/everyones-a-winner\/ ">Edspresso, the feeling is mutual:<\/p>\n

\u0093Arne Duncan got an earful from reporters today. They asked about scoring and why some states emerged as finalists when they did little to improve various parts of their reform portfolio\u0085<\/p>\n

\u0091We said from day one,\u0092 said Duncan, \u0091that there were many, many factors\u0092 that would go into the scoring. Many different things would be considered, he said. \u0091Charters were never going to be the determining factor from the very beginning.\u0092<\/p>\n

Why else would only three of the sixteen have charter laws among the top ten in the country? Indeed, Kentucky has none and seven others have laws that are barely passing\u0085And now that it\u0092s clear that a strong charter law or performance pay system doesn\u0092t seem to matter for the competition, state policymakers can breath a sigh of relief that they don\u0092t have to do any heavy lifting to get or stay in the game, just hire a smart team of consultants to create convincing charts and use flowery language\u0085<\/p>\n

So, do you fans of increased federal involvement in education still think it can make a difference to improving education for our children?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which hits at the central question. Fifty years of ever-expanding federal involvement in education without a commensurate increase in academic achievement should have given people pause enough to think that Washington \u0096 this time \u0096 will be a successful arbiter of innovation. The qualifying states lead one to believe that RttT is full of more rhetoric than reform, despite what the administration would have us believe.<\/p>\n

This brings to mind what have been continuously referred to as \u0093voluntary\u0094 common stardards. The <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/02\/26\/will-education-standards-really-help-failing-schools\/ ">recent revelation that the administration is considering tying the eligibility for Title I funds to their adoption would make them anything but voluntary.<\/p>\n

This is all a good lesson in why those states still willing to feed at the federal trough should at least curb their expectations for results. Even when Washington promises.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/04\/…isappoint-you\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 03.04.10 03:04 PM posted by Lindsey Burke The Department of Education <ahref="http:\/\/blogs.edweek.org\/edweek\/campaign-k-12\/2010\/03\/xx_states_are_named_race_to_th.html ">today released the names of the 16 finalists in the competition for federal Race to the Top (RttT) grants. The finalists include the District of Columbia and 15 states: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}