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Race to the Top (or is it the Bottom?)
Arne Duncan, the Heartbreaker
Just a few weeks ago, Duncan proudly announced that there were 16 finalists in his $4 billion "Race to the Top" competition for cash, er, I mean, federal funds that are being doled out to states who devise an education reform plan of which Duncan approves.
Fifteen states and the District of Columbia sent teams to woo Education Department officials in Washington. The teams had 30 minutes to make a presentation and then 60 minutes to answer questions with a panel of judges.
It sounds a little too much like the reality fashion show "Project Runway" for my taste, but never mind.
Today Duncan slapped down most of the finalists, announcing that there were only two states that had created a plan he liked well enough: Tennessee and Delaware.
Now tiny Delaware will get as much $107 million from the Race to the Top fund, and Tennessee will get as much as $602 million. Now the other states can go back and revise their dresses, I mean, their reform projects, and get ready for the next round of the reality competition.
Poor Washington D.C., where Chancellor Michelle Rhee's take-no-prisoners reform plan has been lauded by the federal government, ended up last among the finalists, according to my colleague Bill Turque.
Turque reported that part of the problem for D.C. may have been the trouble it has had in developing a data information system. Millions of dollars have been spent over the years but still no real system exists. And using "data" to drive reform is one of Duncan's core principles, even though we all know that data is vulnerable to manipulation.
In this story in the News Journal, Michael Horn, executive director of education at Innosight Institute, a nonprofit advocate of education innovation, said that Delaware's winning application was strong on its use of data.
It also made a big deal out of linking teacher evaluation to student performance, including results on standardized tests -- another big issue for Duncan. Some assessment experts say linking teacher pay to test scores is a bad idea, but Duncan likes it anyway.
Meanwhile, 40 points of the 500-point program measurement scale was tied to "successful conditions for charter schools."
Though studies have shown that charter schools in general do no better educating students than traditional public schools, Duncan likes charter schools anyway, which may have been what sunk finalist North Carolina, which currently has a statewide cap of 100 public charter schools.
Talk about micromanaging.
Horn noted that Delaware's application did not have much in the way of really innovative programs, and did not have what the article called a "student-centric focus."
"There's a lot of great jargon, but when you step back from it, it's hard to figure out what they just said they were going to do," Horn was quoted as saying.
Duncan uses a lot of jargon too, but it is easy to understand what he is trying to do with education: expand charter schools, increase student standardized testing, link teacher pay to test scores and close down the nation's lowest-performing schools.
Unfortunately, what is not easy to understand is why President Obama's education secretary is pushing those initiatives. This administration was supposed to bring some reason back into education reform after the failed era of No Child Left Behind.
But from the looks of it, Secretary Duncan may be taking on a race to somewhere even worse.
34 Comments so far
Show AllWhen government policy is being decided in a 'Reality Tee-Vee' format you are in Deep, DEEP trouble.
Watch closely boys and girls, cuz Unca Barry is deep in the pocket of the Corporate bagmen.
Watch as criminal justice becomes the Arnie movie 'Running Man' come to life.
The more I observe, the more the prophesy of Margaret Atwood's 'Handmaids Tale' is coming to pass.
I read the book 20 years ago - you are are correct - a Theocracy is HERE !
want more?
That's an inaccurate way of looking at charter school data. Studies do show that they outperform other types of schools. Often, charter schools are measured in an aggregated way against all other public schools, which doesn't really put them in their cohort, which is the lowest performing urban schools and districts that are failing to raise the performance level of students.
And further to that, there are really great charter schools that have a great process, and there are other charters that are bad. The bad should go away and the really great ones should be able to scale and go national.
Please follow me on Twitter. We're always talking about this process: http://www.twitter.com/douglascrets
What you state about charters not being compared to their "cohort" is bogus. Charters do no better nor worse than regular public schools--and that is without all of the regulations that public schools have to deal with and the fact that they cherry pick their students (if in no other way than the fact that the parents have to have the wherewithal to know how to get their kids into a charter school).
It sounds to me that you are with a charter school now. If so which one?
OYE
It's all nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
It doesn't matter how much money you throw at a system nor how much testing of "teachers" is done... if they are not TEACHING in the classrooms, it's all wasted money.
Look around you.
This "teaching to testing" madness is what has produced the moron behind the Micky D's register who is now incapable of pushing the hamburger shaped button without the assistance of a "manager".
Go to your local school board meetings. INSIST they start actually teaching your children how to lead a productive, sustainable life after they graduate from the "education" system.
If you find incompetent "teachers", don't ask that they take more classes... demand they be fired and that compenent teachers be placed in classrooms.
-------
The dirty Fu<#1^g hippies... were right - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEZoY-TMG4
"Turque reported that part of the problem for D.C. may have been the trouble it has had in developing a data information system. Millions of dollars have been spent over the years but still no real system exists."
It is ironic that the same thing can be said of the FBI, yet it continues to be allowed to keep trying.
Duncan's approach did not seem to help the Chicago school system, so naturally, he thinks the entire nation should adopt his ideas.
The only reason that some charter schools work is the same one that applies to the Catholic schools. Parents are concerned enough to put their kids in them. But if the worst public schools are closed and charters substituted for them, where is the parental interest? Without that, the charters have no more chance to succeed than the ones they replace.
As far as I can see, charters are "trendy" these days because administrators see them as a way to break the teachers' unions.
Doug,
Wouldn't it be appropriate for you to disclose the fact that you are a Vice President at Vander Ark / Radcliff, which dabbles in for-profit education? In fact, your bio says you're also the "former Director of the Education Industry Investment Forum".
You're correct that data can make things fuzzy - there are few solid comparisons. But the idea of having the good ones "scale up and go national" is the Wal-Mart version of charters, commonly referred to as charter management organizations (CMOs) or education management organizations (EMOs). They embrace a corporate structure relying on prepackaged materials, little job security, mechanized patterns of work, and define success using a very small number of variables (usually test scores). That might work if you're moving products, but we're talking about kids here. What's lost in this version of education reform (KIPP, etc) is the need for kids to access a well-rounded education with high quality teachers, facilities, and materials, but also the need for social reforms and greater resources for public schools if we really want ALL kids to have access to a high quality education.
Charter schools were supposed to be a way for educators to test out new ideas or experiment with new work relations, and eventually incorporate the fruits of these experiments into the public schools. They've turned into a way for profiteers to get their hands on some of the roughly $650 billion spent annually on public education. The non-profit CMOs/EMOs are just as dangerous even if they're not in it for personal gain because they make bogus claims about being able to do better with less. What they don't tell you is they're taking donations from hedge fund managers, billionaire philanthropists, and corporate foundations while excluding the most difficult to teach students (particularly language learners and special education students). They introduce competition to a system already beaten down by years of public neglect and shoddy scare journalism. The rapid expansion of charters, test-based accountability, and merit-pay for teachers is not a promising strategy.
Kudos to Valerie for speaking her mind. You don't often get quality criticisms of education reform from the WaPo. Heck - they're making more money off of their other brand (Kaplan test prep) than they're bringing in through news coverage.
K Libby,
Thank you for exposing the charter school advocate--he needs to make his money off of "public school failures".
OYE
Correct
In a capitalist system, the race to the top belongs to those with the most money while the race to the bottom belongs to those with the least money from what I'm detecting after all these years. Maybe there's some pattern I'm missing.
Duncan and Obama are working for corporations promoting for-profit education. 'No Child Left Behind' failed by design, as will whatever Duncan is proposing. Eventually, the frustrated public will throw in its lot with privatized education, and the deed will be done (cuz, look how well that's worked in healthcare).
As Valerie Strauss relates, however, this process of gutting American education can at least be entertaining. How about turning it into a reality show? Hire Trump to say 'your FIRED!' and send those socialist educators packing!
"what is not easy to understand is why President Obama's education secretary is pushing those initiatives"
The finger puppets are on the same hand.
No child left behind was a total farce because it resulted in every child being left behind in terms of meaningful, as opposed to test-infested, learning processes. But "race to the top" retains the flaws of NCLB and adds a startlingly worse element on top of those flaws. At least NCLB made a pretense of being based on reducing inequality by focussing on improving educational quality for minority students. But race to the top (RTTT) drops all pretense of equalizing educational opportunity for EVERY child. A race by definition involves winners and losers; and we have allowed ourselves as a society to become so focussed on Competiton and Success that we sacrifice the welfare of our own chilren on those altars. If you're in a "loser" state whose schools are defined by Arne the Omniscient as deficient because they don't provide enough charter schools or have enough computers creating data bases. you're going to get left behind, be you black, white, brown or paisley. That isn't just punishment, a la being held back if you don't pass a comprehensive assessment test, it's COLLECTIVE punishment because you live in a village in which something bad was done for which you are not personally responsible.
I don't know whether Arnie Duncan has a heart or not, but he must have an ego as over-developed as that of his boss if he thinks that what "Duncan likes" is to be the determinant of what rises to the top or sinks to the bottom in this "race." It's like a race with no referee enforcing established rules, but it's the very kind of unlimited discretion of the Secretary of Education over which I winced when if was announced that educational "stimulus funding" was to be distributed on this basis. My wince is getting worse.
As long as you're already wincing-- I don't know if it's a done deal, but I saw a report of another prospective mass firing of the entire staff of an "underperforming" school.
I'm appalled at Obama and Duncan's quasi-gleeful endorsement of this new draconian trend, which is exactly in the spirit of flinging scapegoats to an angry mob: administrative terrorism.
Team Obama, like its predecessor, is imbued with the repugnant mentality of the schoolyard bully. Their kiss-up, kick-down approach does not augur well for either Amerikan schoolchildren or the rest of us.
Obedient servant: I'm not sure to what school system facing a "turnaround" closing you are referring, but I expect it will be all over the place as those 12 "finalists" for stimulus funding go back to the drawing board and look for something that "Duncan will like" to try to avoid being kicked off survivors' island. Kansas City is planning not to open half its schools in the fall, and as I winced my way through the news, I seem to remember that the axe might be wielded to promote Missouri's application for federal stimulus funding. What a nice piece of pocket change for the Secretary of Education if a whole city's school system could be "turned around." (I just looked it up, and MO did not make the cut on finalists this round but plans to re-submit on next deadline---June 1---and maybe they think Duncan will like a state one of whose largest cities had the balls to close so many of its public schools.)
Since I wrote, I've thought of another distinction between NCLB and RTTT. While the former required teachers to teach to the comprehensive tests, the latter requires state Departments of Education to set educational regulations to the whims of Arnie Duncan. Double wince!
Ken Libby: your comments on spot on.
In her chapter, Choice, from her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Diane Ravitch does a nice job of pulling together the findings on all the research about charter schools.
It's clear from her summary that the Obama/Duncan vision of charters is wrong-headed and will not improve teaching and learning in this country.
On education, these two men haven't a clue.
The teams had 30 minutes to make a presentation and then 60 minutes to answer questions with a panel of judges.
It sounds a little too much like the reality fashion show "Project Runway" for my taste, but never mind.
Put the show on C-SPAN. A really real reality show!
D. Ravitch has come around a bit but still believes that "standards" and "data driven dialogue" (as it's called here in Missouri) is valid. Yes, most people believe in the concept of standards--and they work well in many areas but are not valid in education. You see in education we are dealing with "quality" in "learning" not quantity. It is logically impossible to quantify a quality. Yet that is what we attempt to do with "standards" Please see Noel Wilson's "Education Standards and the Problem of Error" @ http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577. I have not seen a single rebuttal to what Wilson says-it's far too dangerous to even discuss as it explodes/destroys current "educational thinking" about standards and testing. I emailed Ravitch after her mea culpa in the LA Times and she said she hadn't read it. I'll have to contact her again to see if she has as I sent her the link.
She also claimed that one couldn't foresee the consequences of NCLB. Hogwash, as she and others were pushing for this nonsense in the 90's I had looked up a number of studies that told exactly what would happen with this type of testing regiment (in England) or charter schools (New Zealand). All that has come to past was very well known and readily available as I was able to find it. I would think that an education historian such as her would have been able to find it--hell, I was only working on my masters (in Education Administration) back then.
OYE
I'm no educator, but I think standards are OK: for basic readin, writin, and rithmatic. Beyond that I actually believe fairly large leeway should be given the educators to teach 'critical thinking' skills by presenting life as it is: interpretable.
"Oh, I just think I'm gonna barf" Marge Gunderson from "Fargo"
I don't understand the idea of improving education by only giving funds to those whom you think are already doing a good job?
It's like only letting healthy people in the hospital.
It's like only allowing people who are not arrested to get a public defender.
To me it is obvious that this administration is actually continuing the Republican't agenda of destroying public education.
another example of a policy that if the republicans had done it the left would have freaked out and not allowed it to happen.....
but put obama's face on it and - wa la - it's now ok for democrats....
let's face it - obama is the PERFECT republican president...
another reason these democratic fascist idiots will never receive another vote from me......
First of all, not all Democrats like Duncan - most Democrats who know anything about his tenure in Chicago were appalled at his appointment and let it be known, myself included.
As for Obama, I am not exactly sure why he has chosen this man, except that the DNC corporatists, like the Clintons and Pelosi and Emanuel all liked him, and the President, much to his shame, followed their lead instead of investigating this man further.
I agree with the author his agenda is a race to the bottom, and I work long and hard to let people know that school districts can opt out of government funding if they will pass strong bond issues and fund their own public schools, so that they can create their own curricula to meet state standards, and to hire better teachers and feed better food. It is possible, but parents and residents must be willing to fund bond issues for this kind of freedom and set the example that No Child Left Behind and the Duncan agenda are losers for our children and that there are better methods of educating responsible citizens.
So maybe instead of abandoning the Democrats with epithets and cheap shots, you could find a way to work to create something better to offer up to your community?
djnoll: What an inspiring breath of fresh air on educational "reform." With thoroughly corrupted policy-making at the federal and even state levels, people must learn to "act locally" in their individual school districts. I hope you do indeed "work long and hard to make people know" about this. Of course you are exactly right in suggesting that local school authorities are bribed by the financial support offered them from state and federal governments. Will they pay the price in self-sufficiency in maintaining their schools? Many parents make extra payments to have their child taught to play a musical instrument, act in plays, participate in a little league soccer team. They will pay for what they believe is valuable for their children. Do they value schools that not only fund music, drama and "off-beat" sports teams, but also more civic consciousness through social science courses, more historical knowledge and cultural literacy, everything that used to be contained in a "classic" education? This is exactly where the public v. private dichotomy may be dissolved into public entities (local school communities) operating for the benefit of all the children of that community and telling the federal government to go rotate on its stimulus funding.
You go girl (or guy). I know a real life dj noll in Oklahoma; would love to think you're that person.
Education...The Monks know - It goes this way - - - Master - Journeyman - Apprentice
Humans learn by experience and training. Ask Papert or any other "REAL" psychologist of developmental psychology.
The whole NCLB
thing is Bullshit
Public School is Dead!
Data??? we have all we need
DC in the 1960's was a two tiered society
Data is NOT needed
Reality IS
Ghetto
does that resonate?
DC is and has been Fucked for a long time - like 100 years
I went there in the 1960's as a NAVY sailor on leave
Trust me- either you were in the ghetto OR you were at the Smithsonian - total Ghetto
That was 1967
And it is now...2010...
Marion Berry, anyone?
Not everyone in Delaware is happy about this award. For several years a corporate-dominated group called Vision 2015 has been trying to get the state legislature to fund their scheme to privatize education but has been unsuccessful. With such players as the Rodel and Broad Foundations (Eli Broad, ex-honcho at the Notorious AIG), the Chamber of Commerce, and Astra Zeneca writing the Race to the Top application, they have now got the federal government to dictate their program. For more on the backstory and how Delawarians feel, see Who Pays the Piper at http://brokenturtleblog.blogspot.com/.
Finally the Washington Post, such a power among the mainstream US media got it right, at least on this one-- damn it's almost unreal or maybe it is unreal.
AD
In Chicago Mayor Daly and the Chicago Chamber of Commerce devised the education plan that Arney Duncan carried out as head of the Chicago Public Schools. That plan closed loved neighborhood schools, ignoring parents schools council that black and Latin parents had fought for to get input into their childrens' education. Black and Latin working class parents fought for their neighborhood schools but mostly lost. Then Duncan set up charter schools which helped gentrification of neighborhoods attracting middle class people. Black and Latin students were forced into distant schools. Duncan against Chicago parents and students wishes forced opening of military academies which encourage black and Latin youth to go into the military so Duncan is responsible for militarization of our public schools. Duncan's policies in Chicago and as Secretary of Education promote racial and class equality as they force the privatization of the public schools. Statistical date shows that charter schools are worse on average than public schools.
Now Duncan has taken his pro-Chamber of Commerce, pro- privatization to the federal level with Race to the Top which is aimed at destruction of the public school system, promoting racial inequality, and promoting corporate takeover of public school monies. We should all publicly condemn Race to the Top, ask Duncan to be removed, stop charters, and fight for a pro-public school policy at the federal and state and local levels.
Sioux Rose
GALIA: Thank you for the information. Yours is a very interesting post. Obama and his buddies would privatize OXYGEN if they could get away with it, and then they'd hire PR people to make it seem the initiative was done expressly to help citizens breathe!
Here's what works:
Small, diverse groups of learners, engaged in meaningful, empowering activities--not rote crap, not chores, but making meaning!--in which, under the tutelage of thoughtful, well-trained, imaginative, enthusiastic 'masters', students learn to cooperatively scaffold new experience upon increasingly complex and sophisticated competences.
Somebody mentioned the 'apprenticeship' model of craftal learning. The thing to remember is that apprentices learned their trades by learning to MAKE the tools of their trade. When you'd mastered your tools, you applied your learning as a journeyman/person, and became a master upon the approval of your fellows.
Charter schools are mainly a way to transfer scarce assets to approved populations... Self-fulling prophesy: deprived of even MORE resources, public schools "fail" even more metrics which are designed to fail public schools. Suuu-PRAAHS!
"Small, diverse groups of learners, engaged in meaningful, empowering activities"
Oh how trite. (Just kidding).
Fact is, we have never implemented good learning models in a stable way over time in our schools, especially in poor neighborhoods. Every year it is a different gimmick to cover up the problems of large class size, inadequately trained and supported teachers, and unresolved rivalries and tensions between parents and the school.
This latest gimmicks (promoting rivalries and privatization) are especially idiotic and destructive. They are divisive. When I was active in the PTA, there were always some parents who wanted every advantage for their children and not for all the children. It is that mentality and an increasing sense of desperation that is being curried in order to divide and conquer. It is to divert us from the fact that our money is being wasted left and right on optional invasions, on bailouts, on all kinds of nonsense that bankrupts states and robs local needs.
All parents, teachers and older students need to stand together to protect public education, to hire more teachers, not fewer, and to support teachers. If there were enough teachers, they could help each other learn through becoming small, diverse groups of learners (old and new teachers, novices and experts, Art and Science teachers) engaged in meaningful, empowering activities.
The current model in failing schools is to lure in the youngest and most inexperienced teachers to the trap, give them a large teaching load of students who are not especially academically inclined, abandon the the teacher in front of the classroom, often without supplies or lesson plans, and let them sink or swim. Teacher mentoring programs are often a joke. This is all to save money on staff salaries, which should be at the heart of schooling. Many teachers sink, and with them the children in their classes. A year is a big deal to a child.
Money for schools. Not war and banksters.
Joe
"Race to the Top" is the March Madness model for winning the educational trophies. And the losers? Well, they are obviously losers. Better luck next time around, eight year olds.
Meanwhile in practically every state the budgets for education are critically low. Frills like art, music, sports, history, literature, science, tutoring, after-school programs have been cut. Now we are down to cutting out the final frill: teachers. There is always some win/lose, simple-minded sports analogy for why teachers must be fired. But no solutions even for where we will get the replacements. Or maybe I have not seen all the talented teachers sitting on the bench just waiting for their chance to get in the game?
The adolescent, clueless chutzpah of Arne Duncan astonishes. He knows nothing about education. He never bothered to learn anything about it.
Question: Why is this gimmicky hustler in charge of education?
Answer: To distract from the whooshing of all our resources into the war and banking hoops.
Joe