August 12, 2012

The U.S. Department of Education Should Be Abolished: Start by Ending the Federal Programs 'Race to the Top' and 'No Child Left Behind'

The Race to the Top grant program cements Washington's high-visibility role in education, a role that has been growing since 2001, when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, requiring that states show steady increases in student proficiency. Unlike that earlier piece of legislation, Race to the Top is a voluntary program created entirely by the Obama administration and funded by the stimulus package. Rather than mandating that states make changes, as No Child Left Behind did, it offers incentives designed to be too big to turn down.

Race to the Top promotes an academic achievement rat race in which students near the top of the educational food chain strive maniacally to win (or at least finish). The emphasis on testing by former President Bush's No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) and continued with President Obama's Race to the Top initiative (RTTT) has only exacerbated the problem better characterized by the title of the powerful new documentary by Vicki Abeles, Race to Nowhere.

The Obama's administration mistake was to continue Bush's initial mistake of focusing on testing; instead of being a tool for education reform, testing has morphed into the end-all, be-all of said reform. Perhaps the saddest aspect of NCLB is that it HASN'T WORKED! Over the decade in which NCLB has been in place, there have been few appreciable or lasting gains in test scores for which NCLB can take credit. What it has overwhelmingly succeeded at is driving schools and states to game the system (i.e., lower standards, cherry pick data) to keep the federal-funding spigot flowing.

"It's the race to the trough," said Grover Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "They need money and the only way to get it is to compete for federal funds and the only way to do that is to dance to Washington's tune." Faced with continuing grim prospects, dozens of states signed off on the Obama administration's pet initiatives for K-12 education in the hopes of landing some Race to the Top money. The federal government is giving Race to the Top education grants to school districts more notable for the voting blocs they represent than the scores that they post.

Our federal government has allowed improving test scores to supersede actually educating our children. The Department of Education mandates that states must fulfill "four assurances" to receive federal stimulus money: "progress in raising standards, in recruiting and retaining effective teachers, in tracking students' and teachers' performance, and in turning around failing schools."

Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent over many decades in the name of education reform with nothing appreciable to show for it. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has a very big carrot, about seventy billion dollars, with which to motivate states, schools, educators, parents, and students to reform our public-education system. But incentive without the means to harness that motivation is akin to wanting to drive somewhere, but not having a map or even a destination. And RTTT offers neither.

Arne Duncan became Secretary of Education because of his fealty to the corporate education reform agenda that he nurtured and learned under in Chicago. When it was time for Arne, as Secretary, to announce the leader for the $4.35 billion bribery fund known as Race to the Top, the Oligarchs chose Joanne Weiss, COO and Partner of the New Schools Venture Fund--a vast web of corporate and corporate foundation cash strategically invested in the cause of privatizing education, all the while collecting huge tax credits for all that generosity by these vulture philanthropists. Just continue to follow the money.

When tiny Delaware submitted its RTTT grant application, a Boston non-profit corporation, Mass Insight, was instrumental in helping Delaware to develop its school turnaround plans. Mass Insight's favorite turnaround model is the same one that Arne and Billionaire Boys' Club prefer: The consequences for failing to reform test scores will have more bite. The state is going to create a team to oversee these schools, with leadership coming from Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, a Boston group that favors replacing the staff and leadership when overhauling a failing school. Mass Insight, which receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among other corporations and educational reform partnerships, supports the type of reform model that led to the recent firing of the principal and teachers at Rhode Island's Central Falls High School. Now where do the geniuses at Mass Insight get their piles of non-profit to help states develop plans that the judges really like? Well, they happen to get their sponsorship from the same people who wrote the Race Rules and whose COO is, indeed, the Race Director:


This notion that test results are the essential goal of education reform has created an environment in which teachers must "teach to the test;" students aren't really educated so much as prepared to pass tests so schools and states can get federal funding. Race to Nowhere presents some compelling arguments against the emphasis on test scores that increased exponentially with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (it should be called the Almost Every Child Left Behind Act, given its abysmal record in raising test scores or graduation rates, much less actually educating children). Students now focus on memorizing facts (and then forget them shortly after), find learning to be aversive rather than inspiring, and see no problem with cheating to get ahead (in the 1940s, 20% of students admitted to cheating in high school; today, well over 75% make the same admission). The child-development, tutoring, and testing industries are an almost $10 billion scam that feeds on the fears of parents that their children will be left behind. The low rankings currently held by our students compared to other countries on international achievement tests don't bode well for their or our future.

[Source]

Government Opens Competition for New School Grants

August 12, 2012

ABC News - Hoping to build on state-level reforms aimed at closing the education achievement gap, the Education Department opened its Race to the Top competition to school districts on Sunday, inviting the poorest districts across the country to vie for almost $400 million in grants.

Following four months of public comment on a draft proposal, the Education Department unveiled its final criteria for the district-level competition, which will award 15 to 25 grants to districts that have at least 2,000 students and 40 percent or more who qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches — a key poverty indicator.

Grants will range from $5 million to $40 million, depending on the size of the district.

"We want to help schools become engines of innovation through personalized learning so that every child in America can receive the world-class public education they deserve," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement.

The original Race to the Top competition, announced in 2009, set out to provide more than $4 billion in grants to states that undertook ambitious education reforms. Dozens of states changed laws, introduced new teacher evaluation programs and lifted caps on charter schools to qualify for a slice of the funds.

Congress approved about $550 million for Race to the Top this year, and the Education Department expects to use about $383 million of it for grants to districts that propose ambitious reforms to personalize learning, narrow the achievement gap and prepare students for college. The rest will go toward the department's early learning competition.

School districts in states that received money in previous years will still be eligible to apply. Districts can propose programs that affect all or just some of their schools, and can also band together to apply for grants. Proposals geared to specific grades or subject areas also will be considered.

To be eligible, districts must put in place evaluation systems to measure performance of teachers, principals and superintendents by the 2014-2015 school year. The Education Department also planned initially to require school board evaluations and personalized learning plans for students, but officials said they eliminated both requirements based on public objections.

It remains to be seen whether the district-level competition will be alluring enough to entice districts to enact sweeping reforms, said Michael Petrilli, executive vice president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

"It seems that the response from the districts has been somewhat anemic," Petrilli said. "Simply put, there's just much less money at stake than there was for the states."

School districts are expected to signal their intent to apply by the end of August, with applications due on Oct. 30. Districts will find out whether they've been selected for a grant by the end of the year.

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