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The Answer Sheet
By Valerie Stauss

Race to the Top finalists and the 'ick' factor

The Obama administration’s Race to the Top education brand has now, formally, officially, irrevocably, been launched. Today we learned who the first 16 finalists are in the $4.35 billion fund competition.

The competitors -- 16 states and the District of Columbia -- now get a chance to send representatives to woo administration officials with their school reform plans, all tailored to the particular likes of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Ick.

The whole notion of this administration making its education initiative a kind of race where states compete for funds is counter to the desired goal of providing equal resources to children in all public schools.

Then there’s the problem noted by many commentators, including education historian Diane Ravitch, that the initiative is requiring states who want to be funded to adopt practices that claim to be “research based” but, in fact, haven’t been shown to be broadly successful at all.

Duncan is promoting charter schools and the privatization of schools, as well as a scheme to evaluate teachers by the results of standardized tests taken by students. None of the above have been shown to ensure success, but the government will spend billions forcing states to do them anyway.

For the record, the finalists for the first phase are:

• Colorado
• Delaware
• District of Columbia
• Florida
• Georgia
• Illinois
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Massachusetts
• New York
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• Tennessee

California competed but lost, and Jack O'Connell, superintendent of public instruction, explained why the whole enterprise is empty.

"We put forth a solid, thoughtful application," he said. "The systemic reforms we made we made because they're the right educational strategies. It was an unprecedented opportunity to actually fund the reforms."

Federal officials want losing states to reapply, but O'Connell isn't so sure: "We had our best people working on it. Our time may be better spent helping school districts here in California."

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, lots of people who supported President Obama had hoped he would make a clean break with No Child Left Behind and its failed emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing regime. His Race to the Top program certainly isn’t. And with the failing political fortunes of the administration, any effort to boldly reauthorize No Child Left Behind isn’t happening anytime soon.

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, in this post, called Race to the Top “a doomed bribery scheme.”

He’s right. Ick.

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