Race to the Top Winners and Losers
Results are in and the winners/losers in the Race to the Top are following: Arizona, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. Each is now a finalist, competing for its share of the $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top funding. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan says he expects “10 to 15” of these finalists will receive a piece of the pie. Larger states are eligible for more. For example, California is eligible for up to $700 million. So why winners/losers? After all, shouldn’t the education establishment get its share of federal monies? With teacher furloughs, increased class sizes, budget cuts… isn’t it smart to “play ball” with Obama? Isn’t any educational reform better than no educational reform?
Perhaps no.
Teachers unions have opposed the qualification process and application components in the Race to the Top initiative. Increasing parent access/influence and charter schools. Limiting tenure rights. Devolving district and state autonomy to federal oversight, for example national standards. Inequitable teacher incentives/pay for work in lower performing schools. Hardly rank-and-file/teacher priorities.
Additionally, the carrot and stick approach of the Race to the Top competition has strained already underfunded and under-resourced districts and state departments of education. The application timelines forced a “drop everything and get to it” response at both local and state levels. Putting important long-term reform initiatives aside, these educational entities have been pressured into ignoring the buy-in of student/parent/community/teacher stakeholders to go after the money. For example, in California the latest application was written by only seven of the 967 district superintendents.
Furthermore, the Race to the Topic initiative has produced a sadly ironic twist. To increase equity, especially for lower performing schools/students, it has employed a highly inequitable process. In her July 27 article, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post provides this insight:
The “Framework for Providing All Students an Opportunity to Learn” released yesterday by a coalition of civil rights groups speaks directly to fundamental differences over education policy, including those over charter schools, teacher evaluation, and, perhaps most importantly, resource equity.
It said about the competitive nature of Race to the Top, the administration’s chief education initiative to date:
“If education is a civil right, children in ‘winning’ states should not be the only ones who have the opportunity to learn in high-quality environments. Such an approach reinstates the antiquated and highly politicized frame for distributing federal support to states that civil rights organizations fought to remove in 1965.”
The Education Department sent me some facts after Duncan’s speech today that speak to this issue. Here they are:
*The 19 finalists for Race to the Top Round 2 alone enroll nearly two-thirds of all African American and Hispanic students in the United States. Put another way, this 37 percent of US states (including D.C.) enroll 63 percent of our African American and Hispanic students.
*The 21 states (19 finalists plus Tennessee and Delaware, which won Race funding in the first round] have 5.4 million black students and 6.5 million Hispanic students. This represents 66 percent of black students and 64 percent of Hispanic students nationwide.
*Aggregated: 65 percent of the nation’s minority students are in these 21 states.
So if all 19 finalists actually are eventually declared winners in the second round (which is not expected), then we’ll only have to worry about the other 35 percent of minority students being left out of the funding spree. So much for equity.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/equity/duncan-being-too-modest.html
Mark Pennington is the author of the Pennington Publishing Blog and numerous ELA/Reading resources for educational professionals committed to differentiating instruction according to diagnostic and formative data. For free diagnostic assessments, flashcards, and instructional materials, as well as his highly-recommended curricula, check out www.penningtonpublishing.com. Refer back often to the Pennington Publishing Blog for insightful articles and educational tips.
