A reader sent us a link to a poll in the Portland Oregonian.
The question is whether the Portland Public Schools were right to pass up applying to get the federal funding.
Good for Portland!
Maybe the school system figured out that the money is not discretionary and that the mandates that come with RTTT will cost districts more than whatever money it brings to the district.
Here is the poll:
The Oregonian has a new poll asking the community if PPS was right to give up the RTTT grant:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just who is it that is going to hang around and be used, abused, and disrespected to teach in this brave new free market school system? How long will we have to wait before all the bad apple schools are shaken from the free enterprise tree and every student has access to this promised world class education?
Free market losses will be explained away by the people who skate with the money. They will rename, repackage, and resurface. Best solution, communities, schools and local officials unite to come up with their own alternatives.
Diane, are you promoting voter fraud by inviting non-Oregon, non-Portland residents to vote in this poll? Advocacy is fine. Stuffing the ballot box is not. I happen to agree that Portland was right to reject the federal funds, but I wouldn’t think of voting in an out of state poll.
Diane has many readers and followers in Portland and in Oregon. We appreciate her spreading the word to anyone who wants to weigh in on the discussion and vote in the unscientific, informal poll by the state’s major metropolitan daily newspaper.
As an Oregon resident, I have no problem with anybody participating in this poll. Anyone who tries to treat online polls as scientific is foolish, any-hoo. The Oregonian newspaper welcomes all web traffic, helps their numbers. Everyone wins in THIS race.
How funny. Voter fraud:) because the oregonian poll is so scientific.
Voter fraud? Last time I checked this wasn’t official and it didn’t say you must be from Oregon.
The RTTT-D application parameters were different from the RTTT State applications in one potentially important regard: they did not prescribe VAM as the metric for measuring improvement. (SEE http://waynegersen.com/2012/09/11/are-obama-and-duncan-wavering-on-vam/). Instead of VAM, the RTTT-D emphasized the development of personalized learning plans. As Superintendent I actively advocated against our State applying for RTTT grants and waivers because they were based on VAM (see http://waynegersen.com/?s=Race+to+the+Top+NO), but given the change in metrics implicit in the RTTT-D grants, as a consultant I helped assemble a consortium of small rural districts to seek these funds. While I may be a cockeyed optimist, I am hoping that the changes in the RTTT-D application are evidence of a change of thinking on the part of Obama and Duncan. Should Portland apply for the grant? In my judgment if they are interested in providing personalized learning for their students they should. If they want to stay the course with the one-size-fits-all approach there is no point in applying.
Seriously??? It is a newspaper poll, people. Not a presidential election! As a parent of a child in Oregon schools, I am grateful to the stand taken by Portland Public Schools. As a teacher in WA schools, I can only say I wish that WA had taken the same stance.
I voted, and I live in CT. We need to pull together to fight this nonsense any chance we get, even if it is just a newspaper poll.