Jersey Jazzman describes Race to the Top as “segregation gone wild.”
Strangely enough, the districts that applied for RTTT cash and mandates are mostly poor and minority.
Wonder if they know that none of the federal “remedies” has ever worked?
Wonder if they know their district is likely to spend more on implementing the mandates than the money it “wins”?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I almost cannot leave yesterday’s topic: Wireless Generation. Following the career of Joel Klein has been a hobby of mine. It is unbelievable how much influence this man has, how pervasive he is in the Ed Deform movement, how destructive he has been. Now, as I follow Wireless Generation, I am realizing that they are the purveyors of DIBELS. Do parents even realize how much time and money is spent by school districts on DIBELS?
I love Jersey Jazzman’s statement:
“Wonder if they know their district is likely to spend more on implementing the mandates than the money it “wins”? ”
Working in an urban school district, we know how the RttT money is spent. It is NOT on or for “the children”. Rather, it is spent on extremely expensive assessments and highly paid admins to inculcate the culture of data and endless assessments to produce the data.
Isabella, you make a great point that I didn’t explore nearly enough in this post. I wrote a post earlier this year that Diane featured about the teachers union leader in Jersey City, Ronnie Greco:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/11/ronnie-greco-of-jersey-city-real-union.html
Greco did not sign off of JC’s RTTT application. Why? Because he saw the money was not going into the classroom, not was it going to help them settle a contract. The vast majority was going into administration and implementing programs that had no track record of success.
If this RTTT money was being used to hire tutors, or buy books, or reduce class size, or deepen the curriculum, that would be one thing. But it’s not.
Duke, you are absolutely right. What makes Ronnie unique at this point is the fact that he worked in a SIG ( School Improvement Grant) school so he knew first hand how the funds were being misdirected. He knows what it feels like to have a grant approved and signed off on without including the teachers and discussing the particulars with them. He knows that they were making it up as they went along. It was one of the most disenfranchising feelings to have no voice, belittled and written off through a grant that was never designed to REALLY help the students. He knows that the teachers currently working in these schools are some of the most demoralized, and disenfranchised teachers in the district. I can go on and on. Although I am no longer there, I vow to continue to fight for those students and teachers…
Back in June Diane highlighted my response to her blog, expressing my displeasure and distaste for the constant testing and re-testing of our students in dance, sculpture, math, LAL, and etc for the sole sake of evaluating the teachers. Today I am expressing I am completely fed up with more than the excessive testing, but I am fed up with people playing games with the lives of our most neediest people. That money would have been blood money. They sold our souls when they applied for and accepted that grant money back in 2009. The sad part, we didn’t even have a voice in it. Ronnie gets it. I can go on, but I’ll save the rest for my own blog post…
Dr Ravitch you hit the nail on the head. This money comes with more strings than Pinnichio! New and untested evaluations, new VAT in almost all subjects, more bureaucrats to oversee the process, etc. As a history teacher I fear for the future of our profession at such tomfoolery. You and I don’t always agree on the causes of problems in educ but we are in lockstep on this issue!
Consider it a “cardboard carrot.” The new “evaluation” is rigged so that no one will ever receive a bonus. Teachers I work with are flatly opting out of the rating system and telling admin to “Go ahead. Make my day.”
They better hope they have a second income to fall back on or access to attorneys when they get railroaded out of their careers or fired. Let me tell you, teachers can’t really say no without serious consequences. Their unions don’t really stick up for them.
Why isn’t RTTT funding quality early education through grade 4, as the part of the U.S education continuum for which all research points to most gains for all, but especially impoverished, high-need children? Why are we not funding a Birth to Grade four continuum of instruction and assessment based on effective, evidence-based teacher and program quality tools such as the CLASS. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ (CLASS™) is an observational instrument developed at the Curry School Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning to assess classroom quality in PK-12 classrooms. It describes multiple dimensions of teaching that are linked to student achievement and development and has been validated in over 2,000 classrooms. The CLASS™ can be used to reliably assess classroom quality for research and program evaluation and also provides a tool to help new and experienced teachers become more effective. High-quality early education programs like Educare Centers (now 17 operating nationally) could be explored by feds for how to replicate this work across early education and elementary school partnerships proven to impact both students and teacher outcomes. If we can do this effectively in early education, why can’t it be expanded through K-12?
In terms of early childhood education, Head Start is already in place, so RTT would duplicate. In terms of birth to grade 4 “continuum of instruction,” what do you mean specifically? In terms of the CLASS, see the MET report – had far less reliability that than standardized achievement test data, which itself had some issues with reliability.
However, I definitely applaud your perspective of suggesting alternatives rather than simply being against something.
I’m sorry – I misspoke – CLASS had lower levels of predictive validity related to classroom achievement for individual teachers, but that may well be due to non-instructional/classroom variables.
I’m starting to despair and think that the battle may be lost. I spent part of this weekend with some other teachers from my district, and they just kept telling me that we need to put together a multiple-choice, district wide, twice yearly test in several new subjects because these tests are “the way the world is today,” and we want to have created our “own” tests instead of getting the tests from “somewhere else.”
If these teachers, who are major leaders in my district, are feeling this way, have we lost? I’m afraid of the answer.
Never give up.
Organize, mobilize.
Never despair.