The Broader Bolder Approach released
a 100-page report in conjunction with the American
Association of School Administrators lambasting the Obama
administration’s Race to the Top program. RTTT’s goals are
“impossible” and may even be damaging schools, the report said.
RTTT handed out $4.35 billion to 11 states to implement changes for
which there was no evidence, like test-based teacher evaluation.
Critics of the report said that it was too soon to make a judgment
but RTTT funding runs out in one year. “The 100-page report,
released Thursday, argues that policies should tackle the effects
of poverty while simultaneously making schools better. By not
targeting out-of-school factors like nutrition and parental income,
the report says, and by focusing on teacher evaluation systems that
often result in harsh consequences without much useful feedback,
Race to the Top goals are severely mismatched with its
policies.”
For another analysis of the report, see Valerie Strauss’s summation here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Parents of PVMS.
Diane, thank you again for doing the “legwork” for us in posting the latest news…I just read Valerie Strauss’s excellent article, and had to highlight this quote from it:
“* The actions that the Education Department required states to take in exchange for Race money failed to address some of the most important reasons for low student achievement.
— Research clearly shows that most of the achievement gap is driven by factors outside school.
— Important in-school factors, such as funding equity, were not adequately addressed by Race to the Top.”
Gee, I wonder how much the research cost to uncover the shocking revelation that “the achievement gap is driven by factors outside school.” I think the majority of urban district teachers spend a great deal of time trying to nurse the wounds of our students, whether it is making sure we have stuff to feed them because they come to school hungry, or have lunch with the kid who is in tears because her mom has a new boyfriend and now is practically raising her younger siblings and can’t finish her homework, or the boy who’s afraid because his father was just released from prison after beating his mom so badly, etc., etc. We teachers have thousands of these stories…oh wait, I am in the process of being terminated because my teacher evaluation was based on my kids’ test scores, so I am no longer teaching…
As far as in-school factors, yes, funding equity is a huge problem…we had no librarian for most of last year, we had no in-school suspension supervisor, one literacy and math coach for the whole K-8, and our computer lab had 10-year old computers where only about 10 out of 30 computers could get internet connection.
Even though I did technology trainings so that I could provide 21st century skills activities for my lessons…there are so many fabulous online resources (or even just teach 8th graders how to do research papers before high school-a part of the curriculum) it wasn’t possible because our computers didn’t work adequately, and we had no librarian to help oversee the lab in any case. My principal, who was also my teacher evaluator, closed the lab altogether about a month before school ended because he told me “that the kids just fool around in there anyway.”
Too bad we couldn’t have used some of that research money that gave us the astounding news that the achievement gap is driven by outside factors to buy some decent computers and get a librarian-media specialist.
I truly cannot read too much of this “news” anymore because I always feel like Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole…obviously, although I am very sad for myself and the many other teachers in my position, I am saddest for what it means for our at-risk children who are suffering because of all this education “new world order.” I have seen them absolutely in tears when yet another test has been shoved in front of their faces that makes them feel even more inadequate than they already do…
Great post. So true. TY.
Bill Knaak: Teach the Best and Stomp the Rest. In “Race to the Top” President Obama and Secretary Duncan did not invent America’s metamorphic fascination for sport competition and gaming, but they tried to capitalize on it. It is not surprising that Obama, a self-proclaimed basketball enthusiast (and allegedly pretty good at it) should choose Arnie Duncan as Education Secretary. Duncan had played some pro-ball and barnstormed his three-on-three team across the country in a national tournament–and won for a prize of $10,000
It is not hard to imagine these two, pausing for a brief rest after shooting back yard hoops at the White House innocently raising the question, “So what are we going to do about education? Of course, we will throw a March-Madness-Type High Stakes National Education Tournament with prizes. We won’t need Congressional approval because we can use stimulus money. People in this country love competition, sport and gaming. They will surely go for it” And they did. RTT hit the states not only as a media-hyped March madness phenomena, but as a virtual earthquake, starting with $4.5 Billion in prizes for “school reform” with follow up “consolation prizes” for minor sports such as early childhood education.
But in 2013 the conceptual race is over and it is time to rise from the ruins of the quake, or in the metaphor of the French revolution, “examine the edge of the blade as it falls” (especially on teachers) Other than the promised “shakeup of the system” nothing much has happened that benefits the education of needy American children either nationally or in the states. Nor could it reasonably been expected to happen. Neither President Obama nor Duncan, the two athletic minded architects had any credentials or experience for the initiative. As Harvard-trained lawyers they learned something about causation, but that knowledge doesn’t translate into expertise in education .policy.
With television, personal computers, and play stations the notion of risk-free competition and gaming has been nurtured. The loser may get shot but never dies or even gets hurt. But when politicians, financiers and the media “game” economics and education, people do get hurt. People with limited education and finances were severely hurt in the stock run up of the 1990s encouraged by daily headlines and stories about the ease of wealth increases. Similarly, when the media encouraged by the finance industry “gamed” the housing market with exciting headlines about accelerating housing prices, many people with limited means and no real estate experience “lost everything.” And so it has been with Race to the Top. The hurt is not just with the teachers, but with students and for education in general.
.
Excellent analysis Bill. Thank you. And now the shills for Common Core are insulting the intelligence of educators nationwide in their determination to install this untested (huge money maker) process of education on all students including ELL and Special Ed.
They are hiding the flaws found in the recent NYC testing that produced such disastrous, recently published, results. In California, the plan had been to start testing (yes, on those over-retail cost iPads without keyboards in LAUSD) in January. But the caveat was that no one, neither parents and the public, nor teachers and administrators, would know the results of this 2014 testing prior to any teaching of subject matter. Obviously those in California setting education policy did not want anyone to see the same sort of massive failure that we all saw in NYC.
Please note that our former teacher-State Supt. of Ed., Tom Torlakson, understands deeply the dangers of what is being promoted, and is working assiduously to ameliorate this imposed mandate of CC process and testing.
Fortunately, last weekend, two of our State legislators introduced a bill to NOT test in 2014, but rather to start teaching subject matter and then test in 2015. It is a great relief to many of us that there are some intelligent folks running our State Legislature.
The shambles that is LAUSD/Deasy and the iPad horrors is an embarrassment to our State (and to LAUSD) which once had the best public education system in the Nation…along with NY.
Deasy is up for evaluation by the LAUSD School Board at their next meeting. I hope they carefully take into account the massive tax money being misspent under the guise of the ‘savior’ system of CC, and this economic decision was paid for with Construction Bond money which We the People, California taxpayers, will pay off for the next 30 years….for rapidly obsolete over-priced iPads to teach the possibly failed system of the unproven Common Core.
The teachers on our school board understand the need to rehire experienced teachers ASAP in order to reduce class sizes from close to 50 students, and make them teachable at 30 or so. Over 30,000 of our State’s teachers have been fired and are being replaced in the charters with the TFA kids, sent mindlessly into our most challenging schools.
Should Obama/Duncan and RttT, and Broad and the Waltons, and Coleman and Pearson, be running every state’s public schools?
Perhaps we need a mindset of the French Revolution here and now.
As for Race to the Top….”Help! We’ve fallen and we MUST now get up,”!
We’ve ALL got to work together and do EVERYTHING we can to get out of this education reform mess!
It’s just not happening, though, is it?
I have heard that “growth scores” (student improvement on a state-approved, “normed” assessment) can include factors such as low SES-meaning that there would be more validity in holding a teacher accountable for an expected rate of achievement for a certain type of student based on aggregate data from “x” number of other students with similar characteristics. If this is true, it still would not account for many of the other factors outside the classroom, and avoids a very significant INSIDE the classroom variable: the cohort effect. In schools that have a larger low SES student population, you are likely to have a larger concentration of the issues/stressors associated. Take one student out of that situation and put him/her into a school with greater affluence, more resources, more models of school readiness and academic success, I would bet the academic growth is greater. Not because of the teacher, but because there are fewerdistractions, more resources and more models of positive behaviors. “Race to the top” is just one more example of how catchy language is used to mislead. “Race to stop the B.S. and do the right thing” would be better.