This reader sees ominous signs as his school complies with the demands of Race to the Top:
Race to the Top is diverting teacher know-how, skill, talent, passion, etc to numbers crunching and reporting. taking valuable time away from figuring out how to teach well. We are heading rapidly to where the only people who will be able to get a deep enough education to be capable of being in charge of anything in the world will be those who can go to private schools.
Race to the Top is a misnomer – it is Crawl off the Bottom because it does not allocate any”measurable” value to AP classes, college credit offerings. art or music. Our numbers are measured by scores on academic tests. To comply with Race to the Top, we have to give our students a “pre-test” at the beginning of our classes this September, a test designed for students to fail because it is similar to what they will take as final exams at the end of the year. the point being to show improvement, but it means students all over NYS are starting off their year by massively taking tests they will fail miserably on, per requirement of NyS’ compliance with RTT.Every teacher I know learned in their earliest classes & experiences, that testing to show failures is VERY bad pedagogy.
And to keep things in perspective, 60% of the federal budget goes to war & defense, compared to 2% to education. The rest of the cost of public schooling is carried by state & local governments. is that the kind of support that will allow this generation to run the country any better? I don’t think so.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I was lucky to be elected as a delegate to the DNC in Charlotte. On Friday following the convention, I was invited by a friend to speak about my experience to AP government classes at one of Charlotte’s top private schools (tuition $20K per year). My friend gave me a tour of the school, and when we entered the Arts Building, I got to watch lower school students act out the arrival of their ancestors to Ellis Island (dressed in simple homemade costumes). I wonder if public school students who are Racing to the Top have the benefit of that type of learning experience.
“And to keep things in perspective, 60% of the federal budget goes to war & defense, compared to 2% to education. The rest of the cost of public schooling is carried by state & local governments.”
Well, considering that it is the state constitutions that authorize public education the fact that public schools are mainly funded locally and by the individual state one wouldn’t expect the federal government to fund any or very much of the public school tab. I don’t believe the federal constitution has much to say about public education being a function of the feds. Unfortunately the federal DOE has way too much to say in what is done at the state and local level through the use of coercion of witholding much needed funding.
I’m not sure I would necessarily want more federal involvement as the localized system has served this country quite well over the years (with some exceptions such as separate but equal, local schools not providing a proper education for the special needs ppopulation, etc. . . .) It is the state’s responsibility to come up with adequate and equitable funding.
Now as far as the spending on the military industrial complex, talk about corporate welfare with so much waste and inefficiency that the Pentagon has never completed the required by law yearly accounting. But no, the powers that be and the punditocracy claim that our public schools are causing this nation’s downfall. What a joke!
Well really, NONE of the Federal budget should be going to education. IF you want to Feds to interfere more in education, expect them to spend more
If you want the Feds to test more, spend more money.
If you want the Feds to micromanage teachers, spend more money.
THat is exactly what we are getting.
Shouldn’t we work to go in the opposite direction?
Get the FEDS out of the classroom?
THey have no COnstitutional basis for what they are doing.
I was shocked to see the new name for our Benchmark Test #1 (Start of the Year)
It is now called, “Instructional Effectiveness Assessment Series”….sure hope I do OK.