Gary Rubinstein, former TFA but now veteran high school math teacher wrote this article in Education Week about the failure of Race to the Top. I wish I didn’t have to delete any part of it but Internet or copyright protocols require me to. Subscribe to Edweek so you can read it all. And be sure to follow Gary’s blog.
“Years from now, I hope we will look back at Race To The Top as the time we allowed the rich and powerful to conduct reckless experimentation on our nation’s schoolchildren. And they would have gotten away with it too — to paraphrase every Scooby Doo villain ever — if it wasn’t for those meddling educators. Race To The Top is an example of how reform in any field will fail if it is based on an invalid premise. That premise, in this case, is that teachers cannot be trusted.
“We need the Common Core, the argument goes, because when teachers set what they consider to be an appropriate level of ‘rigor’ in their classes, they will usually choose to make it too easy. They do this because either because they are lazy or because they simply believe that students are not capable of challenging work or, most likely, both.
“Teachers are so devious, it must be, that they have figured out ways to get satisfactory evaluations from their supervisors despite all their ‘inputs’ going in one ear of their students and out the other. Administrators are also either incompetent for thinking they are witnessing learning, or they are giving positive evaluations to ineffective teachers for other reasons that only they could know….
“When teachers complain that they don’t want to have this inaccurate component as 50% or 40% or 35%, depending on what state they’re in, they are reassured that ‘multiple measures’ are being used so that, on average, it should all work out. Couldn’t this ‘multiple measures’ argument be used to justify having shoe size as a component of the evaluation score?
“By starting with a bad premise, the ‘reformers’ have been given the power to start destroying public education in this country. Fortunately the momentum is slowing down on Race To The Top since if it were permitted to continue to grow the result would be a massive teacher shortage as the only people dumb enough to become teachers would also be too dumb to do the difficult job of teaching. Without teachers willing to teach, ‘reformers’ would learn that it truly is lonely at The Top.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is really unfortunate to hear comments disparaging teachers.
The root cause of our underperformance in public education is that we are clinging
to an outmoded system based upon industrial assembly “Theory X” top down thinking
based upon management theory from the 1900s.
Teachers can deliver miracles, if they are only freed from the mandates of those who have not a clue on human capital development.
I suggest that on any superior performing educational organization you will find the components of empowered teachers and involved parents who take part of the load of the enormous burden that society has chosen to impose upon faculty members.
One thing that you will not find is a plethora of highly compensated central office specialists who demand time and reporting from the already overworked teachers.
There are four important components tasked to teachers.
1. Planning lessons,
2. Implementing those lessons,
3. Assessing a student’s understanding of the objectives as they are outlined in those lessons (this also includes assessing the merit
of the lesson itself)
4. Recording (reporting) what students know and are able to do.
Ongoing, top down education reform has forced teachers to waste an inordinate amount of time on standardized tests that give teachers very little useful information about any of the four components of their job. The incessant demand for data collection and reporting has also negatively encroached on classroom instruction and teacher time.
The vast majority of career teachers have learned, over time and with experience, how to balance the demands of their job. Let us do our jobs.
@Betsy Marshall … top down education has done a lot more than waste time on testing and encroached on classroom time. Teachers are forced to follow top down dictates that make no sense to any professional educator and then they are blamed for the effects. Huh??? Makes as much sense as RTTT. Top-down reform is just a means to get rid of masses of public school teachers to make way for the privatization movement.
Any system which fails to put emphasis on a teacher’s professional judgement as to what her particular students needs and abilities are given the environment present at that point in time is doomed to fail.
There is such a vast differential in the preparedness and the home environment of students that to treat them as anything other than unique is foolhardy.
There is no substitute for the abilities of a professional teacher to assess the unique abilities and opportunities of students and to then proceed with learning in such a manner as to optimize the learning of that given and unique set of students.
Centralized, top down systems are destined to fail in most situations, and most certainly are in the field of education.
The fact that “reformers” don’t trust teachers isn’t just a problem with Race to the Top. It’s the reason for every one of these “reforms.” And it makes me sick.
Deformers want to make money. For them, disparagements, false research, and slanted media reports are sleight-of-hand tricks for the public and cya for politicians.
The use of the word “Trust” for anything other than a bank department, would perplex them.
At our school we all call it “Race to the Bottom”. That is where all of our schools are headed under the toxic leadership of Barak Obama and Arne Duncan . . .and oh, let’s not forget, my governor, John Kasich, who truly hates all teachers and public schools. I am sure he and his wife are relieved their twin daughters do not have to suffer in the horrible environments he is creating in our Ohio schools. Sadly, we will probably have to suffer with him 4 more years . . because he is loaded with cash. I switched to Republican because I cannot stand Obama, but I cannot stand John Kasich either. I know Florida suffers with that silly Jeb Bush . . .and New Jersey suffers with that big mouth governor. Yes, we are all on a race to the bottom. Ohio will meet all of you there.