According to news reports, the new federal budget strips all funding from Race to the Top. Good riddance to one of the worst, most destructive federal programs in history. Historians will one day tell us who cooked up this assault on teachers and public schools. If states wanted to be eligible for part of Arne Duncan’s $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funding, they were required to adopt the “college and career ready standards,” aka Common Core, even though no one had ever field tested them. States had to agree to evaluate teachers to a significant degree by student scores, even though there was no evidence for doing so. States had to open more charters, transferring control from public to private management. States had to create massive data systems to track students.
RTTT was an all-out assault on the teaching profession, public education, and student privacy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
the republicants have proven to be useful idiots in this case. For all the wrong reasons they have done the right thing. Now watch all those states that were so strongly supportive start falling away. J bush is still pushing this though.
This next year will be interesting with Lamar Alexander in charge of education and Jeb Bush making a move for the presidency. Free market approaches to ed reform will be the touted as the big solution.
http://publicschoolscentral.com/2014/12/03/jeb-bush-another-friedmanomic-devotee-redefines-public-schools/
Jeb running for president makes me anxious.
I’ll bet you 4.3 billion that Jeb will race away from the common core after he announces his candidacy for president.
Like Romney back-pedaled from Massachusetts’ Romneycare.
Not a betting man here, but Jeb seems pretty entrenched on this position. He’s taking the hardness off his edge, but he’s remaining steadfast on his essential positions.
Jeb is invested in charters, particularly cyber programs. He favors the Common Core in the hopes of delivering a fatal blow to public education.
So begins Arne’s Incapacitated Anas platyrhynchos time in office. Next up, his job at Gates Foundation or Pearson.
“No Child Left Behind”
No child left behind
And Duncan, that means you
Cuz Pearson likes your kind
And Gates Foundation too
The Race to the Top was grand
But now has gone defunct
So let Bill take your hand
Reform has been debunked
I love it!
Agreed! While the testing may not end, perhaps there is hope for the other stuff to fade
Republicans are poised to tackle the reauthorization of ESEA/NCLB in 2015. Defunding RTTT is a good start in dismantling some features of toxic reform efforts. However, we certainly can expect the free market corporate reform initiatives to continue and even be strengthened with Lamar Alexander leading the charge. More choice, charters, vouchers, etc. More dismantling of public education.
http://publicschoolscentral.com/2014/12/02/lamar-alexanders-oldnew-ideas-for-education-reform/
But states can choose to stand unto that. Right?
Up to that
Now watch the State Commissioners start to scramble!
The language being used by those engaged in ESEA reauthorization is “portability” of ESEA funds. In other words, it promotes privatization through charter schools and vouchers. Look for states to be required to provide more “choice” in order to qualify for ESEA funds. So, there may be some relaxing on CCSS and testing requirements at the federal level (but remember that governors like Lamar Alexander lead the charge in pushing testing, so states are likely to continue implementing high-stakes standards and testing), there will be more privileging of free market approaches to ed. reform.
I’m not a fan of Arne Duncan but I’m not willing to give state leaders a complete pass.
This insistence that they were “coerced” into adopting all of this policy just reeks of political expediency and cowardice.
They wanted to turn over their public schools to ed reformers. It’s easier than doing their jobs and running their public education systems themselves.
“We were helpless!” Really? Come on. They ALL went along with it because it was the dominant theory in the circles they run in and they all swallowed it whole.
This is a federal AND state agenda. They’re all responsible for it. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the agenda of the state leaders and the federal leaders. None of them questioned ANY of it until their political base objected to Common Core.
NC state supe says the state standards we were developing were pretty much the same as CCSS anyway. (?).
But NC dropped CCSS (but we still use it meanwhile).
I love this selective federalism and outrage. Congress passed a new charter building fund. It gives Duncan HUGE discretion. He can basically make up the rules as he goes along.
Are the conservative governors going to whine about how they were “coerced” into that, too? Is there anything more “local” than a new public school in a community? Why aren’t they objecting to the federal charter subsidy program?
They don’t want to do their jobs. It’s easier to “relinquish” to the experts.
Joanna, what a coincidence! CCSS looks just like NC standards.
Absolutely agree on not giving states a pass, because it should have been clear from the beginning how poor the policies behind RttT. At the same time, I prefer when state governments say they are helpless as an alternative to actually believing in the policies. I’d say our Ohio legislature on the whole, while improving, still backs DOE.
It should be entertaining for us to watch national Democrats run in this state in 2016.
How do they denounce the Jeb Bush education agenda after they all supported it when Obama was pushing the identical set of policies?
What does Clinton say? “I’m for a slightly better-regulated, privatized school system”? “I support vouchers too, I just think we have to rebrand them as tax credits”?
I can feel the excitement building! 🙂
It reminds me of national Democrats with NCLB. “We thought it was very progressive! We were misled!”
Remember that?
Was RttT even a net gain for states? They have to pick up the continuing costs of these awesome DC innovations funded by “start up grants” do they not? Are state leaders telling us they didn’t know that? Why not?
They’re still doing it. They’re still taking “grants” from ed reform billionaires when they will be stuck with the ongoing expense once they adopt the ed reform policy and billionaire is down the road. At what point do they figure this out?
Nothing is free. Surely adults who are running states know this.
New Federal Budget Defunds Race to the Top
by dianeravitch
According to news reports, the new federal budget strips all funding from Race to the Top. Good riddance to one of the worst, most destructive federal programs in history. Historians will one day tell us who cooked up this assault on teachers and public schools.
New Federal Budget Defunds Race to the Top
by dianeravitch
According to news reports, the new federal budget strips all funding from Race to the Top. Good riddance to one of the worst, most destructive federal programs in history. Historians will one day tell us who cooked up this assault on teachers and public schools.
Seems to me you have done that in two compelling books, and there are a batch of others. Historical perspective is another thing, and will take some time because the architecture of NCLB is not yet rescinded and the players who participated in Race to the Top are still active via ALEC and state legislatures, These “players” are not letting up.
I do wonder how the defunding may bear on the proposed teacher education regulations. I think that the “outcomes-only” viewpoint of this administration is not that different from the views operating in all states with Republicans in office.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
So nice t o know that SOMETHING in the bill being defunded is on the right track. So much is abominable.
What’s stopping a full repeal of NCLB?
To Ohio Algebra II Teacher:
It is worth to repeat your excellent question:
“What’s stopping a full repeal of NCLB?”
It is just a reminder for all “Game changer” players that:
“What or who MAKES you, can BREAK you” is the UNIVERSAL LAW,
because we, human beings who accidentally or intentionally make any GOOD or BAD DEEDS, will surely ENJOY or SUFFER the consequences of our own ACTIONS as we console ourselves that it is our fates!
I do not believe in fate, but in our own action and our state of mind whether it is compassionate or cruel so that we will be happy or miserable in life and for life. Back2basic
Test scores are still being tied to teacher evaluations. This has to end. Now. I’d also like to see the end of common core anything, period. Looking at the “Common Core Regents” in New York is very depressing and completely devalues literature, in my humble opinion; English Language Arts is a complete misnomer.
Race to the Trough -as in a feed container heaped with taxpayer dollars. Cal it Obama’s version of No Corporation Left Behind.
What a colossal waste of money that could have been used to really help children.
And to think that the original Race to the Flop legislation was connected to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was meant to save our country from the Great Recession. So…..greed heads on Wall Street profit from screwing our economy…..then are judged to be “too big to fail”……leading to regular citizens bailing them out…….which eventually leaves us with the current looting of public schools -by corporations!
What??????
This is good news. However, the U.S. Department of Education is funded at $70B (!) per year. SIG grants are still available.
Diane,
I really do not think that defunding RttT should be conflated with repealing it.
One is not dependent on the other.
The battle still beats on . . . . . .
1Best news about education I’ve heard coming out of Washington in YEARS
RTTT was the result of a deal between Ted Kennedy and the Bush administration. Kennedy wanted a legacy on education so he made a deal with the devil. I’ll bet he is shaking in his grave from seeing the results if the deal.
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
I’m afraid my state will continue to make us race – and we won’t get anymore money or support.
The bottom line, Democrat or Republican, East coast, Mid or West, what happens in the classroom makes a difference. I have seen entire schools of kids tank the test because they were sad the Principal received a promotion. The legislators, Governors, and city politicians have no clue about school funding and the bureaucracy behind it. Give me local control of what goes on in the classroom and lets spend that county and state education oversight where it needs to be spent, in the classroom. The historic scorecard for federal programs is about a D- as it is. Fund our Regional Occupational Programs and help us get our kids to work after high school and after College. The system is built to enslave college students in unbelievable debt and not to channel them by their skills into a career that they can build a better life on. Don’t give them a test, help them build fulfilling futures