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How President Obama Could Win the Election

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2012 //
64

By all accounts, the election of 2012 will be close.

For educators, the stakes are high.

Mitt Romney supports every kind of privatization, from charters to vouchers to full-time online schools, and he has no problem with for-profit schooling.

His agenda threatens the survival of that most basic of democratic institutions, the public school.

Educators supported President Obama when he ran in 2008. They enthusiastically embraced him as a true change agent, expecting that he would make major alterations to the noxious federal law No Child Left Behind.

But after his election, instead of calling for a major change in NCLB, he launched his Race to the Top, which builds on the flawed strategies of NCLB. Although President Obama has won the endorsement of the NEA and the AFT, many of the nation’s nearly four million teachers are discouraged by his policies. If they sit home or if they are lukewarm, he could lose the election.

We can’t let that happen.

So I am doing my part by writing a short speech that would win educators back. If he uses this speech, he would win the election. He could incorporate the following into his acceptance speech at the Convention in Charlotte or use it on a subsequent occasion:

“I want to address a few words to the nation’s hard-working teachers and principals, to its dedicated leaders and school board members. You hold the future in your hands. Your work will determine whether America is a great society, a just society and a creative society in the future.

“I know you have been disappointed in my approach to education. I know that teacher morale is at a low ebb. I know there is far too much pressure to teach to the test. That degrades the joy of learning.

“I know that most of that pressure comes from mistakes we made when we launched a ‘Race to the Top.’

“I know now we were wrong.

“Judging teachers by the test scores of their students is wrong. I understand now that this method doesn’t work. I apologize to you for letting it happen.

“You know that I have spoken out repeatedly against teaching to the test. I would not want this for my children, and you should not want it for yours or the children in your care. This is mis-education.

“Our country is now spending billons of dollars on testing and test preparation that should be spent in the classrooms of America, bringing back the 300,000 teachers who lost their jobs. reducing class sizes, restoring libraries, and providing services directly to children.

“Our nation must out-innovate the world and it won’t happen by picking a bubble on a standardized test. It will only happen if we encourage critical thinking, free inquiry, and a sense of wonder and imagination in every classroom.

“We want our students to lead the world in their love of learning. We want them to be the best in creativity. We want them to know history and foreign languages, science and mathematics, literature and geography. We want them to rexperience the liberating power of the arts. And we want them to have physical education every single day so that they are healthy and fit.

“One more thing. I realize that we were wrong to require states to allow more privately-managed schools as a condition of getting money from the Race to the Top.

“Through our mistakes, we inadvertently unleashed a movement to privatize our nation’s public schools and to turn them into for-profit centers for equity investors and technology corporations.

“This is unacceptable. Folks on the right have wanted to privatize our schools for half a century. We can’t let that happen.

“When we look around the world, we see that the top-performing nations have great public systems. We do not want to revive a dual school system in our nation’s cities, dividing up our public funds between a weakened public system and aggressive charter chains.

“And so I am directing my Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as of this day to cancel the Race to the Top. The fact is that learning is not accomplished in a “race.” Races are fine on the sports field, but not in the classroom. Learning is accomplished because of the patient effort of students, teachers, principals, parents, and communities working together.

“From this moment on, the U.S. Department of Education will dedicate its efforts to improving public education; to supporting equality of educational opportunity; to enforcing the civil rights of our students; to funding the districts where need is greatest; to strengthening the research and information that we need to upgrade our schools; and to recognizing that the primary responsibility for reform lies with the states and districts that are closest to the problems.

“Yes, we must improve public education. But we must do it in ways that make our communities and our democracy stronger. We must do it in ways that respect the dedication of our educators. And we must do it in ways that recognize that many children and families need extra help because of the burdens of poverty. We must do what we can to lift those burdens and to bring about the greatest of American goals: equality of educational opportunity.

Categories Obama, Race to the Top, Romney, Mitt

About That Meeting at the White House

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
11

I posted the previous report about a meeting at the White House with Pennsylvania leaders because I thought you should read it. I felt frustrated reading it. I met at the White House in June 2010 with Roberto Rodriguez, Rahm Emanual and Melody Barnes, who was then the head of the Domestic Policy Council. I said all the same things. All they wanted to talk about was how Race to the Top would fix everything, the $1 billion they planned to spend on merit pay, and the sure success of tying teacher evaluation to test scores. I told them how disheartened teachers were by their whole approach, that they had aligned themselves with the GOP agenda. I warned that they would lose the 2010 elections if they didn’t get a different agenda. I told them that what they were doing would not succeed and would have terrible consequences. They didn’t listen.

The issue with the Obama team is whether they do anything differently.

Now they are pushing Race to the Top down to the district level. They refuse to accept that Race to the Top is no different from what the GOP would do, except for vouchers. I am glad that Larry Feinberg made that point.

The fact that you met with the “office of outreach” shows that this was a meeting intended to give you the impression that they were listening.

What matters is not that they invited you to the White House. Not that they heard you out.

What matters is will they do anything differently?

What signal, if any, will the White House give to show that they understand that Race to the Top is an extension of NCLB? It is NCLB on steroids.

If a Republican President had proposed Race to the Top, exactly as it is, Democrats would have fought it, made the President modify it, insisted on Congressional hearings before letting it go forward, demanded evidence before it was implemented.

None of that happened.

When I met Arne Duncan in the fall of 2009, just the two of us, I asked him why he was going around the country to campaign for RTTT with Newt Gingrich. His answer: “Because the President told me to.”

My advice: Judge them and all politicians by what they do, not what they say.

Categories Obama

A Teacher Writes the President about Merit Pay

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2012 //
7

A teacher in Boynton Beach sent me a letter he wrote to President Obama in 2010, trying to explain why merit pay doesn’t work. Obviously, no one at the White House or the U.S. Department of Education agrees with him. Since 2010, matters have gotten even worse, especially in Florida, where the Legislature mandated merit pay and provided no funding for it. No one at the White House or the U.S. Department of Education or the Florida legislature or any of the conservative governors seems to know or care that merit pay is not supported by evidence. They just like it, and it doesn’t matter that it never works.

Dear President Obama,

It appears my worst fears on the issue of teacher merit pay are now beginning to be realized – as a direct result of your administration’s general support and Race to the Top incentives for the concept. As such, I am re-sending this letter, originally sent the 2nd week of August, 2009 and again six weeks later due to no response. I believe the importance of this argument and its growing urgency justify my doing so.

Please allow me to begin by expressing my great, heartfelt appreciation for all you have undertaken and done so far in your still-young administration – particularly in these urgent and challenging times.

With this said, I feel conflicted – and, as an inner-city public high school teacher, compelled – to express my concern for one of your educational reform proposals. As I understand it, your announced support for a teacher merit pay plan is, I feel, misplaced. The concept of teacher merit pay is itself fundamentally ill conceived and corrosive in its societal, professional, and personal potential effects.

Please let me explain why. In its simplest and most positive reading, merit pay offers monetary rewards and public recognition to teachers of outstanding, measurable excellence and, possibly, effort. Since the number of teachers so honored will inevitably be limited in any given year, the program will create a much larger pool of non-recipients, many of whom will be hard working, praise-worthy teachers, who will automatically be labeled, at best, “average,” and at worst, “inferior,” or “substandard.” You, in fact, note and apparently endorsed this perception when speaking of educational reforms generally and this plan specifically, as you said in March of 2009: “We need to make sure our students have the teacher they need to be successful. That means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom.”

There are teachers who are incompetent or ineffective; I agree that they should be removed. Fair ways to assess such performance already exist. I doubt there is a school district anywhere without an established procedure for removing underperforming teachers. A teacher merit pay program, however, by its inescapable “praise some, condemn the rest” dynamic, is an improper and unfair method of doing this. Judiciously standardizing and enforcing the process of identifying and removing underperforming teachers is, I believe, a worthy and honest federal Department of Education goal. A merit pay plan as a means to do this is neither.

Because a merit pay program will create the impression among parents and students alike that there are a few good teachers, and the rest are inferior, the recognized teachers will be in greatest demand, not only at their schools but at other intra-district schools, inter-district schools, or even other states or organizations. A bidding war for such recognized teachers would no doubt be good for those teachers,

but a potential disaster for their school and community, especially if such teachers leave. Moreover, you immediately put every other teacher in an untenable position. What are they to say to those parents and students who now find they have to settle for those “inferior” educators? A plan that fosters a symbiotic relationship between school and community goals is, I believe, a worthy DOE goal. A merit pay program will do the opposite.

Professionally, the actual process of determining who deserves the merit pay is problematic in every respect. Whatever criteria are ultimately used, with whatever weight or priority assigned to each, some group of trained, objective and competent individuals must devote time and energy to the process – time and energy that, one can argue, should be better spent.

Insofar as the actual assessment goes, various methods – both objective and subjective – exist, each with their own advantages and shortcomings. Ultimately, however, it will almost inevitably include some form of student testing. Few teachers, administrators, parents or students would welcome yet more mandated testing. It has been a profoundly sad and questionable effect of the No Child Left Behind Act that mandated testing has gradually displaced – and sometimes altogether eliminated – virtually all other educational goals and their affiliated programs. Many of these endangered and terminated programs offer individualized student options for success; toward workforce ready skill- sets in career areas the student shows an interest, ability and desire in –frequently involving academically empowered technical training. Indeed, as authors Kenneth Gray and Edwin Herr expose in their book, Other Ways to Win, and Thomas Freidman reinforces in The World Is Flat, the virtually exclusive educational focus preparing all students for a four-year college degree leaves many students behind. In fact, the authors suggest, workforce areas of high demand today are increasingly underserved as a direct result.

I am heartened that past comments you have made suggest your awareness of some of the NCLB program’s dubious effects. The truth is that standardized tests, however valid, in no way connote standardized classroom challenges for the teacher. How then is a program to account for – and equalize for the sake of fairly assessing teacher merit – the wholly disparate nature of classes even across the day for the same teacher, let alone the myriad combinations and differences otherwise? Until a merit pay plan’s “hows” and “whys” are understood; until it demonstrates it recognizes and respects the distinct conditions under which teachers teach, you cannot expect teachers to endorse it. I can only hope you demonstrate the esteem for teacher unions that you have claimed you have for teachers. Their notable absence of input in the NCLB program’s design and mechanics correlates directly with the current teacher and administrator lack of support for, and frustration with it today.

In a July, 2008 speech to the National Education Association, regarding your support for merit pay you said, “Now I know this wasn’t necessarily the most popular part of my speech last year, but I said it then and I’m saying it again now because it’s what I believe and I will always be an honest partner to you in the White House.” With the vast majority of teachers against the merit pay idea, a consensus among partners is badly needed. A drive to collate and assess our nation’s teachers’ greatest local pressures and challenges could be a DOE goal toward creating such a consensus. A merit pay plan that will exacerbate teachers’ pressures and challenges will divide, not unite us.

On the personal level, a merit pay plan risks humiliation, frustration, invalidation, and dissention and rancor among the many for the benefit of the few. The attrition rate among new teachers is probably the highest among any professional group, not because they have been deemed incompetent, but because the effort, energy, time and work they give; the grief and thanklessness they receive quickly burn people out, and certainly aren’t worth the pay they get for it. Submitting to a federally sanctioned stigma of merit “non-recognition”, one might be able to tell oneself, does not necessarily mean I am a failure or my performance is sub-standard. But it surely offers no prospect of validation.

Teachers are taught that a student’s self-image matters. I would suggest this is true of adults and teachers too. And human nature being what it is, where a merit pay process perceives an individual as exemplary, but a number of their coworkers do not, dissonance and bad feelings are unavoidable.

Teaching is also a learning process. Many young teachers, some of whom undoubtedly have enormous potential, capitulate to the difficulties and leave early. Merit pay will only hasten their departure and further challenge all teachers’ perspectives.

For each of the reasons stated above I urge you to reconsider your support for teacher merit pay. I am aware my concern may be viewed as premature, since no actual plan has yet been publically proposed. One is anticipated, though, based on your oft-repeated support for it. As a teacher I understand that we, with administrators, are the system’s “front line”. As such, we answer to the rules, regulations and processes expected of us. But accountability, the current touchstone for education generally and teachers specifically, is not value-neutral. One is never “held accountable” for success or any positive outcome. Inasmuch the NCLB heralds “the arrival of accountability” to education, it insidiously suggests the system has heretofore been negligent. Cast in such light, an adversarial dynamic is created among the various players, with teachers again on the front line. Problematic assessment programs are themselves never held to account for either the pall they cast over the system or for the dysfunctional dynamics they foster; we teachers, almost exclusively, are.

Of all the ideas I’ve heard put forth for reforming and improving our public education system, none strike me as more prescient or promising than yours for universal preschool programs. As Geoffrey Canada has demonstrated with Harlem Children’s Zone and you have said, “research shows that early experiences shape whether a child’s brain develops strong skills for future learning, behavior and success. Without a strong base on which to build, children, particularly disadvantaged children, will be behind long before they reach kindergarten.” If a merit pay plan is to be mandated, it should be put in place only after the universal preschool program you propose has become the norm. Many of the students at my high school, a large number of whom are children of recently arrived immigrants, come without the strong base you describe. As a result, my school, as assessed by the system, faltered this past year (2008-2009). We now face the full impact of the accounting’s consequences. We will now narrow our focus even more to teach to the tests, and in the process lose the educational forest for the trees.

President Obama, I believe in your goals for our nation. For improving our educational system, however, teacher merit pay is completely counterproductive.

Thanking you for your consideration, I remain Sincerely Yours,

Martin Ginsberg martygraaa@yahoo.com

P.S. In Florida, Republican sponsored and partisan-passed Senate Bill 6 and its companion House Bill created great turmoil and stress – while exacerbating the “adversarial dynamic” mentioned above. Governor Crist vetoed it today as the Republican Party chair in the Florida Senate vowed to reintroduce it. It appears Georgia is now in the process of following suit. 

Categories Florida, Merit pay, Obama, U.S. Department of Education

Do Educators Have a Political Party?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2012 //
39

Paul Thomas of Furman University says that educators have no political party, because no political party today supports educators.

The Republican party is downright hostile to public education and to teachers.

Romney’s education agenda calls for privatization.

It is the most radical rightwing document of any major political party in my memory (and I have a long memory).

Romney would be a disaster for American public education, for the schools that enroll almost 90% of the nation’s children.

His agenda is not conservative, because he wants to destroy a cherished part of our American tradition: free public education.

His agenda is radical.

But what of the Democrats?

Thomas nails down the Obama-Duncan routine of good cop-bad cop as well as the double-speak surrounding Race to the Top.

When the public sector unions and public education were getting a thrashing in Wisconsin in the spring of 2011, neither Obama nor Duncan showed up. Instead, they went to Miami to join with uber-privatizer Jeb Bush to celebrate a school that allegedly had been turned around by firing the staff (no reporter bothered to follow up and notice that the school in question was still on a list to be closed because it remained one of the state’s lowest performing schools even after the staff was fired).

Obama and Duncan repeatedly echo Republican themes about education, pushing charter schools, merit pay, firing teachers and principals as a “reform” strategy, etc.

It’s telling that when Romney announced his agenda, the Obama camp responded by saying, “we are doing that already, just look how much Governor Chris Christie likes our education program.” Pathetic.

I know that Obama gave a speech the other day saying all the things he should have been saying and doing for the past four years (but hasn’t). Is the change real or just more “reformer” rhetoric?

We will see. Actions speak louder than words.

Categories Obama, Romney, Mitt

Will the Real President Obama Please Stand Up? UPDATE

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2012 //
23

Josh Greenman of the New York Daily News writes today that President Obama has been terrific on education reform issues: he has challenged teachers’ unions, pushed for merit pay, encouraged the expansion of charter schools, and used billions of dollars in stimulus funds (via Race to the Top) to promote an agenda that either President Bush would envy. In its editorials, the Daily News has stridently defended charters, testing, and accountability, and has led the charge against the teachers’ union. The billionaire owner of the Daily News, Mort Zuckerman, is on the board of the Broad Foundation, which avidly promotes school closings and privatization.

So imagine Josh’s disappointment that the President is now kowtowing to those teachers unions and saying that more money will solve the problems. He writes, “So count me disappointed that Obama is campaigning for reelection with education rhetoric that is ripped right out of a dusty old Democratic Party playbook.” Wow. A Democratic President actually sounding like a Democrat on education.

Josh wonders why the President doesn’t stick up for his strong testing-and-accountabiilty and school choice agenda. Why doesn’t he boldly admit that his program is not all that different from Romney’s? (There are two big issues where they differ: Romney supports vouchers, Obama doesn’t; Obama wants to help students with their crushing student loans, Romney doesn’t.) UPDATE: (One other major difference: Romney thinks anyone should be allowed to teach, without any certification or standards, and you can bet that he will continue the Republican assault on teachers’ unions.)

Josh implies that the President is reaching out to teachers and their unions and supporters of public education because–guess what?–it is an election year. With a few more eloquent speeches, maybe he can persuade them that his agenda has some resemblance to the traditional Democratic view that schools should have adequate resources, that teachers have a right to bargain collectively, that the federal government has a responsibility to promote equity (not competition), and that school choice is the rightwing plan to privatize the public schools.

Well, it is good to hear the rhetoric. That’s a change. We can always hope that he means it. But that, of course, would mean ditching Race to the Top and all that absurd rightwing rhetoric about how schools can fix poverty, all by themselves.

Categories Obama, Poverty, Privatization, Race to the Top, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

Strange Bedfellows

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2012 //
32

A reader this morning said I should make a clear distinction between what the Republicans and the Democrats say/do about education.

I wish I could.

Race to the Top is no different from No Child Left Behind, other than the timetable.

It shares the same assumptions that testing, choice, and data are the magic keys to the kingdom of 100% proficiency.

The waivers to NCLB are more of the same data-mania.

A reader sent me this survey from Governor Scott Walker’s education department. Testing and data, plus charters and vouchers.

That’s the combination that won a waiver.

Why doesn’t Arne Duncan ever speak out against what is happening in Louisiana? in Tennessee? in Florida? in Ohio? in Indiana?

Why doesn’t Obama?

Why is there no prominent Democratic voice standing up against privatization?

Strange bedfellows.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Obama, Ohio

Rhee Supports Republican Candidates in Florida

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
25

I can’t understand Arne Duncan and President Obama’s infatuation with Michelle Rhee.

Rhee says she is raising $1 billion, and we know that she is spending in state after state–to support Republican candidates.

In Wisconsin, a swing state, she gave to Republicans.

She gives to Republicans because they are likeliest to support her anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda.

She just gave money to some Republicans in Florida, which is a swing state for President Obama.

Can anyone explain the President’s and Secretary’s fondness for this woman who is supporting those who will fight Obama?

 

 

Categories Duncan, Arne, Obama, Rhee, Michelle

The Failure of Bloomberg’s New Schools Strategy

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
14

The New York Daily News (owned by billionaire Mort Zuckerman, who also owns U.S. News & World Report) often runs editorials applauding the “reforms” of the Bloomberg administration. Its editorials are anti-union, anti-teacher, and consistently supportive of the policy of closing schools that have low test scores.

But the New York Daily News has excellent reporters who don’t follow the editorial line. They just report the news. And the story today is stunning.

The headline summarizes the story: “Bloomberg’s New Schools Have Failed Thousands of City Students: Did More Poorly on State Reading Tests than Older Schools with Similar Poverty Rates.”

This analysis shows the abject failure of the policy that has been the centerpiece of the Bloomberg reforms for the past decade.

Closing schools and replacing them with new schools is also the centerpiece of the Obama-Duncan “turnaround” strategy.

Here is an excerpt from the news story. Note that the grandmother of a student in Brooklyn makes more sense than the six-figure bureaucrats who run the New York City Department of Education. Tanya King of Brooklyn for Chancellor!

…When The News examined 2012 state reading test scores for 154 public elementary and middle schools that have opened since Mayor Bloomberg took office, nearly 60% had passing rates that were lower than older schools with similar poverty rates.

The new schools also showed poor results in the city’s letter-grade rating system, which uses a complicated formula to compare schools with those that have similar demographics.

Of 133 new elementary and middle schools that got letter grades last year, 15% received D’s and F’s — far more than the city average, where just 10% of schools got the rock-bottom grades.

“It’s crazy,” said Tanya King, who helped wage a losing battle to save Brooklyn’s Academy of Business and Community Development, where her grandson was a student.

The school opened in 2005, then closed in 2012.

Instead of closing struggling schools and replacing them with something else that doesn’t work, King says, the city should help with extra resources to save the existing schools.

“You have the same children in the school,” she said. “What’s going to be the difference? Put in the services that are going to make the school better.”

Her grandson Donnovan Hicks, 11, will be transferred next fall for the seventh-grade into another Bloomberg-created school, Brooklyn’s Peace Academy, where just 13% passed the state reading exams this spring.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bloomberg-new-schools-failed-thousands-city-students-article-1.1119406#ixzz21M3o9hBP

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NYC, Obama

Common Core Standards: A Boon for Edu-Biz

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2012 //
15

Whether the Common Core standards are good or bad, one thing that is clear is that they have opened up multiple opportunities for entrepreneurs.

The textbook industry is retooling, at least adding stickers that say their products are aligned with the Common Core.

Pearson is developing a complete curriculum package in mathematics and reading, for almost every grade, assisted by the Gates Foundation. Children in some district will be able to take their lessons from Pearson products from the isearliest years right through to high school graduation.

Consultants are standing by, ready to sell products and services to school districts.

Here is one interesting list of what is available. There are many more.

What is happening now was not unexpected. Indeed, it is the intended result, it was planned for, hoped for, envisioned.

Joanne Weiss, who helped design Race to the Top and is now chief of staff to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, described the plan:

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.

Weiss spent many years as an edu-entrpreneur, engaged in the design, development and marketing of products for the education industry.

We don’t know yet whether Common Core standards will improve the education of America’s children. But of this we can be sure: They will be good for the education industry.

Diane

Categories Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Obama, Pearson, Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education

A Letter from Jill Biden to You

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2012 //
40

Some readers received an email signed by Jill Biden. They asked what I thought of her message. They asked me how I would respond if I were in their place.

The letter says:

Dear  –

I’ve been a teacher in public schools and community colleges for more than 30 years.

Being an educator is about more than teaching — it’s about instilling confidence. There is no better moment than when I see a student realize that she can do whatever she sets her mind to do. I’m sure you know that feeling, too.

President Obama knows what that’s like, too. He understands that improving the education system takes all of us, and that teachers are absolutely critical to those efforts. He listens when teachers explain the challenges they face in overcrowded and underfunded classrooms. And he knows that education is key to a healthy economy and a strong country. That’s why he’s working so hard to improve our schools.

You are receiving this email because you have told the campaign you also work in education.

Today, I’m proud to invite you to join me as a member of Educators for Obama, a new group of supporters dedicated to re-electing the President, who was once a college professor himself. Sign up and get connected with the Educators for Obama community today.

President Obama has made education a priority. He is giving states the flexibility they need to strengthen their schools and end the practice of teaching to the test. When states were cutting their budgets and laying off teachers, he took action to keep more than 400,000 educators in the classrooms where they were needed. He’s proposed competitive funding to make sure teachers and educators like us get the respect we deserve. And he’s made federal student loan payments more affordable by ensuring public school teachers who make their payments on time will have their remaining debt forgiven after 10 years.

Our students deserve a president who is committed to their education — and to the teachers who help them succeed.

As a member of Educators for Obama, you’ll be kept in the loop about important news and events. We’ll also provide you with the resources you need to organize your friends and colleagues in support of the President.

So join teachers, principals, educational professionals, and me, and stand with President Obama this November:

http://my.barackobama.com/Join-Educators-for-Obama

Thanks,

Jill

Of course, everyone should write whatever they believe.

This is what I would say.

Dear Jill,

Since you are an experienced educator, I know you can sympathize with my plight. I admire President Obama and remain grateful for his work in providing stimulus dollars to prevent budget cuts in 2009-2010. That meant a lot to me and to fellow educators.

However, I am surprised that you think that Race to the Top has introduced “flexibility” or that “competitive funding” (i.e. Race to the Top) gave “respect” to educators or that Race to the Top will “end the practice of teaching to the test.” None of this is true, and I assume that someone in the Department of Education has not informed you accurately about the negative effects of Race to the  Top on educators and our nation’s schools. 

Race to the Top has made “teaching to the test” even more important than No Child Left Behind. Because of RTTT, my state now ties teachers’ evaluations to student test scores. Because of RTTT, many states are passing laws to remove any protection for teachers’ freedom to teach, as it will be easier to fire teachers for any reason or no reason. Because of RTTT, my job and that of other teachers and principals requires that we teach to the test.

My state was lauded by Secretary Duncan for opening more privately managed charter schools, which takes funding away from the public schools, so we now have larger classes and fewer resources to help the neediest children, who are not welcomed by the charter schools. So, yes, there is overcrowding and underfunding, and the diversion of public funds to charter schools and vouchers is one cause of those conditions. 

As this terrible movement to dismantle public education and to reduce the status of teachers to at-will employees gathers momentum, I have not heard either President Obama or Secretary Duncan speak out forcefully against it. I have not heard either of them denounce the legislation that hurts our nation’s public schools. Instead, Secretary Duncan has given federal funds and plaudits to some of the states that are enacting the most toxic legislation.

I voted for President Obama and Vice-President Biden with enthusiasm in 2008. I am certainly not attracted to Romney, whose ideas are even worse for educators and public schools than Race to the Top.

But I wanted you to understand why I and so many other educators are disappointed in the education record of the Obama administration. It is likely to be a close election, and the Obama team needs our votes. I remain hopeful that the President will eliminate Race to the Top. Words will not be enough to persuade educators that this administration is on their side. 

Yours truly,
Categories Education Reform, Obama, Race to the Top
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