Race to the Flop

While sitting in traffic the other morning, I heard a brief story on NPR about one of Obama's education-reform tactics called "Race to the Top Fund" (I'm calling it RTF for short). States can apply for funds from this program if they are showing aggressive reform in four, main areas which you can read about here under "Program Description" towards the bottom of the page. Seems a bit generic to me. Aside from being difficult to navigate, the website is lacking clear and helpful information that simply maps out the who, what, where, when, why and how of RTF. The application is 103 pages long and must be verified by the governor of the applying state.

From what I can gather, this program is heavily based on gains: percentage increases in student performance, at-risk students/schools making significant improvement, standards-based assessments that measure student success, highly effective teachers and principals who create/implement/encourage these gains, etc. There is no mention of community, family, parent, or guardian involvement which, from my experience, is the pressing issue. Without this involvement, your attempts to have a massive body of students achieve "success" (however the govt. describes it) are futile. I think the majority of the community must be invested in the education of its children in order for the students to do so. We are still so segregated...it is typical for middle and upper-middle class, white children to be more proficient than African-American children. Drive around your city; it's easy to see. And speaking of segregation, I would like to know who decided to name this program "Race to the Top". Sure, they mean race as in speed; but considering the reality of the public school system + it's racial divide, it's such an unfortunate word to use in this circumstance. Dumb, dumb, dumb.


It is infuriating to hear about programs like RTF because the steps that schools are expected to take in order to apply lead to a dead end. The heavy focus on percentages of "standards-based curriculum" and "standards-based assessments" is insignificant when the curriculum and assessment processes are flawed. For example, a low-achieving school could, in the eyes of the government, meet their Adequate Yearly Progress numbers while more than half of the students may still be deficient in the subject areas for which they were tested. Let's say the number of students reading on-level at Lion Elementary is 15%. In order for Lion to meet AYP, they must show a 20% increase in students reading on-level which means the other 65% of the students remain deficient. Just because a school goes from an "F" to an "A" doesn't mean that all of the students magically caught up with everyone else in the district/state. Sure, there's progress; but this emphasis on scores (and how those tests are scored/who actually scores them is a whole other issue that I won't discuss now) is deceiving. It crops out so many other contributing factors that could aid student achievement.  The government is taking the place of the family because govt. doesn't know how to repair what is so severely damaged. In turn, teachers, principals, numbers, scores, and the like are held responsible for measuring very limited definitions of things like growth and progress. They are hypnotized by these lines of numbers and scores (which now equal dollar signs), failing to see that the answer and their biggest ally lies beyond the schoolyard fence.