THE PLANK NOVEMBER 12, 2009
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Today, the Department of Education released its final application rules for the much-touted Race to the Top (RTTT) program. Next year, $4.35 billion in competitive RTTT grants will be doled out among the states based on their commitment to education reform and innovation. The new rules governing who will qualify for the money are drawing some praise. A New York Times article published this morning quotes union presidents, think tank leaders, governors, and school district chancellors as being generally pleased with the guidelines, which, after being released in draft form in late summer, garnered comments from some 1,600 people. Other education experts, however, are criticizing the rules for watering down RTTT's reform agenda.
A few highlights from the final guidelines:
--Broad visions clarified: The Department added a new category called "State Success Factors" to the guidelines. This component demands that each state clearly and fully articulate its reform agenda and demonstrate that it can get buy-in from local groups (like unions and boards of education). “It became clear that a lot of states were treating [the criteria] as a checklist. There was no big picture,” Joanne Weiss, the Department's RTTT director, tells EdWeek. “Now this is where they build their case.”
--Teachers matter most: Applications will be scored on a 500-point system, and the reform priority with the most weight (138 points) is improving teacher quality, which I wrote about after attending a conference on the issue just last week. Among other things, states must develop teacher evaluation systems that "take into account data on student growth (as defined in this notice) as a significant factor"--or, in other words, tie student achievement to assessments of a teacher's effectiveness.
--Good news for the national standards movement?: States wishing to receive RTTT money are encouraged to adopt common K-12 standards by August 2, 2010. Those that "cannot adopt a common set of K-12 standards by this date will be evaluated based on the extent to which they demonstrate commitment and progress toward adoption of such standards by a later date in 2010." But the development of these common standards counts for only 40 points in the overall scoring of applications.
--Charters? Not necessarily: In response to complaints from some reviewers that the initial RTTT rules focused too heavily on charter schools as vehicles for change, the Department will now assess how well states and districts enable "innovative, autonomous public schools … other than charter schools." N.C. Governor Bev Perdue tells the NYT, "We like charters in North Carolina, but we like other methods of innovation, too. So I can see that Secretary Duncan listened to us, and that’s phenomenal."
But other response to the rules aren't as positive as Perdue's. Some people see omissions and loopholes, while others see too much structure. Andy Smarick of the Fordham Institute worries on the think tank's blog that "the increased weight now given to 'multiple measures' in teacher evaluations" could "mean that student performance data—the real reform element—might get crowded out." He also points out that "[a] section on performance pay, tenure reform, and teacher dismissals fails to even reference union contracts. In most places (and in all major cities), you simply can’t address any of these issues without fundamentally altering collective bargaining agreements." (He's right--archaic union contracts, which I've written about, can't be ignored in the push for better teachers.) On the flip side, Amy Wilkins of Education Trust tells EdWeek that the rules are so clear-cut and carefully quantified that there is "no incentive for states to be particularly bold."
The various reactions to the RTTT guidelines remind me of the Goldilocks fairy tale: Depending on who you ask, they're too big, too small, or just right. The first round of applications is due on January 19, and money won't start flowing until the spring. So it'll be months before we know exactly how well these rules fit, and fulfill, the country's desperate need for education reform.
2 comments
Do we know that "teachers matter most," in the sense that they and their contracts and unions are the main cause of all of our education woes? Thinking about it from the arm chair for two minutes, one might suppose that the real picture is more complicated than that, and that students, teachers, adminsitrators, school board members, social environments, educational programs and curriculums, capacity to provide one-on-one or otherwise tailored attention to students, all might have something to do with that end product for which teachers are apparently solely responsible. Seyward wrote in the linked post that "Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the nation's largest teachers' unions, and a task force member, has called the report [regarding teacher 'effectiveness'] 'disrespectful.' In a letter to the task force's leadership, she said its work 'has focused almost exclusively on how teachers need to change rather than how the system and all its actors need to change.'" Well, what about that? I know that there are bad, lazy, and/or burned-out teachers, as there are bad, lazy, and/or burned-out everythings -- including cops, firefighters, social workers, and all manner of unionized public employees. I object to -- and, yes, find extremely condescending and "disrespectful" -- the now popular tendency to boil all of our education issues down to, "Those lazy gaddamn teachers with their teamster contracts." It's a glib and offensive reduction of an *obviously* complex issue. Much as "tort reform" means "caps," and "medical malpractice reform" means "caps," "education reform" has come to mean "fire teachers." I'm not saying that these teacher effectiveness concepts shouldn't be part of the picture, and I think that they can be done right. What I object to is the scapegoating -- the exclusive focus on teachers as the source of everything that's wrong with education in this country. If I were Weingarten, I too would be tired of hearing about how my members -- the professionals on the front lines, who have, in many cases, an impossible job that pays relatively little -- are the culprits. I might prefer to hear a "thank you very much" once in a while.
- jhildner1
November 12, 2009 at 5:32pm
jhildnert: Thank you very much. When I was a kid, back when Amenhotep was the pharaoh, teachers taught what came to be regarded as an antiquated curriculum by methods that came to be regarded as antiquated methods. They were underpaid, but they were respected, and the kids they taught built the most successful society in the history of the world. Most of the time, back then, if a teacher reported that a student was not performing up to his, or, more rarely, her, ability, the parents ( back then parents tended to be plural) were inclined to give that view some credence. Long gone. Back then, some parents worried that the curriculum wasn't sufficiently challenging for their prodigy. Rarely, did they fear for the prodigy's safety in the school. The schools then reflected the society; they still do. Then discipline was a normal expectation; in most schools, most homes, and in adult behavior. Long gone. Now the over-achievers are perceived as under-challenged victims; the under-achievers are over-challenged victims. Discipline is no longer an honored, or expected, trait. Can it possibly be that we have got it wrong: The over-achievers can't reach their full potential without being taught discipline; the under-achievers can't achieve anything without discipline; and the teachers can't teach anything without discipline. What do we expect of our teachers? Liberators of the privileged? Guards of the non- privileged? Is order no longer an agenda item?
- lsernoff
November 12, 2009 at 11:20pm