Race To The Top

[downtown]

While most of the attention in Washington has been on the Health Care debate, the economy, and political race handicapping, the Obama Administration has (kinda) quietly started what may be the biggest change in US Education policy since the Civil Rights Act and Title 1 funding.

I'm talkin' bout Race To The Top

In a nutshell, RttT is a*massive* ed grant program, to the tune of 4.35 Billion bucks. The money is dispersed on a highly competitive basis...states have to complete applications for funding, and the top handful will bring back the money. Sec.Duncan has already said that there will be "more losers than winners".

In order to "win", states have to dramatically change their education rules. You get the most "points" for your RttT application if you increase the number of charter schools you have, institute Merit Pay (or use test scores to judge teachers), improve data collection systems, and developing better tests. It also continues in a similar ideological vein to NCLB. For those of you who bemoaned that NCLB meant too much teaching to the test...RttT won't give any relief.

Some worry that RttT is just a huge shot in the arm to textbook publishing companies, charter school networks, and other Big Ed Business factions. Others, like Texas, refused to even apply because they rented "washington intrusion". Others think that the status quo has gotten so bad, that something big like RttT might just be what is needed to shake things up, 'especially in some of the lowest performing states.

The finalist states were just announced. I'll write more about this today because I barely see my students today...but what do you think?

 

[Cutlass]

At least their thinking of doing something. Will this help? I have no idea. But any move from the status quo has got to be worth trying.

 

[Mise]

I don't think more "teaching to the test" is going to help...

 

[RedRalph]

If I understand it, this is just more of US government trying to run public services as if they were private corporations.

 

[Cutlass]

No, and more privatization won't likely help either. Longer school years, the end of local property tax as funding, smaller class size, and more up to date materials, are probably the things that would help the most. But those are things that have too much opposition.

 

[downtown]

If I understand it, this is just more of US government trying to run public services as if they were private corporations.

Yeah, privatization and corporate governance are certainly the orders of the day with US school reform since 2000, and RttT keeps up that tradition. Some foundations, like the Gates Foundation, prob have more influence with poorer schools than their respective state DOE.

It has worked in a few places, but the biggest question is always the ability to scale working projects up. For Profit K12 schooling has mostly been a pretty catastrophic failure, and its pretty inaccurate to say that Charters/school choice IS THE answer. Where I live, creating a zillion different options has prob hurt more.

 

[Cheetah]

You're going through with an insufficiently implemented reform which includes changes to the education system that involves more testing to get better students?

I take some kind of sick comfort in knowing that while the US will join Norway and others in trying to further mess up education, the US has a worse initial position than we do.

 

[amadeus]

Throw more money at it! That always solves the problem, especially in education... geez, can't believe there are still dupes out there that fall for this nonsense!

 

[illram]

Not a fan of the idea of "teaching to the test" in general, so I'm not too excited about this.

On the other hand, are their realistic alternatives in such a humongous system? Is there merit to the idea that you do need some sort of objective bar to judge performance at? Is the problem the setting of the bar or the inaccuracy of what the results mean? (I.e. smart kids might not do well for reasons other than aptitude or lack thereof, and teachers might be good but just not getting good results from students, etc..)

 

[Kraznaya]

Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but, why should students have to suffer because their state governments are idiots?

 

[civ_king]

No, and more privatization won't likely help either. Longer school years, the end of local property tax as funding, smaller class size, and more up to date materials, are probably the things that would help the most. But those are things that have too much opposition.

I can learn perfectly fine with of 30 globes 30 show the USSR and and 26 show East and West Germany

Throw more money at it! That always solves the problem, especially in education... geez, can't believe there are still dupes out there that fall for this nonsense!

They aren't just putting money, the money is a carrot to lure them to change to try to make them better

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

It's a nice idea, but it's piecemeal. If you want to have universally high standards of education, you have to apply universal standards. Right now, each state has its own board of education with its own curriculum standards, and schools are funded largely on local taxes. So the poorer the neighborhood, the poorer the school, and the poorer the education, which leads to a cycle of each generation being unable to break the cycle of poverty. The ideal condition would be to federalize the schools, and have the federal government distribute funding on a fair basis, while mandating certain curriculum standards that would be based on graduating a productive and competitive workforce.

Current schools in the US have a curriculum based on notions from 100-150 years ago on what was important. They do not stress subject matter that has relevance to the 21st century, such as science and math, and instead waste time with gym, art, music, and other irrelevances. This has forced undergraduate education to pick up the slack and function more on remediation than on education. This is to say nothing of the occasional uproars over teaching of creationism. With problems like these, I cannot say that American schools have any set of standards, especially given how easily everyone is promoted.

 

[lovett]

I don't think more "teaching to the test" is going to help...

It's my understanding that, if properly analyzed, the results of well made tests amongst most age groups are actually very good indicators of how good a teacher is. That is to say, how much their students learn.

Given that it makes sense to bases pay in part on test results.

 

[downtown]

You're going through with an insufficiently implemented reform which includes changes to the education system that involves more testing to get better students?

I take some kind of sick comfort in knowing that while the US will join Norway and others in trying to further mess up education, the US has a worse initial position than we do.

The idea isn't to test more to get better students. The idea is to test more (and differently) so we can track what students know and don't know better. One of the big movements here is a push towards more data-driven decision making in schools.

Throw more money at it! That always solves the problem, especially in education... geez, can't believe there are still dupes out there that fall for this nonsense!

This is different from most money dumps because the money isn't really being spent on "stuff", like books or computers. It is supposed to go to things like data systems, new tests, staff development, or entirely new schools outside of the traditional public system.

Not a fan of the idea of "teaching to the test" in general, so I'm not too excited about this.

On the other hand, are their realistic alternatives in such a humongous system? Is there merit to the idea that you do need some sort of objective bar to judge performance at? Is the problem the setting of the bar or the inaccuracy of what the results mean? (I.e. smart kids might not do well for reasons other than aptitude or lack thereof, and teachers might be good but just not getting good results from students, etc..)

I shamelessly teach to the test, because the system provides incentives for doing so (and quite strong punishments for not doing so). I'd happily do it another way, but I dont know a better one either.

Current schools in the US have a curriculum based on notions from 100-150 years ago on what was important. They do not stress subject matter that has relevance to the 21st century, such as science and math, and instead waste time with gym, art, music, and other irrelevances. This has forced undergraduate education to pick up the slack and function more on remediation than on education. This is to say nothing of the occasional uproars over teaching of creationism. With problems like these, I cannot say that American schools have any set of standards, especially given how easily everyone is promoted.

A major part of RttT is to emphasize STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering and Math) in K12 education. Ironically, NCLB basically prohibited teaching science and tech to poor children.

I wouldn't say Art or Music are irrelevant though. Art has been a godsend for my classroom.

 

[Ayatollah So]

it makes sense to bases pay in part on test results.

Provided that
(A) merit pay is based on the ADVANCEMENT that students make under your teaching, not the absolute level they achieve. Pay should not be lower for teachers just because they start with lower-achieving students. And,
(B) tests should be wide-ranging and variable so as to preempt teaching to the test as much as possible.

I wouldn't say Art or Music are irrelevant though. Art has been a godsend for my classroom.

Motivating students to develop their minds and abilities is far more important than stuffing any fixed list of knowledge into their heads.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It sounds like the Department of Education is trying to bribe states to conform to their own opinions of what needs to be done by massively rewarding those which already do.

 

[Mise]

In Arwon's thread on social mobility, there was an OECD report that had a few things to say about raising educational standards in the West. It pointed out that starting kids at school earlier lead to higher performance among underprivileged kids. Tracking and grouping children by test scores at an early age, thereby separating the high performers from the low performers, reduces achievement of low performers without improving achievement of high performers; similarly, mixing rich kids with poor kids, and high achievers with low achievers, raises the performance of low achievers without reducing performance of high achievers.

More generally, just having kids in school for longer hours, or reducing the ridiculously long summer holiday, would make for the biggest improvements. To me, if they're gonna spend a few billion dollars on something, they could have spent it on that instead. (Though I am aware that a 4.35 billion doesn't buy very much extra teaching time...)

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

A major part of RttT is to emphasize STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering and Math) in K12 education. Ironically, NCLB basically prohibited teaching science and tech to poor children.

Why do we need a special federally funded program to encourage STEM? Why not just mandate all schools to focus on it?

I wouldn't say Art or Music are irrelevant though. Art has been a godsend for my classroom.

How relevant are they to the global economy, when in each case, 90% of the earnings come from less than 10% of the workforce? What that amounts to is that for every 10 kids that graduate, 1 will be a rock star and the other 9 will be starving artists. That may sound romantic but it won't achieve prosperity. Investment in industries that are appreciating, such as biotech, compsci, and engineering, would be the more useful.

 

[illram]

How relevant are they to the global economy, when in each case, 90% of the earnings come from less than 10% of the workforce? What that amounts to is that for every 10 kids that graduate, 1 will be a rock star and the other 9 will be starving artists. That may sound romantic but it won't achieve prosperity. Investment in industries that are appreciating, such as biotech, compsci, and engineering, would be the more useful.

I don't think art and gym and so on in High School or below is really about turning kids into little career Picassos. It's just about stimulating kids behavior and thinking in new ways. It's one of the few glimmers left in our education system of actually teaching kids something other than how to become nothing more than cogs. They will likely become cogs anyway, believe me. But the art and the music and the gym might give them something a little more "unique."

 

[downtown]

It sounds like the Department of Education is trying to bribe states to conform to their own opinions of what needs to be done by massively rewarding those which already do.

You're halfway correct. It does bribe states to conform (research has been mixed on some of this stuff), but a LOT of states have already pretty drastically changed how they operate.

Why do we need a special federally funded program to encourage STEM? Why not just mandate all schools to focus on it?

Thats prob unconstitutional.

How relevant are they to the global economy, when in each case, 90% of the earnings come from less than 10% of the workforce? What that amounts to is that for every 10 kids that graduate, 1 will be a rock star and the other 9 will be starving artists. That may sound romantic but it won't achieve prosperity. Investment in industries that are appreciating, such as biotech, compsci, and engineering, would be the more useful.

Because they give students the confidence they need to approach problems in math and science. We don't teach Art, Music, etc for content purposes, it is about developing the skills and problem solving strategies needed for other content areas.