How New York Could Lose by Winning

City Journal ^ | 03/05/10 | Marcus A. Winters

[TigerLikesRooster]

Marcus A. Winters

How New York Could Lose by Winning

The state doesn’t deserve a dollar in Race to the Top funds.

5 March 2010

Surprise! Education secretary Arne Duncan announced this week that New York is a finalist in the first round of the Race to the Top (RttT) grant competition, the Obama administration initiative that will reward states with federal education dollars if they adopt a range of reforms. The good news is that the state is still in the running for up to $700 million in funding, money that would help fill some immediate budget gaps. The bad news is that winning would set education reform in the state back years.

According to Department of Education guidelines, states improve their chances of getting RttT funds by adopting policies like merit pay, using student test scores to evaluate teachers, and eliminating caps on charter schools. States submitted applications in January, and an expert panel has been evaluating the proposals according to the stated RttT criteria ever since. The panel has whittled the list down to 16 finalists; now it’s up to Duncan to decide which states will receive grant money.

Until the finalists were announced, RttT had been a clear success: without allocating a single dollar, the competition had spurred several states to adopt a series of promising reforms. Many states pushed these reforms through quickly, fearing that if they dawdled, they would be left out in the cold. This week’s announcement offers the first real information we have about how the administration is evaluating applications.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[ronnie raygun]

MORE MONEY IN THE TOILET, PUBLIC EDUCATION HAS TERMINAL CANCER THERE IS NO HOPE

[sergeantdave]

The big mistake the Founders made was not burning New York city to the ground. Every bitch there was flipping up their skirts to every Tory or red coat who came along. Now we have Chuck Schumer, the New York Times and CBS as a result.