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DOE names 16 'Race' finalists

March 4, 2010 By

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia are finalists in the first round of  “Race to the Top” funding: Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee. The winners will be chosen in April, and a second round of applications accepted in June.

Some weak applications made the cut, notes Eduwonk.

Some states with good apps here but OH and NY is not a great sign…and IL and CO were arguably bubble states at best and not sure what SC means given how out of step they are with parts of the administration’s agenda.

If too many states get grants, it’s going to look like the kindergarten race at Ravinia School in the 1958: Prizes for all, including those who run diagonally. (And, yes, I ran diagonally and slowly but got the same green “participation” ribbon as my classmates.)

Update: Edspresso wonders why so many charter-restricting states made the finals.

California lifted its ban on the use of test data to evaluate teachers but the Golden State didn’t make it. DC and Florida, along with Colorado and Louisiana, might just be the only reformist states that made the final list. And now that it’s clear that a strong charter law or performance pay system doesn’t seem to matter for the competition, state policymakers can breath a sigh of relief that they don’t have to do any heavy lifting to get or stay in the game, just hire a smart team of consultants to create convincing charts and use flowery language. Read a little of Illinois’ application. It seems to be written entirely in the future tense.

Race To The Top is a “doomed bribery scheme,” says Daniel Willingham.

Flypaper’s Andy Smarick calls the list of 16 a major disappointment. He was hoping for five finalists or even three.

The list of 16 is padded, writes Tom Carroll of Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability. Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee are highly competitive, Colorado, Georgia and Delaware are competitive and the rest should be out of the running, he predicts.

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Feds politicize school research

March 3, 2010 By

Feds And Research Shouldn’t Mix, writes researcher Jay P. Greene.

Federal research tends to support federally favored policies. Even when it’s farmed out to independent evaluators, there’s pressure not to alienate those who will be awarding the the next contract.

The safe thing to conclude in those circumstances is that the evidence is unclear about the effectiveness of a policy but future research is needed, which, not surprisingly, is what many federally funded evaluations find.

Greene served on a What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) panel that was supposed to identify what was known from the research literature on how to turn around failing schools.

As we quickly discovered, there was virtually nothing known from rigorous research on how to successfully turn around failing schools.  I suggested that we should simply report that as our finding — nothing is known.  But we were told that the Department of Education wouldn’t like that  and we had to say something about how to turn around schools.  I asked on what basis we would draw those conclusions and was told that we should rely on our “professional judgment” informed by personal experience and non-rigorous research.  So, we dutifully produced a report that was much more of a political document than a scientific one.  We didn’t know anything from science about how to turn around schools, but we crafted a political answer to satisfy political needs.

Federally funded research also is way too expensive, Greene writes. And a lot of it is awful.

In particular, I am thinking of the work of the federally funded regional research labs.  For every useful study or review they release, there must be hundreds of drek.  The regional labs are so bad that the Department of Education has been trying to eliminate them from their budget for years.  But members of Congress want the pork, so they keep the regional labs alive.

The feds can provide data on student performance to researchers who’d be stymied by privacy laws, Greene writes. Researchers can take it from there.

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Obama ties funds to new standards

February 23, 2010 By

President Obama wants to link Title I funding to states’ adoption of “college- and career-ready standards, he told the National Governors Association.  States would have to sign on to common core standards under development — Texas and Alaska are the hold-outs — or work with state universities to set their own standards.

It’s not clear how “college- and career-ready” would be defined or evaluated, Education Week notes.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan also wants to tie Race To the Top funding to adoption of “college- and career-ready” standards.

Forcing states to adopt the Common Core Standards Initiative (CCSI) package is a “huge mistake,” writes Lynne Munson on the Common Core (no relation) blog. It alienates states like Massachusetts and California, which already have rigorous standards and won’t appreciate being coerced.

However, several new reports criticize the quality of the proposed common core standards, reports Curriculum Matters. Drafters are fighting over what to include in the reading and math standards. Once they see the final result, some states may opt out.

On Flypaper, Checker Finn suggests humility and prudence:

If these standards and assessments end up representing a huge improvement over those in use in most states today, then much that’s good may reasonably follow from their installation and use. But what if they don’t? And even if they do, what about those (few) states that have done a creditable job on their own and for which CCSSI may represent either a lateral move or a step backward? In any case, would it not be prudent to appraise their safety and efficacy before demanding that they become the center of America’s new education universe?

Rick Hess worries that the Education Department’s arrogance will undercut RTTT, which he likes.

. . . the Duncan team’s self-righteousness, impatience with skeptics, and frantic pace have meant little time or interest in building a process that will be credible and sustainable.

Duncan says the governors are “receptive” to linking common standards to eligibility for federal funds. Alexander Russo says he’ll believe it when the governors say it themselves: Sure, force us to jump through a new hoop to get the same old funding!

Update: Reward results, not process, says Center for Education Reform.

Why Race to the Middle? First-Class State Standards Are Better than Third-Class National Standards asserts a paper by Ze’ev Wurman and Sandra Stotsky for the Pioneer Institute.

Australia is introducing new standards — including grammar.

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Stimulating schools

February 12, 2009 By

Politics K-12 is the place to go for news on the education provisions of the compromise stimulus bill:

The agreement would provide $53.6 billion for the state fiscal stabilization fund, including $40.6 billion to local school districts using existing funding formulas, which can be used for averting layoffs and programmatic cutbacks, and to pay for school modernization. The fund also includes $5 billion for incentive grants to be allocated by the Secretary of Education; and $8 billion to states’ high–priority needs, which may include education.

The agreement would provide $1.1 billion for Early Head Start and $1 billion for Head Start, plus $2 billion for the Child Care Development Block Grant.

It would also provide $13 billion for Title I programs for disadvantaged students and $12.2 billion for grants for special education.

And, on the higher education front, the bill would boost the maximum Pell Grant to college students by $500, for a maximum of $5,350 in 2009 and $5,550 in 2010.

. . .

The $25 million fund for charter school facilities is not included.

. . . The compromise agreement includes $250 million for state data systems, $100 million for teacher quality state grants, and $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund. It also has $650 million for education technology, which is less than the $1 billion provided in both the House and Senate bills. The $13 billion for Title I money includes $3 billion for school improvement grants, according to education lobbyists.

Lots of money, not much reform.

The Gadfly guys have advice for Arne Duncan on how to manage the ed stimulus money.

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