Top-Down Education Reform

“RTTP” is part of the new parlance of school and government employees. In a few days we will be told by U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan which Race To The Top state applications are considered finalists for funding in the first round of competition.

Forty states applied for the S4.25 billion in total funding. The prize, financed by the economic American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will range from $350 million to $700 million per state and be awarded in April. Will California be on the list in this first round?

The reading of the first round of 40 state applications (10 states did not apply) has been done behind closed doors and the identity of the judges remains anonymous. All comments and scores by RTTP application reviewers needed to be completed by Feb. 8. The application reviewers had to sign confidentiality agreements to ensure that they would not talk with the media or make their identities known. I am not sure this was a prudent step in this age of transparency and openness, especially since billions of public dollars are at stake. 

There were 49 selected reviewers and each one reviewed four or five randomly assigned state applications on a 500-point scoring rubric. Actually, as I understand the process, even though the reviewers might have given a state application high marks, Duncan wields all the power to choose the final states that will come to Washington D.C. for presentations.

According to Education Week most of the reviewers picked by the Education Department were current or former superintendents, members of state boards of education, and many had doctoral degrees.  Perhaps the pool of reviewers selected from nearly 1,500 applicants is a little too elitist? 

Not a good thing from my perspective. I certainly hope there were some current teacher leaders, top elementary, middle and high school principals, and well-versed parents on the list, too. Unfortunately, we cannot know that answer just yet.

In California only 41 percent of school districts sent in intent to apply applications to the state for any RTTP money that comes California’s way. The real wound for California comes when only 26 percent of unions signed off on their district’s application, however this was not a requirement for submittal, as crazy as that seems to me. CTA and CFT will hold many of the cards once we learn whether California is eligible for the federal funding.

From my past experiences only those reforms that percolate from the bottom up stand a chance for thriving in schools. This very expensive experiment is very top down from everything I read and experience. I have the audacity of hope, though, that RTTP succeeds so our educational system will become second to none, whether California wins funding or not.

Joseph Di Salvo is a member of the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Board of Trustees. He is a San Jose native. His columns reflect his personal opinion.

8 Comments

  1. Thank you for this post; I have been wondering about Race to the Top. I completely agree that the panel of reviewers sounds a bit elitist. Current teachers, principals, and others who are well versed in the daily occurrences of a classroom should be an integral part of the judging. I don’t understand why this seemingly simple notion is so often overlooked.

  2. > According to Education Week most of the reviewers picked by the Education Department were current or former superintendents, members of state boards of education, and many had doctoral degrees.  Perhaps the pool of reviewers selected from nearly 1,500 applicants is a little too elitist?

    Good grief!

    Education is too important to be left to the educrats.

    Any rational society would immediately send in a SWAT team and remove anyone with an education doctoral degree.

  3. RttT becomes a little more politically controversial after today…As I had assumed California was not a winner today. The RttT first round finalists have been announced by Secretary Duncan’s office a few hour ago. In alpha order they are: Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee. These states plus D.C. the week of March 15 will assemble a 5 person team to make a presentation to the reviewers who will adjust their scores on the 500 point scale after each presentation.

    California has one more chance to become a finalist which will be by June 1 in a reapplication process. Final awardees will be notified in September. It is interesting to note that most of the states were right-to-work and Southern. From my readings Western states have always lagged behind real school reform.

    Post Script: I mistakingly listed the Race to the Top acronym as RTTP in my blog posted yesterday. In all cases it should read RttT.

    Joseph Di Salvo

  4. Assuming the funds were available, what would prevent Santa Clara County from awarding merit pay to the top 5 percent of teachers as judged by standardized test results of their students?

  5. ” what would prevent Santa Clara County from awarding merit pay to the top 5 percent of teachers as judged by standardized test results of their students?  ” –  No money and California Teachers Association opposes most common sense solutions while many student get poor educations

    CTA has no solutions except give schools more taxes but many taxpayers believe they are not using taxes efficiently to educate students

    1) Many California Schools are under performing since their students spend less time in classroom s during school day and few weeks per year that higher performing private, charter, best pubic schools and schools in other countries

    2) Many California schools are in very small school districts and spend unusually high percentage of school funds on administration not classroom teaching

    3 Cost Reduction Solutions –

    -Consolidate multiple city school district like San Jose’s 19 districts into 1 school district which provides all admin and support services

    – All 19 schools district contract from 1 district for all admin and support services

    – All county school districts admin and support services consolidated under Santa Clara County Departmeent of Education

  6. Joseph – The MLK Association is holding a fund raiser in March to raise money and honor highschool scholarship winners. Are you going?

    What do you think about the boycott Raj and his buddies are waging against the MLK Association for honoring the SJPOA? They took a donation from the SJPOA to keep the historical Freedom Train running after losing their two long time sponsors. Would you agree that in these tough finanical times boycotting a fund raiser for scholarships is wrong?

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