The Race to Bureaucratic Bondage
The short version of the controversy over the state of Nevada seeking federal “Race to the Top” schooling dollars goes like this:
The weak economy has left Nevada schools short of cash. “Race to the Top” participation would provide more federal dollars, but the program requires states to use student test scores to track how well students have advanced under INDIVIDUAL teachers, whereupon those INDIVIDUAL teachers are to be rewarded or dismissed based on those results.
Nevada has the testing and the computer databases necessary to do that. But the powerful teachers unions convinced the Legislature to specifically bar the use of students test data for evaluating such INDIVIDUAL teacher performance.
Since rewarding or firing teachers based on how students actually advance under their tutelage would be a good thing — restoring a measure of accountability more reminiscent of the free market — let’s repeal the ban on using available data to do such evalutions, the argument goes.
Then, as a bonus, we could also sign up for “Race to the Top” and get more federal dollars. What’s to lose?
That’s the “Classics Comics” version of the controversy. Why, then, are so many states and school districts saying “No thanks” to “Race to the Top”?
Because it’s another big “jobs” program, basically — designed to stick local taxpayers with both the “jobs” and the bills.
Texas won’t compete for up to $700 million in the new federal school “stimulus” money because the program “smacks of a federal takeover of our public schools,” Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry announced in January.
In California, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell pointed out last year that “Any monies won in this competition will not be used to cover operational costs, restore lost funding, or supplement existing programs.” They’re only to hire new educrats to set up new “tracking and monitoring” programs — for which the “stimulus” funding will soon run out.
In Illinois, state Rep. Suzanne Bassi, a Republican from suburban Chicago, says she fears what will happen to any new Race to the Top programs in a few years.
“The federal funds run out,” Ms. Bassi says. “Then it falls on individual districts, and the taxpayers foot the bill” for continuing the pricey new schemes.
Chris Slowik, organizational director for Chicago’s South Cooperative Organization for Public Education, said districts there still bear scars from previous ambitious efforts.
“Not too long ago,” Ms. Slowik said, “everyone was encouraged to get early-childhood programs going, but then the funding wasn’t there.”
Dan Lips of the Heritage Foundation detailed the problems when “Race to the Top” was first proposed a year ago, at www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2009/01/Ten-Reasons-Why-the-Economic-Stimulus-Should-Not-Include-Education-Spending:
“An unprecedented federal spending increase for education will not improve economic growth,” Mr. Lips warned, “and past experience strongly suggests that this plan will not improve American educational performance. …”
Race to the top is “premised on the belief that higher spending on public education improves educational performance,” Mr. Lips noted. “But decades of experience have demonstrated the limits of increasing federal education spending. Since 1985, real federal spending on K-12 education has increased by 138 percent. But higher federal spending has not corresponded with equal improvement in American educational performance. …
“While states and local policymakers may welcome federally funded fiscal relief, they should recognize that new federal dollars will invariably come with new strings and bureaucratic costs,” Mr. Lips warned. “The proposed new spending includes a series of new regulations, including requirements that states … develop new data systems,” etc. “The proposal would also position the Department of Education with more policymaking authority over state education policy. …”
Most bizarre, as Mr. Lips pointed out a year ago: “The spending package would prohibit school choice, an effective strategy for improving education.
“One troubling regulation included in the proposed spending plan is a prohibition that no funds be used to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary and secondary schools. Besides appealing to special interest groups that oppose school-choice policies, it is unclear why the spending plan — whose stated goal is to support state efforts to improve education — would include this prohibition.
“A growing number of states are using state funds to give parents the power to choose the best school for their children.” Not only do kids do better when they can use vouchers to attend private schools, but “School-choice programs have been shown to improve efficiency and save taxpayer money,” Mr. Lips reports. “A recent analysis found that the Milwaukee school voucher program, which helped 18,500 children attend private schools, saved Wisconsin taxpayers $32 million in 2008.”
How?
“Since the cost of educating a child in private school is lower than in public school, government saves resources when children use scholarships to transfer from public to private schools,” where they learn more, faster.
Instead of further increasing federal spending and debt — and limiting parental choice — Mr. Lips advises “The federal government should help states meet current fiscal challenges by offering state policymakers greater ability to prioritize how federal education dollars are allocated to best meet their students’ needs.”
Use testing data to find out in whose classrooms kids are failing to advance, thereupon rewarding or punishing that performance? Sure — providing you allow each teacher to expel his or her three worst troublemakers on the seventh day of each semester, no questions asked.
But as for the rest of this guff: Is it a “Race to the Top”? Or a race to school district bankruptcy … with more bondage to Washington thrown in for good measure?