Considering the impact of the new “Race to the Top” Initiative

Late last week, Obama and Duncan announced a new $4.35 billion education initiative to encourage states to improve their K-12 schools. While $4 billion is certainly a lot of money it isn’t big compared to the total spending on education in America. A Wall Street Journal article on the new initiative provides data needed to put it into context. “The Department of Education estimates that the U.S. as a whole spent $667 billion on K-12 education in the 2008-09 school year alone, up from $553 billion in 2006-07 [a 21% increase in only 2 years]. The stimulus bill from earlier this year includes some $100 billion more in federal education spending—an unprecedented amount. The tragedy is that nearly all of this $100 billion is being dispensed to the states by formula, which allows school districts to continue resisting reform while risking very little in overall federal funding.”

The Journal goes on to comment, “It’s also worth noting that the U.S. has been trying without much success to spend its way to education excellence for decades. Between 1970 and 2004, per-pupil outlays more than doubled in real terms, and the federal portion of that spending nearly tripled. Yet reading scores on national standardized tests have remained relatively flat. Black and Hispanic students are doing better, but they continue to lag far behind white students in both test scores and graduation rates.”

The states would be evaluated on 19 criteria from how friendly they are to charter schools to whether they cut k-12 funding this year. Education Week noted the new program included must provisions that any state hoping to land a grant must allow student test scores to be used in decisions about teacher and principal compensation and evaluation and that the state had been approved for stabilization funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (most already have been).

This whiff of merit pay is in opposition to the unions [NEA and AFT] longstanding stance that teacher pay be based only on years of service and credentials. So lots of promises will be made but the unions will effectively make any compliance of the “show” type only. Note too that the wording is that the state must not have any laws in place that prohibit using student achievement data in the evaluation of teachers and principals. This is a far cry from a law that requires the data to be actually used in teacher and principal pay and evaluation decisions.

So what is the result of this likely to be? It is definitely another “stir the pot” to look like you are doing something positive education initiative. If spending more money alone would solve anything the problem would have been solved long ago.

Why isn’t the system getting better? Because . . .

• Education leaders don’t know how to lead. They are trained for a fantasy job, not one that needs to be done or even exists.

• The adults in the education system believe they deserve more and are more important than the kids.

• The legislators and bureaucrats specify process when they should specify results with rewards for making it happen and penalties for not making the required improvements.

• The education system is infected with a high level of truth suppression. That is, political correctness and group think are ubiquitous in their effect of preventing the required intellectual honesty to face shortcomings squarely and deal with them.

• Educators believe they don’t need to change. After all they have avoided it for decades by using techniques such as wheel spinning exercises that “look” like action when they aren’t. They believe that “we tried” is an acceptable excuse. As Yoda told Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, “Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.”

• Educators believe that they should be paid based on years experience and diplomas they have. Performance organizations pay based on results not background or age and they actually perform. Funny how that works.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive but to show examples of problems that could and should be fixed. One key that is part of the “talk” is that educators need to manage the education process with data. I say they need a closed loop, short cycle, data driven, participative management style. Education entities I have studied who have tried to implement the continuous quality improvement process have failed miserably. Why? Because they do everything that counts wrong. They hire a bunch of consultants, facilitators, data clerks, trainers, etc. and the “leaders” take a hands-off approach to the process. Because they don’t do their jobs, i.e. lead, the process turns into a “go through the motions” exercise that is seen as a distasteful burden to the teachers and others expected to do the process. Leaders need to facilitate, involve themselves in the data and actively expect the best participation of the group in problem solving based on priorities developed from analyzing the data. That is, they can’t delegate the leadership responsibility.

The Race to the Top initiative has a very high probability of being another “throw money at the problem and hope something good happens.” Doing the same thing over and expecting a different result should result in a realization after it doesn’t work for a hundred or more times in a row that this is the wrong approach. Of course you have to be able to look objectively at the truth to realize what is actually happening. Hard to do when the truth is so well hidden.