Race to Nowhere

On August 24 the national department of education announced the winning states for their “Race to the Top” awards. The purpose of the process was to hold out money carrots as incentive for states to enact changes in their laws and ways of managing their education process in the hope of accessing a several billion dollar pot of money to be divided among “winning states.” After the first round of the competition, Colorado became a finalist and had been considered very likely to be a winner in yesterday’s awards. The following quotes from the Wall Street Journal’s coverage tell the story.

"Colorado, which finished 17th among 19 finalists, had been widely viewed as the top contender in the competition, and Mr. Duncan said Tuesday that he wished he could have funded the state. Dwight Jones, Colorado Commissioner of Education, said he was "shell-shocked" that his state didn't win and he pointed to the lack of teacher union support as one reason."

"There is a real disconnect for me because we did exactly what the administration urged us to do—adopt significant reforms," Mr. Jones said. "So we adopt the ambitious reforms and create the conditions to make dramatic changes, but we don't win because not everyone signed on. That worries me."

"Deborah Fallin, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Education Association, said the union supported Colorado's application in an earlier Race to the Top round, but the state didn't win then, either. The union withdrew support in the second round after lawmakers passed a teacher evaluation law that make it easier to get rid of low-performing teachers. "They want to blame us no matter what," she said."

This whole process is indicative of how money is the cocaine in education circles. More money for education is the primary goal of everyone in education from the public schools to the education schools to the consultants and book publishers, and to the politicians whose campaigns are financed by education power groups. The above quotes from Mr. Jones and Ms Fallin are great examples of the ubiquitous attitude among educators. “It is their fault, it couldn’t be mine.” Thus, Jones blames the unions and the unions blame “they” which is inclusive to those who made it easier to fire bad teachers.

Yet, no one talked about doing a better job of educating our kids. Oh, they would argue that getting rid of a few bad teachers would improve things. That is true as far as it goes. And it doesn’t go far compared to the “whopper” problems that the educators cleverly ignore or hide hoping the public doesn’t figure out what they are doing.

Some obvious questions come to mind

• How could Colorado consider entering a “Race to the Top” competition when Colorado standards as represented by the CSAP achievement tests are among the lowest in the nation? Did they really think they should be rewarded for such poor performance? Perhaps in the “Alice in Wonderland” world of public education that was a reasonable expectation since there are no real penalties for poor performance.

• When it comes to improving things for our kids, throwing out the content-free curricula and replacing them with content-rich curricula tied to much more rigorous standards and achievement tests would have immensely bigger positive impact than firing some bad teachers. Am I saying that the bad teachers should be ignored? Of course not, but I am saying that the priorities of actions do not in any way match the power of the potential improvements to be gained. Fixing the curricula is the only thing that will substantially impact the achievement gap favorably.

This list could go on and on but hopefully you get the point. The current education management process in America and especially in Colorado is built on a faulty foundation. Spending huge amounts of money on remodels that don’t address the foundational issues is a recipe for continued high costs and abysmal performance. It is not good stewardship of our vital resources.

We must expect our politicians and educators to stop the obfuscation of the truth and face facts. The current pet projects that only enrich educators without benefiting the students must be trashed and replaced by real and effective changes. Yes, some pain for the adults in education will be required. But the pain for children would be reduced greatly and that is as it should be. It is time to leave the dream world that is American education today and transition to the real world where continuous improvement and competitive performance are not only nice but required.