The Department of Education today released the names of the 16 finalists in the competition for federal Race to the Top (RttT) grants. The finalists include the District of Columbia and 15 states: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee. In all, 40 states had applied for the grants. In March, state leaders will come to Washington to deliver presentations on why their states merit a slice of the $4.35 billion in grants. Winners will be announced in April.
The more than $4 billion RttT initiative is the largest discretionary fund an education secretary has ever had the opportunity to work with. As part of the overall $100 billion allocated to the Department of Education as part of the economic “stimulus” plan passed last year, RttT was supposed to be a means of spurring states to implement the types of innovative education reforms that the administration thought would spur academic achievement. Yet, the group of states that made the first cut on the way to a grant was a numerous one – conventional wisdom was that far fewer states would make the first cut.
In addition, the few, true reform measures that conservatives were applauding – namely charter schools – already appear to be on the chopping block. Andy Smarick over at Fordham writes today in a blog post entitled Major Disappointment:
The US Department of Education had the opportunity today to send a clear signal–that the Race to the Top is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that very good wouldn’t be good enough, that only the biggest and boldest plans would merit consideration. Instead, the administration accepted 15 states and Washington, DC–nearly 1/3 of all applicants–as finalists.
The list includes Kentucky, a state with no charter law and New York, which brashly rejected reform legislation–including a critical cap lift provision–in advance of the deadline. It includes Colorado, which backed off of important reforms related to teachers, and Ohio, whose proposal was weak in a number of areas… I was preparing to heap praise on the administration for doing as they had suggested–only shining a spotlight on the very best of the best. I expected a finalist list of 5 and was quietly hoping for 3. My worst-case scenario was 12. I never would have imagined 16.
Amanda Farris over at the Republican Policy Committee echoes that sentiment, writing:
Secretary Duncan has repeatedly said that in order to qualify for Race to the Top funding states will need to meet “a very, very high bar.” It is therefore surprising that despite the fact that “ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charters and other innovative schools” was a selection criteria, New York and Kentucky were chosen as finalists. As you may recall, earlier this year New York refused to pass an education reform bill that would have expanded their charter school caps, and Kentucky does not even have a charter school law.
“Is this an indication that Secretary Duncan is not really all that serious about expanding quality charter schools and rewarding only the most reform-minded states? This lengthy list of finalists does not inspire much confidence.”
And, over at Edspresso, the feeling is mutual:
“Arne Duncan got an earful from reporters today. They asked about scoring and why some states emerged as finalists when they did little to improve various parts of their reform portfolio…
‘We said from day one,’ said Duncan, ‘that there were many, many factors’ that would go into the scoring. Many different things would be considered, he said. ‘Charters were never going to be the determining factor from the very beginning.’
Why else would only three of the sixteen have charter laws among the top ten in the country? Indeed, Kentucky has none and seven others have laws that are barely passing…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…
So, do you fans of increased federal involvement in education still think it can make a difference to improving education for our children?
Which hits at the central question. Fifty years of ever-expanding federal involvement in education without a commensurate increase in academic achievement should have given people pause enough to think that Washington – this time – will be a successful arbiter of innovation. The qualifying states lead one to believe that RttT is full of more rhetoric than reform, despite what the administration would have us believe.
This brings to mind what have been continuously referred to as “voluntary” common stardards. The recent revelation that the administration is considering tying the eligibility for Title I funds to their adoption would make them anything but voluntary.
This is all a good lesson in why those states still willing to feed at the federal trough should at least curb their expectations for results. Even when Washington promises.
Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or as it is more accurately described, President Barack Obama’s Failed Stimulus. When President Obama signed the now $862 billion deficit-spending bill into law, the unemployment rate stood at 7.6% and the U.S. economy employed 133.5 million people. At the time President Obama promised the American people that, thanks to his stimulus, unemployment would never go higher than 8.2% and the U.S. economy would support 138.6 million jobs by December 2010.
At the one year mark unemployment is now 9.7%, after rising above 10%, and the U.S. economy has lost 4 million jobs leaving the White House 9 million jobs short of the 138.6 million they promised to deliver by December of this year. By any objective measure President Obama’s $862 billion stimulus must be judged as a complete failure. Undeterred by these facts, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) published a report on the economic effects of the Administration’s economic stimulus plan claiming that there are 2 million more jobs in the economy than there otherwise would have been had the President’s stimulus not become law. But as Heritage Policy Analyst Karen Campbell has documented, the CEA report relies on completely arbitrary benchmark projections that fail even basic standards of economic analysis. If the Administration had used other economic forecasts, the results would not have been as impressive – in fact, some would have shown that the economy lost more jobs after the stimulus package was implemented.
Armed with their CEA propaganda, President Obama is dispatching his Cabinet officials to 35 communities across the country this week to try and convince the American people that his Failed Stimulus is in fact, a success. The President faces an uphill climb: according to the latest poll from The New York Times only 6% of Americans believe the stimulus has created jobs and 48% of Americans believe it never will.
One might hope that after $862 billion in failed stimulus spending, that liberals in Washington would take a break from spending other people’s borrowed money. No such luck. The House has already passed a new $154 billion stimulus package and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is pushing a$15 billion plan in the Senate, $13 billion of which is a temporary Social Security payroll tax exemption for new hires. This temporary tax break will further increase our Social Security system’s existing deficits, will cost $1 million per only eight temporary new jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office, and will do nothing to decrease long-term unemployment.
While this would be President Obama’s second stimulus, it would actually be this recession’s third. In February 2008, President George Bush passed an equally useless mix of temporary tax cuts and mortgage grantees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac totaling $168 billion. That stimulus did nothing to stop the recession and neither will President Obama’s second stimulus. Our nation simply can’t afford wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and deficit Keynesian stimulus spending every February. Now is a good time to stop.
Quick Hits:
- In a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, the Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan.
- As fighting in Marja carried into its third day, the number of Taliban fighters in the area has dropped by about half.
- Opposition to a European Union bailout of Greece, where the retirement age is 63, is growing among Germans, who can’t retire until age 67.
- Latinos who backed President Barack Obama are frustrated by the lack of amnesty for illegal aliens.
- According to the latest Rasmussen poll, 59% of likely voters say states should have the right to opt out of federal government programs they don’t agree with.