President Barack Obama announced Monday that $900 million in federal grants in the proposed FY 2011 budget would be available to school districts and administrators who work to transform roughly 5,000 failing school across the nation. While the proposal encourages transformation of the few thousand schools that produce half of America’s yearly 1.2 million high school dropouts, the reliance on federal government resources and direction to rescue America’s educational system falls short of true reform.
The President’s proposal, detailed in a subsequent press release, encourages early intervention programs for students at risk of dropping out and an emphasis on college readiness programs like advanced placement courses and dual enrollment. Specific accountability measures include replacing the management and half the teaching staff of a low-performing school, closing the school, restarting a school under a charter’s management, or transforming a school through increased teacher training and support. The President went on to emphasize the role of government in reforming failing schools, while noting the part parents, teachers, and the community can play in education America’s students. He stated:
Government has a responsibility. Government can help educate students to succeed in college and in a career. Government can help provide the resources to engage dropouts and those at risk of dropping out and, when necessary, the government has to be critically involved in turning around the lowest performing schools. …Education is not and cannot be the task of government alone. It’s going to take non-profits and businesses doing their part through alliances like America’s Promise. It will take parent’s getting involved in their child’s education consistently. Going to parent-teacher conferences, helping their children with their homework.
While the plan announced by President Obama expressed a laudable motivation to reform failing schools and lower dropout rates, the continual dependence on federal aid and discretion for salvation from poorly performing high schools misses the heart of effective reform found most often in greater competition and parental choice. Rather than spend almost $1 billion of additional federal grants, states and school districts can encourage and implement meaningful reforms that expand access to good teachers and increase parental involvement in students’ education.
An expansion of effective virtual schools and the use of online classrooms may address many of the concerns outlined by the President at a reduced cost to taxpayers. Virtual schools not only increase students’ access to high quality and advanced classes and educators, they also foster the innovation that President Obama sees as integral to keeping students engaged in academics and on track to graduation.
As the President noted, increased parental involvement in students’ education will dictate the success of any school reform effort. But rather than relegate a parent’s role to conference attendee and homework helper, why not empower families with a meaningful choice in their child’s education through school voucher programs? As demonstrated in the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, providing parents the ability to choose a safe and effective school for their children means better performing students. The use of voucher programs and other school choice initiatives also increases competition among schools, which may lead to a natural reformation or closure of failing schools.
President Obama concluded his remarks by saying:
The stakes are too high – for our children, for our economy, for our country. It’s time for all of us to come together – parents and students, principals and teachers, business leaders and elected officials – to end America’s dropout crisis.
Agreed. All of those parties, from students to principals to representatives, should work together for effective reform that keeps money in the wallets of taxpayers and educational choice in the hands of parents and students.
Sarah Torre is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm
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.