The list of the Race to the Top recipients came out just as students and faculty all over the state of California, marched, gathered, sat-in, taught-in, spoke and sang to protest the massive budget cuts and fee hikes that are affecting the golden state’s educational system from K through to grad school.
Race to the Top is the competitive carrot—namely $4.35 billion worth of stimulus grant money—that the Obama administration has offered states who make innovative changes to their educational system.
So, as it was stated, restated, and predicted, and succinctly laid out in great detail, the states who made the most constructive changes, got the bucks.
And California was not on that list.
Why? Because the usual intractable suspects blocked the reforms that Gloria Romero and other ed reformers tried their damnedest to push through. But once again, the decisions were about the well-being and power-retention of the adults, not about the kids. (Do I sound angry? I am. I’m angry.)
And so, because our fair state failed to make the changes needed, we didn’t get the money.
Actions—or lack thereof—have consequences.
Jill Stewart at LA Weekly , who is also feeling pretty grumpy on the topic, lays out her views on why California got stiffed.
Here’s how California got itself into this hugely embarrassing predicament:
Gloria Romero, the scrappy state legislator from Los Angeles, had tried hard to fight the CTA-dominated crowd in the Sacramento statehouse. But she failed to persuade other powerful Los Angeles state legislators to back her plan to require true merit-judging of teachers, which the California Teachers Association has long opposed.
President Barack Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan say they are sick of thecurrent insanity, where merit plays no role in rewarding or punishing public school teachers. Some people think LAUSD and California are the epicenter of the anti-merit insanity. (See LA Weekly’s recent cover story, Dance of the Lemons by Beth Barrett).
Here is what toughie Romero had to say about getting stiffed publicly, and hugely, by President Obama: Romero danced around quite a bit in her official statement released about an hour ago, using a lot of vague government-ese to make it sound as if all was well.
But her clearest phrase was “the status quo is entrenched in our public school system …”
Even the relatively benign reforms Romero finally managed to push through in Sacramento were refused by more than half of the California school districts and teacher unions, according to Howard Blume and Jason Song over at the Los Angeles Times blog.
Oh, and by the way, many states did take on their teacher’s unions or otherwise manage to win money from Obama…….
Read the rest here.
According to Howard Blume and Jason Song at the LA Times, our state could have gotten as much as 700 million (if we’d played ball marginally with what the Obama administration asked).
We can apply for the second round in the summer. But, by that time, we will have had to make some changes.
Maybe some of Thursday’s protesting students could also march for that worthy goal.
The LA Times editorial also has a clear, correct and very sad explanation of what California failed to do.
Unlike Colorado, which built its Race to the Top application in concert with districts and teachers — and which made it to the list of finalists — California got relatively little support from school districts, fewer than half of which signed on to the application. That didn’t help the state’s chances.
To put it mildly.
The teachers union cost the state, themselves and most importantly the kids big time.
How ironic is it that the CTA was a major Obama supporter during the campaign?
I wonder how cozy that relationship will be in the future. Looks like they need to talk to the UAW members and see how to grease the wheels the right way to get bailed out.
From anyone’s perspective, CA does not deserve the Federal money. The liberal politics in CA are used to getting a handout because … they hold out their hand, like the beggars who expect you to give them some cash and are clearly annoyed if you don’t pull out your wallet.
I commend the Obama administration for demanding real reform instead of just another program to pass out cash to be wasted by administrative overhead in districts like LAUSD.
Clearly CA is NOT LEADING THE WAY!
What a jewel we have in Sen Gloria Romero of East Los Angeles, she stands out as a tireless advocate for reform in both public education and it’s polar opposite, the Calif prison industrial complex. Romero is rare in that she has no fear about taking on the Goliaths who guard these sacrosanct institutions, were money takes precedence over humanity and childrens futures.
And Sen Romero can be counted on to keep throwing those stones at those Goliath’s until she hits her target.
Why don’t you blame Obama for putting rules ahead of students?
“Do like I tell you or you and your children will suffer the consequences”.
All the scum in prison thinking much about the future of their children? Nope, selfish and with no sense of responsibility is how best to describe them.
Micro bacteria that grow on the parasite that grow on the fungus that grows on the scab on the body of that despicable organism known as “scum” by a few. Where’s the love, man?
I applode this effort to fix a failing system. I love that some hippy scum is saying “Do like I tell you or your children will suffer the concequences”. As a product of the lausd, I stand behind The Administration in trying to right the ship that is capsizing. It is failures like yourself “Big Government” that have placed the children in piss poor classroom conditions. I for one favor outside evaluation sites that evaluate the entire school, both teachers and admin staff. If it is found that there are rifts between and and front lines than by all means investigate and find the problem. Fix the system! Don’t blame a nameless blank wall of a government.
That should read: If it is found that there are rifts between the admin staff and the front linesthen by all means investigate and find the problem.
Hippy scum? Too bad pal. You just can’t stand such a progressive system can you? The LAUSD is a perfect of example of the way us progressives are taking over the country. You better learn to live with it. Big Government is the way of the future. It is the way your children will be raised. Big Government is the answer. The last election proved that. The children will be better off for it. Can’t you see how successful the LAUSD is compared to other school districts throughout the country?
“The LAUSD is a perfect of example of the way us progressives are taking over the country.”
Really? How do you figure that? Seems like entirely nonsensical statement, to be honest.
Also, just for the record, among the reforms that the Obama administration favored was precisely anti-big government, and put power in the hands of the parents, taking it away from the district administrators and from the unions.
And, Woody, your comment is also entirely logic-free. The administration’s suggested reforms are an attempt to get the districts to institute the kind of reforms that put the students first—not the needs and desires of the grown-ups and their desire to hold on to power.
Those of you who keep going for tired and false positions about “big government” or liberal/conservative simply are uninformed as to the nature of what is going on in the educational arena in this country.
The evidence-based reformers are the wave of the future and they draw their ranks from conservatives and progressives.
Last summer Arne Duncan organized an “education tour” that featured him, Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich. It was, of course, a PR stunt. But it made the point quite well.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-09-29-school-tour_N.htm
Employing liberal/conservative battle lines to examine this issue is to get it entirely wrong and to—as it happens—put children last, behind the stupid, ego-driven fights of the adults. Don’t do it.
Knee-jerk conservatives who reject reforms because they’re suggested by the Obama administration—are going to be left behind. History ain’t on your side.
And ditto the knee-jerk liberals who reject reform that opens the door to good charters, because many conservatives also favor charters (the horror), which these anti-reform liberals label as the privatization of public education, which is utter poppycock. They too are on the wrong side of logic and history, in my personal opinion.
And, just to preempt any arguments on that count, charters aren’t automatically better. Good charters are better than big, overly administration-bound, failing schools. Bad charters are just bad schools.
The charter model is simply a public school model that is more fluid, therefore more open to true, evidence-based reform than is a gigantic administration heavy system that becomes, like the supertanker, very, very slow to turn.
What Celeste said…
Absolutely on point. A reality-based response that proves the difference between resentment-driven creeps and a human being with a brain tackling these issues.
Celeste,
Very interesting comment. It seems you have an issue with the teachers union. Aren’t you a union supporter? Don’t you think the teachers union knows what’s best for the kids?
Another Taxpayer,
I am very supportive of the importance of unions. But that doesn’t mean I support everything that unions do. Why in the world would I? The teacher’s union’s job is to protect it’s members. That’s as it should be. Ditto law enforcement unions. But sometimes what is best of the security of employees may be in conflict with what best for the population they serve. Then what?
I object to lock step anything—which includes blanket support of unions. The teachers union is the second most powerful union in the state of California. The CCPOA—the prison guard’s union is the most powerful. I think both of them have, at times, been enormously problematic and obstructive when it comes to reform. That doesn’t mean I’m anti-union. It simply means I don’t want them to call all the shots. They have a job to do—which does not include having the final say on every piece of legislation that affects their sphere of interest.
I would hope that all of us could entertain the complexity of thought that allows for both the support of unions, and the willingness to challenge them when we believe they are wrong.
PS: I’m very interested in seeing what the teachers with the help of UTLA are going to do with the 20 LAUSD schools that they will now be taking over. I haven’t read their proposals but I understand many of them are quite good.
Creative teachers in some of the county’s worst schools have had terrific ideas for years now, and have been roundly ignored. I assume that many of those ideas have been incorporated in the pilot schools proposals that will soon be put into motion. May it be so.
Celeste, how do you know that Obama’s “reforms” are better for the students? Is it based upon the fact that the rules come from higher up with strings attached? I don’t remember your deference to Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.”
If the schools need money and Obama is holding the school systems hostage, then the attention should be focused on the holders of his purse strings.
Actually, I don’t see how any rules from Washington are an attempt to give local control to parents. If Obama wanted that, then he would tear down the Department of Education and let parents and local school systems run their schools as they best see fit and with the money that is now going up to Washington and coming back in pieces after half of it eaten up in adminstrative costs.
Celeste: Knee-jerk conservatives who reject reforms because they’re suggested by the Obama administration—are going to be left behind. History ain’t on your side.
Celeste, I’m not “knee-jerk” after having seen that Obama’s education and appointments are all socialist and are using our education system to destroy our freedoms and replace them with a on-size fits all government. It’s been part of the systematic takeover of the American mind by socialists.
You might be right about our being left behind, but not because we’re wrong but because a majority of Americans were educated by government schools and are too stupid to see how they are being used. Are you one of the stupid or one of the arrogant socialists?
Just what local school systems and parents want!!
Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals†Recommended on Obama’s Website for American Teachers and ELEMENTARY EPIDEMIC: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama
Reforms? Not any that I want and certainly not any for which I’m willing to sell my soul for tax money from Washington. But, according to Celeste, Obama knows best!
Nice song by Victoria Jackson:
“There’s a Communist Living in the White Houseâ€
Blame local school boards and parents for not going along.