Yesterday, Barack Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan, announced that they propose to offer $900 million in “turnaround grants” to the nation’s 5000 lowest performing schools if the districts overseeing those schools will agree to reorganize the failing institutions according to one of four reform models.
It seems that, according the the Department of Education, around 2000 of the nation’s schools are responsible for half of the nation’s 1.2 million yearly dropouts. Arnie Duncan will be aiming the grants at those 2000 spectacularly failing schools, along with another 3000 of the runners-up in the failing category for good measure.
The LA Times and the NY Times both have more of the details.
Say what you will about this newest incentive based strategy, and the Obama administration’s $4 billion Race to the Top initiative (and many have said a great deal), but at least Obama and Arnie Duncan act like there really is a soul-crippling crisis going on in the nation’s schools.
And they have put their available dollars where their collective mouths are in the hope of bribing and cajoling states and local districts into the kind of reform that the Obama folks believe will work..
(BTW, It should be noted that the $900 million is still just a proposal that is part of the budget that the president sent to Congress.)
Both programs offer a carrot rather than a stick approach to promote the administration’s-approved brands of reform.
For instance, for those unaware, the competitive Race to the Top program, will drop its education-focused economic stimulus dollars only on a limited number of states, meaning that all states who want the money must compete with each other to show who has the innovation and/or reform chops worthy of the big bucks.
In fact, Race To the Top has more in common with the Knight News Challenge—than it does the Bush administration’s stick-driven No Child Left Behind.
The finalists will be announced this week and Edu-Wonks are madly handicapping who will likely make the cut.
Sadly, California is considered very unlikely to win any of those Race to the Top moneys due to the fact that the various teachers’ unions and other lobbying groups badly watered down the state’s reform package.
It’s a payoff to the teacher unions, and a wasteful one that won’t change a thing except to hire more union teachers.
If those schools are doing badly, shut them down and incentivize charter schools. Minorities at my daughter’s Catholic high school (many there on scholarships) did much better than their cohorts at the nearby public schools.
A definition of stupidity is doing the same thing time after time, and achieving the same bad results. Throwing money at schools qualifies big time.
Gotta love stuff like this –
CF: Sadly, California is considered very unlikely to win any of those Race to the Top moneys due to the fact that the various teachers’ unions and other lobbying groups badly watered down the state’s reform package.
Woody Says:
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
It’s a payoff to the teacher unions, and a wasteful one that won’t change a thing except to hire more union teachers.
Why doesn’t this blog have more commenters who aren’t morons ? It’s a great blog, but I’m afraid having Woody pop up as the first commenter in 9 out of 10 posts makes people think twice before jumping in.
Having reg continually attack people with vile words is what keeps other people from commenting…and, what an absolutely stupid conclusion he reaches above. People won’t comment if I go first, which hasn’t been all that often, anyway?!
Woody is right. Reg is the most consistently vile commenter on here. I can only assume that Celeste and Mark (on his blog) allow this trash because they know Reg personally and pity him.
Err, that’s Marc, not Mark
Woody is an open racist and bigot who “jokes” about his wishing for President Obama’sdeath.
John Moore is a fascist fuck who considers Walter Cronkite a traitor and called for journalists to be hung for using the First Amendment.
When I call one of you sickos a “child molester” repeatedly, you can start whining about what a nasty person I am. Until I sink to the level of racist and homophobic bigotry, using “child molester” or “traitor” to counter your weak shit and calling for fellow citizens to be killed for exercising their constitutional rights, you pathetic losers can both go to hell with your crybaby nonsense. What a couple of moronic wimps.
Here’s your sick, perverted Party, boys. No wonder wingnut creeps like you are making your animal noises:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33866.html
“Conservatism” as currently practiced by your crowd is a social disease.
And reg stays clearly in form. Reg, if you commented on other non-right-wing blogs where I sometimes go, you’d last about two posts and be banned.
Moore – the truth, which you know, is that that resentment-driven cranks like Woody and Surefire would be banned on these blogs, so my responses to them wouldn’t be necessary. Check out Surefire’s attack on Celeste in the Trutanich post – that shit wouldn’t be tolerated on the other blogs where I comment. And you wouldn’t last either because you don’t have the chops…
I’m taking your response as a defense of Woody’s child molestation, Obama-death, “fag” baiting and overtly racist comments here. “Woody is right…” – which puts you in the same cesspool. Enjoy the company down there.
reg is a psycho…and, there’s no retracting that conclusion.
Like usual, Reg, you show your failure at fundamental reading comprehension.
You know anytime Celeste wants to spank me for something I said, and she did once and I apologized, I think she has the right to do it and will certainly say something if she feels the need, and I’d respond. Reg is crying though because I said she made me “gag” (not her personally) and that compares with what he puts here as s.o.p.?
Reg is a fraud and a cry baby and for him to be critical of some of my comments is as laughable as the cop hater himself.