Friday, April 23, 2010

Where in the World Is Arne? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Where in the World Is Arne? - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Where in the World Is Arne?

Politics K-12 wants to know, as does Rick "Straight Up" Hess.
Race to the Top started out as a new, exciting adventure with the promise of billions hundreds of millions of dollars in prize money to help the nation's students. And now, reality is setting in—and the adults are fighting.
In the run-up to the first round of the competition, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was a dominating presence, not hesitating to praise the well-behaving and model states (think Louisiana, and all the kudos he gave them for its teacher-education and student data linkage). And he also didn't hesitate to shake his finger at those misbehaving states, like New York, for not having a better charter school law, or California for having a teacher-student data firewall. Duncan used the power of the bully pulpit to provide states with important road markers to navigate the competition. States, in turn, could use Duncan and the Race to the Top competition as political