The President's Speech
Dear Deborah,
I watched President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech and liked his appeal to the nation to encourage innovation, creativity, and imagination. But I was disappointed by his misleading description of Race to the Top. He said it is not a "top-down" program and is not prescriptive. He thinks that it somehow emerged as a result of the good ideas of teachers, principals, local school boards, and communities. But nothing could be further from the truth. It was designed and written within the confines of the U.S. Department of Education by Secretary Arne Duncan and a flock of advisers from the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation.
Race to the Top was funded by nearly $5 billion of economic stimulus money appropriated by Congress. Never in history has the U.S. Department of Education had money of this scale to dispense at will. As I wrote in my recent book, Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute called Race to the Top "NCLB 2: The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick." While Petrilli liked the program's demand to expand the number of charter schools and
