Thomas Friedman Loooves "Race to the Top"... Should You?
by Frederick M. Hess • Oct 26, 2012 at 7:03 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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The NYT's Thomas Friedman is at it again. Last Sunday, with his customary humility, he opined in "Obama's Best-Kept Secrets," "While I don't know how Obamacare will come out, I'm certain that my two favorite Obama initiatives will be transformative." One of the two was Race to the Top (the other was the President's push to boost mileage standards for cars and trucks).
On the one hand, Friedman cheerleading for ambitious federal programs is no surprise. After all, he's the guy who has damned the frustrating, pluralistic, federal design of the American system, saying on Meet the Press in 2010, "It's why I have fantasized...what if we could just be China for a day?" On the other hand, Friedman treats dubious assertions as established fact. He suggests that 4,500 union affiliates signing meaningless pledges is a game-changer. He repeats, without qualification, Duncan's claims about miraculous results on school turnarounds and student discipline. Ignoring broken promises and eye-popping tales of implementation headaches and bureaucracy that a reporter could tackle, he blithely announces that "even states that did not win [RTT] have been implementing their proposals anyway."
As voters weigh President Obama's first term, it seems a good time to offer a slightly more acerbic take on
