Letters to the Editor: San Francisco Chronicle « InterACT

Letters to the Editor: San Francisco Chronicle « InterACT:

Letters to the Editor: San Francisco Chronicle

by David B. Cohen

Downtown San Francisco (photo by the author)

Last week, the teachers unions in San Francisco and Oakland declined to support district applications for the latest round of Race to the Top grants, which will go directly to districts rather than to entire states.  I remain skeptical about this approach, both in terms of its potential failure as a driver of real and sustainable improvement, and also its heavy-handed federal intrusion into state and local policy.  (See “Duncan Seeks Cheap Conversions”).  As a subscriber to the San Francisco Chronicle, I knew what to expect: editorials blasting the teachers and unions, with barely a hint of acknowledgment about the reasons that these teachers associations followed the same route as associations in many other California cities.  I wrote two letters to the