Race to the Top Going from District to District – Lessons Learned
After Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gleaned as much as he could out of the Race to the Top funding, such as it was, by putting a carrot in front of the donkey with potential money to the states, he decided to go from district to district selling his wares.
The state of Washington did not seriously go after Race to the Top money, knowing what the price was, charter schools and the wasting of community schools through closures and “turnarounds”.
Unfortunately, several of our school districts took the bite the second time around by what I am guessing was some finagling by the part of Bill Gates and the Broad Foundation with facilitation by the Broad superintendent who at the time was reigning the Seattle school district.
To follow is a post that was originally on the Seattle Education blog but at this time, I see this as painful lesson learned that needs to be shared.
The Road Map Project, Race to the Top, Bill Gates, a national data bank, Wireless Gen…and FERPA?
One of the deals that we made with the devil when it came to accepting Race to the Top dollars is the relinquishing of our children’s information.
Gates and others have begun to collect information about our children from New York to LA and it is about to happen in Seattle thanks to the efforts of the Road Map project, et al, falling all over themselves to receive a pittance of educational funding, $40 M to be split between 7 districts in our state. That’s $5.7M for each school district, if it were to be divided equally.
To put that into perspective, West Seattle High School’s budget for this year is a little over $6M and that does not include building upkeep or other building costs including utilities.
The money will not go into established programs or to help with our budget crunch which happens to be a $32 M shortfall in Seattle, but is to go to “assessing” students starting in pre-school. Assessments basically mean testing on a long-term basis. This is not sustainable but oh well, there is some pie in the sky reasoning about receiving yet another largesse from Bill Gates, and maybe someday we would be able to continue to
After Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gleaned as much as he could out of the Race to the Top funding, such as it was, by putting a carrot in front of the donkey with potential money to the states, he decided to go from district to district selling his wares. The state of Washington did not seriously go after Race to the Top money, knowing what the price was, charter schools and the wasting of c