Competitive Baloney & Rehabilitating RTTT
At the Stanford SOCIAL INNOVATION Review (I don't know why the yell the middle of their name), Joanne Weiss has unleashed an astonishing stack of deep-fried baloney that attempts to retro-actively legitimize the destructive power-and-money test-and-punish legacy of Race to the Top."Competing Principles" is truly audacious.
Joanne Who??
Weiss has a powerful pedigree. She put in years as an ed tech honcho before going to work for NewSchools Venture Fund, an investment firm for hedge fundies to get their paws in the education biz and that sweet, sweet mountain of public tax dollars. In conjunction with that gig, she served on the boards of Aspire, Green Dot, Rocketship and Leadership charter outfits, to name just a few.
All of this made her perfectly positioned to become Arne Duncan's Chief of Staff and the lead dog for Race to the Top. Are you starting to understand why that program was such a mess?
But when Weiss looks at RttT, she does not see mess, and in this article, she paints with rosy hues the many fine lessons to be learned from the administration's signature education program.
She opens with a brief fantasy-filled recap of RttT's impact (43 states now have super-magical tests that can measure critical thinking), and then moves on to the Eight Big Design Lessons of Race to the Trough.
Create a Real Competition
The administration was not sure that the initiative would be "compelling." But golly gee, 46 states ponied up to give it a try. Weiss believes that the secret was "our decision to leverage the spirit of competition." How, one may ask, does one harness this mysterious and mystical force?
First, they set a very high bar, allowed for very few winners, and offered very big rewards. She forgets to mention another important step-- launch your competition when states have just been CURMUDGUCATION: Competitive Baloney & Rehabilitating RTTT: