The Race to Kumbaya
by Frederick M. Hess • Mar 29, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Perhaps they should have called it the "Race to Consensus" or the "Race to Stakeholder Buy-In." Upon hearing there were only two round one Race to the Top (RTT) winners, I thought Duncan deserved some credit for recovering his footing after the fiasco of naming 16 round one finalists. Then, when I heard the two were Delaware and Tennessee, I had second thoughts. And they brought to mind my observation from a few months back (and restated this morning) that the numerical marker was a terrific tool for Duncan. All he had to do to get laurels was limit the number of blue ribbons--and now he's done that.Looking at Delaware and Tennessee leaves me thinking that all the talk about bold reform was window dressing. The states that explicitly set out to blow past conventions, and devil take the hindmost, fell by the wayside. Florida and Louisiana's bold, action-backed plans--which reflected a belief that they could push forward if they did so only with the eager and willing--lost out to states that obtained laughable levels of buy-in from school districts, school boards, and local teachers' unions.
Tennessee boasted that it had obtained signatures of participation from 100% of Local Education Agency (LEA) superintendents, 100% from the presidents of local school boards, and 93% from the local teachers' union leaders. Delaware bragged that it obtained 100% of the signatures in each category. Is this really a good thing?
Spin, Mr. Secretary, Spin!
by Frederick M. Hess • Mar 29, 2010 at 9:20 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Like the Energizer Bunny, our earnest Secretary of Education just keeps going. The Race to the Top (RTT) winners are slated to be announced this afternoon, and a rumor from a reliable source has it that there will be just three winners. That would be good news.
Given his unfortunate penchant for talking bigger than he delivers, and all the ink already spilled on RTT, you'd think Duncan might let the results speak for themselves. After all, just about everybody--other than his flacks, love-struck media types, and state officials eager to curry favor--thought his decision to name 16 round one Race to the Top (RTT) finalists a massive let-down, especially after all his tough talk. Even RTT boosters and Duncan allies like DFER honcho Joe Williams and Eduwonk Andy Rotherham were puzzled and disappointed.
But, rather than let the results speak, Duncan's at it again. Our earnest Secretary bragged to columnist David Broder in yesterday's Washington Post that the winning RTT proposals are "so good, and so few." We'll see. I've few doubts the media will play it that way. But I'd advise those not on the Department payroll to give Andy Smarick's new "Education Stimulus Watch" a careful read before reaching any conclusions. If one looks past the shiny exterior of the RTT spin machine and peeks under the hood of the apps, as Smarick has noted, the significance of what all but two or maybe three states are proposing is actually pretty dubious. If the Department names just two or three winners, as rumor has it, then Duncan will have countered some of the damage that resulted from the fiasco of naming 16 round one finalists. Even so, this would have been a terrific case for him to show, not tell.
Noteworthy here, as I've pointed out before, is how easy it is for Duncan to ensure that round one of RTT is