Race To The Top

The federal government is putting its money for educational reform behind a program called Race To The Top. The goals of this program are to:

provide $4.35 billion for the Race to the Top Fund, a competitive grant program designed to encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform; achieving significant improvement in student outcomes, including making substantial gains in student achievement, closing achievement gaps, improving high school graduation rates, and ensuring student preparation for success in college and careers; and implementing ambitious plans in four core education reform areas:

• Adopting internationally-benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success  
  in college and the workplace;
• Recruiting, developing, retaining, and rewarding effective teachers and principals;
• Building data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they  
  can improve their practices; and
• Turning around our lowest-performing schools.

While these are important goals I believe they miss  half the needs of the children in our education system. A recent survey from the justice Department claims that over 60 per cent of our children are exposed to violence.  The survey found that, “Nearly half of all children surveyed were assaulted at least once in the past year, and about 6 percent were victimized sexually."

Reform that does not address the social emotional needs of our children is not a complete reform program. There are students sitting in our classes that can not focus because their daily lives are chaotic. NCLB has caused us to focus on the competitive nature of our society and provide even more stress for children, teachers and adminstrators. I fear that Race To The Top is more of the same.

While it is important to address academic performance and student outcomes it need not be framed in terms of competition. There were a number of reforms that began in the 90s such as portfolios and individualization. These reforms have been lost in NCLB reform.  With the advance of technology it seems to me that those ideas should be looked at again. We need to reduce the amount stress caused by the high stakes testing that has become the norm.

While we have been ratcheting up our testing to meet international standards, other countries have adopted our ideas of the 90s. Singapore comes to mind. They worked to reduce stress in their schools by developing programs emphasizing critical thinking skills. Yong Zhao, a professor at Michigan State, in a new book, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, draws upon his experience in the Chinese education system and argues that Chinese officials are changing their system to reduce their high stakes admission tests and promote critical-thinking skills. Education Week reports that Zhao says, "Clearly, American education has been moving toward authoritarinism".

As the feds pour money into education and seek national standards our national fixation on fear of "losing" will cause them to replace our system of local control of schools. Graduates of our schools have created the strongest economy in the world with freedoms others do not enjoy.  To limit our freedoms to compete with authoritarian regimes does not seem logical.


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