History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
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Themes in the news for the week of December 7-11, 2009
- 09-23-2009
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A weekly summary of themes in education news provided by UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.
'Race to the Top' is Underway
So is the Race for Federal Dollars.
By UCLA IDEA staff
On the one hand, the immediate stakes in this race seem high: California, in the midst of a public education crisis, could receive up to $700 million of $4.35 billion in federal money from the RTTT education initiative. On the other hand, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters points out that the RTTT funds are just a side issue, amounting to, at best, just 1% of the state education budget.
The competition for RTTT money will be judged on a point system that includes eliminating caps on the number of charter schools the state allows, improving data systems to support instruction, and linking student achievement to teacher evaluations. For California to receive the funds, state politicians need to pass a bill that accommodates these requirements; but “scoring” these points can also be at odds with different parties’ core education and political goals.
An Assembly bill, authored by Education Committee Chairwoman Julia Brownley, is backed by teacher unions, and was approved in committee on Wednesday (Los Angeles Times). A competing Senate Bill, sponsored by Education Committee Chairwoman Gloria Romero, favored by charter school organizations, was “effectively shut down” (Sacramento Bee). “The Romero bill included provisions to give parents a stronger voice in how schools are run, while Brownley's bill would establish more oversight for charter schools, among other differences” (Sacramento Bee).
Walters points out that Governor Schwarzenegger, who supports the Senate bill, wants “more charter schools free to set their own curricula, more parental choice in schools, and tougher performance standards for teachers and pupils alike” (Sacramento Bee). Education advocates and the California Teachers Association (CTA) argue that “California's education problems stem mostly from a lack of money” (Sacramento Bee).
Does the Race to the Top initiative promise real education reform in California? Marty Hittelman, writing in the California Progress Report says that the state legislature shouldn’t pass a bad law simply to compete for federal funding. “In a year that Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature have made billions of dollars in catastrophic cuts to school funding, it is ironic that the Legislature is rushing to adopt bad policy to compete for a relative pittance in federal funding.” Hittelman says that too much emphasis is placed on charter schools. He cites a study that finds that most of them do not do better than regular public schools; and many, do worse. Hittelman also says that charter schools need to be held accountable, and be required to serve “English-language learners, students with disabilities, and very low income students (California Progress Report).”
Dennis Shirley, an education professor at Boston College, recently testified at a Race to the Top public hearing in Los Angeles. Shirley calls for reform measures that will last after the federal funds expire. He proposes a “transformational model” that provides “struggling schools with professional development to help them to learn to work with data, while also providing them with supports to deal with those aspects of student learning that are not captured by data.” Shirley favors helping “teachers who are succeeding with the students in turnaround schools to share their practices with others.”
Shirley’s comments underscore the limits of RTTT’s promise to leverage and influence the direction of education policy while paying too little attention to whether its mandates can (or should) be brought to scale quickly—that is, expanded and sustained so that all children get the education that is their right. Although new federal support is welcomed and urgent, the RTTT initiative promises incremental funds to a small number of schools while most public schools struggle to make do with declining budgets. California has cut $18 billion in public education funding the last two years, thousands of school staff have been laid off, and class sizes have increased in many schools. Whichever bill to secure RTTT funds passes in the state legislature, California will still rank near the bottom (currently, 47th in the nation) in education spending.
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