Editorial:
The Race to the Top is President Obama’s signature education policy that was to spend $4 billion dollars in states that qualified for the federal dollars. To qualify though, states had to compete against each other and meet the standards set forth by the Obama administration – only two states qualified in this, the initial competition: Delaware and Tennessee.
California did apply for the grant money. It did not have the full support of all the school districts in the state, San Diego Unified School District, along with several other districts decided not to participate with the grant application. This along with the teachers unions opposing the initiative, California’s chances were doomed from the outset.
At the same time it is hard to be disappointed. Yes it is disappointing that we missed out on the millions of dollars that may have come, but it is not disappointing that the Race to the Top is coming up short of its goals.
The Race to the Top is just an extension of the failed Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind program that focused on rewarding those schools that did well and punished those schools and teachers that did not live up to the standards. The NCLB focused on testing which rewarded teaching to the test, and encouraged the privatizing of public education with the growth of charter schools, which have yet to prove that they are the answer to low performing schools.
Instead of punishing those schools that are failing —Obama wants to close as many as 5,000 low performing schools— they should be finding the resources and the monies to support these schools and see that these schools become good schools.
Standardized test is not a one size fits all solution or a fair and equitable gauge of how poor and minority schools are doing. Each school faces unique situations that differ from the well-to-do or even the middle class communities, yet they are all being judge on the same criteria. Education is not a one size fits all, factory solution, as the Alan Bersin top down education philosophy has already proved.
Most if not all of the low-performing schools are located in low-income, minority communities and they are often the center of the community, not only providing an education, but a health center, pre-school services, social center, and sports fields for the community. Schools in the low-income minority communities are often the only thing that holds a community together. To forsake these schools and not to put the effort and money into these schools is to forsake the community in whole.