Only losers

I wrote this a couple months back whne Florida lost out on the first round of cuts with the race to the top grants. It still seems relevent.

See the list of winners, is one of the prompts on the ed.gov site, about the Race to the Top grants. What about the losers can’t we see a list of them too? Am I the only one offended that the government is treating the future of our children like a game? I am personally glad we did not get any part of the Race to the Top grant. In theory, these grants created by politicians are designed to improve education but I think they are going to end up having the opposite effect. They are going to hurt education and do so dramatically.

This didn’t stop Florida from pulling out all stops to get a share of the grant and many education experts thought we were a shoe in and it came as quite a surprise that we didn’t. Maybe we didn’t win because we asked for 1.1 billion dollars or over a quarter of the grant for just us alone. In our fervor to get it, the legislature also put senate bill six and its house counterpart on the fast track to becoming a law. You might know the bills under their other name, the, we hate unions and everything is the teachers fault bill. Then again maybe we didn’t “win” because the nation knows the powers-that-be we don’t value education that much.

Isn’t it ironic that the states leaders, basically the Republican Party rail against practically everything the federal government does but then fall all over themselves in attempts to get money? I guess anything to avoid doing the right thing right? How about they fund education properly and then stay out of the localities way, at least until they get a clue as to what they are doing.

I voted for President Obama and I will even admit I got caught up in his hope and change speeches. I thought the country had gotten a little mean and selfish, I didn’t like the war. I felt it was time we went in a different direction. However after reading the provisions of the Race to the Top grants, this is not the change I had hoped for and even worse it has shaken my hope, my belief that things can change for the better, especially if this is the direction the government wants to head in. Politicians like used car salesmen have a way of making things sound good even bad things, but like my grandfather used to say, you can put perfume on a pig, but it’s still a pig. The Race to the Top grants is a pig of an idea.

It calls for Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace. This actually sounds good until you think about it critically. Florida already has a test, the almost universally reviled F-Cat. It is so high stakes for both children and schools that most schools just teach to the test. I hope some of these kids can get jobs where they just take the F-cat day after day because that’s all we have prepared them for. And where I can’t speak for everywhere in Florida what exactly is Duval doing to prepare them for the work place. We have practically eliminated the teaching of trades and severely curtailed the teaching of arts. I am also not sure if all the social promotions and the ignoring of discipline that we do, does our kids, who will eventually join the work place, any favors. What do you mean I have to do my work and I can’t curse you out, are questions I can see many of our children asking future employers.

Then when it says: Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals how to improve instruction, is a huge problem too. If the government was being honest it should have written, lets over work our already over worked and under paid teachers. Let’s give them more tasks than they can possibly do and then have them only play a peripheral relationship to education. For centuries do you know where most teachers got their data? It was from working with the kids and learning about them. They don’t need to spend hours creating bell curves and bar graphs to learn little Johnny needs extra time or little Suzy is more of a visual learner, the good teachers after a few days know it and do it.

The third point is recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most. Hmmm, where are they needed most? Oh that’s right they are needed most everywhere that children go to school. The race to the Top Grant with its winners and losers prioritize children. Now do some children need extra help and extra resources? Undoubtedly, should they get them, yes.

Finally the race to the top grant calls for turning around the lowest-performing schools. Wow what a great idea, if only the states and localities would have thought about that, then we wouldn’t have been sitting around doing nothing for all these years. The thing that most people don’t want to admit is that most of the worse schools are in the worse neighborhoods and where schools can be part of the plan to turn them all around they can’t be the only piece. Teachers who show up every day, spend their own money and make an honest effort cannot compete with what is going on in children’s homes and neighborhoods, they can’t and to blame teachers is just wrong. The school in Rhode Island that received a lot of publicity when all of their teachers were fired not only was in one of the worse poorest neighborhoods but had actually been making gains in reading and math and for all their hard work received pink slips. In the end they didn’t fail the community, the community failed them.

Schools are not designed to fix society, if a child does not want to learn they can be highly successful doing so. The thing is, if not careful schools can exacerbate already existing problems and there are some things they can be doing to make sure fewer kids fall through the cracks as well. This is what we should be working on fixing and improving.

I have a couple ideas to turn education around, ideas that won’t break the bank and won’t blow up the wheel. If a kid can’t master the material they aren’t passed until they can. If a kid acts up they get consequences. If a kid does either of those we get them some help to catch up or find out why. Then let’s lay off teachers, there is not some epidemic of bad teachers out despite what some right wing talk show hosts would have you believe. The vast majority of teachers are hard working, dedicated and sacrifice so much. If we want to put more procedures in place to check on this, as long as they are not too intrusive, then they are not going to mind.

My question is, how are the politicians in Washington D.C., Tallahassee and 1701 prudential Drive, supposedly the best of the best we have to offer as a nation not getting that this is what we need to do? Maybe it’s because they are in their ivory towers too far away from the problem or maybe it’s because they really aren’t the best of the best after all. Whatever the reason, this is not the change I hoped for and if it comes true, it will be change I dread.