Race to the Top Initiative
We’ve read the fine print
This summer, the U.S. Department of Education has been very active in its attempts to reform public education through the use of stimulus fund dollars. Knowing that states throughout the country are in desperate need of money, the White House is asking for broad reforms before these funds become available.
This is never truer than the USDOE’s latest grant program, Race to the Top.
The Race to the Top is a $4.3 billion program designed to help states meet their funding obligations for public education. The grant is completely competitive and therefore not every state will receive their share of this money, as it depends on its meeting certain criteria to become eligible. It is expected that, should Nevada qualify for Race to the Top monies, it will receive around $20 million. To put this in perspective, the Nevada Department of Education budget for the 2008-2009 school year was $2.2 billion. The Race to the Top funds would equal less than one percent of the budget our schools used all of last year, and this is not including the local dollars that each county adds to their school budgets. So, while the USDOE is attempting to use the carrot and the stick approach to school reform, the stick, in this case, far outweighs the carrot.
In order to qualify for the Race to the Top grants, each state must comply in 4 general areas:
Progress in addressing each of the four assurances:
- Standards and assessments
- Data systems to support instruction
- Great teachers and leaders
- Turning around struggling schools
As it sits today, the state of Nevada only marginally meets two of the above criteria and minimally in the other two areas. There is also a condition, as placed by the USDOE, that there shall be no law inhibiting a school to tie teacher evaluations to test scores. Currently, Nevada state law prohibits the use of test scores when it comes to teacher evaluations, and the Nevada State Education Association has fought to keep this law in existence for more than 20 years.
NSEA has done so because many variables go into how a student will score on a single test. Some students are excellent test takers; others show their acumen in other ways. Parental involvement, nutrition and other socio-economic factors also have a large effect on how a student will perform during a test. Holding a teacher’s evaluation hostage, on a matter that they cannot completely control, is not only unfair but it’s not the proper way to evaluate whether a teacher is effective at what they do.
Because Nevada does not meet the necessary criteria, it is practically assured it will not be eligible for Phase I of the Race to the Top funds. However, there have been several grumblings and rumors that Nevada will be heading into a special session sometime by the end of the year, and the top item on their agenda is changing the law which assures teacher’s that their evaluation won’t be tied to a student’s test score. Moreover, there will be other items on the agenda in order to help make Nevada eligible for Phase II of the federal stimulus program.
NSEA is concerned the USDOE is overstepping its boundaries on the proper role the federal government should play in education. Education is a states’ rights issue, and a state shall determine the best way to educate its pupils. Additionally, the changes the federal government is requiring, in testing and in education standards, do not come cheap. In fact, it will cost the Nevada education system quite a bit of money in order to qualify for the $20 million. How does this make sense? Spending quite a bit of state money in order to receive back less than one percent of the total state operating budget on education, all the while weakening the regulations the state of Nevada has specifically put in place in order to educate its students, just doesn’t add up. While education funding in Nevada is poor, it is irresponsible of the federal government to demand reform when states simply don’t have the money to enact it. In fact, they should be waiving this requirement to allow states to be eligible for the funds if their intent is really to help students succeed.
Educating children, from state to state, is not a one size fits all strategy. What New York state needs in order to overcome its education barriers is much different to what Nevada needs. If the USDOE wanted a responsible solution to the education funding problem as caused by these poor economic times, it would work with each state individually instead of simply demanding reforms that haven’t proven to work in the first place.
Finally, many of the issues the USDOE is asking Nevada to usurp are items which are collectively bargained into local contracts. NSEA is against any new law or regulation which limits the collective bargaining agreement. While not every state has the collective bargaining laws Nevada does, this is just one more example of the federal bureaucracy trying to make education a one size fits all strategy; and it simply won’t work.
While NSEA does have several problems with the Race to the Top grant, there is still a vast opportunity of cooperation between the state, the federal government, and the educators who work in our public schools. NSEA looks forward to continuing to work with Secretary Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education. Together, we hope to come up with shared guidelines—ones that will meet the needs of students and educators alike so that school improvement goes beyond a single test score and, instead, goes toward improving for the children while arming them with the 21st century skills they will so desperately need.
