Funding ‘Race’ Could Leave Education in the Dust
January 18, 2010
Local school administrators and unions put on their track shoes in December to figure out whether they were interested in applying for some brand-new federal funding that might actually take care of some of those unfunded mandates plaguing schools these days.
Ohio’s been offered a piece of as much as $400 million by the federal government through the Race to the Top grant, and the state has been trying to drum up local support to help ensure that money is received. While one could argue any new money for schools can’t be a bad thing, there is plenty of skepticism about whether it actually would help and how much control local districts would cede to grant administrators in the process. It’s worth noting the Ohio Education Association expects to back the program, but it stopped short of recommending it to local unions.
The grant itself is intended to improve student achievement, reward effective teachers, track student success more effectively and improve low-achieving schools, all admirable goals. But like any federal money, there are strings, including tying teacher evaluation at least in part to student test results, a notion that rankles some.
The bigger problem, however, is the state, and thus schools, was given sketchy information about a possible grant in mid-December and were asked for a response by the first week of January. News flash to the feds: That’s not exactly prime time for school districts to be doing much of anything but retuning buses and celebrating holidays with families.
Nevertheless, several area districts did beat the deadline, and some others had all the information they needed to decide not to apply. Lancaster City Schools opted against applying after the district’s teachers union executive committee unanimously rejected the idea, Superintendent Rob Walker said. It didn’t help that there wasn’t much time to gather more information. Some 60 percent of the state’s districts opted against applying.
Chad Sinnott, president of the Lancaster Education Association, said union members felt as if they were giving up too much control to the federal government, so more time to consider the issue would have been welcome but probably wouldn’t have made a difference.
"It was rushed, and a lot of the items in it were not flushed out," he said. "And secondly, it’s big government … taking a lot of the local control out of decisio ns."
Liberty Union went forward with an application in part because, although the information is sketchy, there definitely are additional steps that can be skipped to opt out of the program.
Superintendent Paul Mathews said he, a union official and others went to Columbus during winter break to learn more about the program and came away confident that the program is a good thing.
"I think we all agreed that this is the future of education," he said, adding that it might be better to get in on the forefront, rather than be dragged there later.
Still he and others in the district are wary that they’re being asked to sign on to a program without knowing what’s in the fine print.
"We’re hoping that it turns out to be as positive as we anticipate it to be," he said.
Indeed, a lot of things sound great on paper, but the devil is in the details. The federal government would do well to remember that if it’s a good idea, it’s worth taking an extra month or two to give the people on the ground the chance to understand what they’re getting themselves into, rather than force them into a race.
Although Ohio hasn’t made major policy changes, some other states have as they attempt to qualify for the federal money.
Somehow, dropping 50 state programs on a track and telling them to "race" their way to what could become a national curriculum doesn’t seem like the best approach.
It’s impossible to reach the goal — winning the race — if nobody knows where to find the course.