StickWithANose

Although this article is framed in that all too familiar lazy journalistic style of the evil unions vs. sincere reformers, it does stumble upon an uncomfortable truth about the Obama administration.

To the surprise of many educators who campaigned last year for change in the White House, the Obama administration’s first recipe for school reform relies heavily on Bush-era ingredients and adds others that make unions gag.

Standardized testing, school accountability, performance pay, charter schools — all are integral to President Obama’s $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant competition to spur innovation. None is a typical Democratic crowd-pleaser…

Debate over Race to the Top among Democrats, education groups and others is widespread, with thousands of written comments pouring into the government since late July. It previews the clash to come when Obama and the Democratic-led Congress update No Child Left Behind. The controversial law is certain to be renamed and reworked. But those who want to scrap it entirely might be disappointed because federal education policy has been largely bipartisan for the past two decades.

The reason that Obama’s education policies do not deviate from Bush’s policies is that there is zero separation between the two parties on this issue. The article details points of agreement.

To create systems to track individual student achievement over time and link growth in scores to individual teachers and principals;

To use those data in part to evaluate and compensate teachers and principals;

To lift limits on independently operated but publicly funded charter schools, which usually are not unionized; and

To shake up perennially struggling schools identified through No Child Left Behind.

As I have documented here repeatedly, there is simply no evidence that these reforms are effective tools in raising student achievement. However, there is ample evidence that in the name of producing a new generation of critical thinkers to compete in the global economy we are relegating schooling to the cognitive basement. Applying market-based reforms in a second-best marketplace is a recipe for a disaster that will primarily impact the poorest among us. Nothing new there…