StickWithANose

Arne’s Race to the Top project is a testament to the Disaster Capitalism model that seeks to advance corporate-based education reform through the exploitation of collapsing state budgets, and it is now encountering the remaining elements of institutional resistance to its privatization of the institutional mandate of public schooling in urban districts. EdWeek:

Teachers’ unions in at least two states are threatening to withhold endorsements of their state’s Race to the Top applications, which could jeopardize the states’ chances of winning the coveted federal dollars.

In a letter printed as an advertisement in the Tallahassee Democrat, Florida Education Association President Andy J. Ford discouraged local union affiliates from signing an agreement to implement a state plan that, among other things, would require districts to base teacher evaluations and compensation bonuses heavily on student test scores.

However, I don’t hold out much hope that anything will come of this. The reporting on this latest conflict will follow the same tired old narrative of high-minded reformers doing battle with entrenched interests [ie. teachers and their pesky unions]. Behold:

The Race to the Top program, part of the economic-stimulus legislation passed last year, has been problematic for the national teachers’ unions because of its heavy emphasis on using student achievement to measure teacher effectiveness. Now the action has moved to the state and local level, as states prepare applications for the Jan. 19 deadline for the first round of funding.

The $4 billion program is forcing states to engage in a delicate balancing act of aggressively pursuing the money while maintaining support from state and local union affiliates.

“We’re bumping up against a reality where the teaching profession is resisting doing a lot of things that are pretty sensible,” said Charles Barone, the director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee that has been highly critical of teachers’ unions. “We’re in for a showdown. The unions aren’t going to give in most cases, and I think the [Obama] administration is going to have to see what it’s got in front of it.”