In July, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the finalists for the second round of the Race to the Top grant competition.
Washington didn’t make the cut.
Gov. Gregoire, Randy Dorn and State Board of Education Chairman Jeff Vincent issued this statement in response to Washington state’s elimination: “Today’s news does not mean the end of meaningful education reform in Washington. When we put together our application, we were committed, win or lose, to making sure we would carry out education reform our way, the Washington way.”
The Tacoma News Tribune reports Mary Lindquist, president of the Washington Education Association, saying: “While we are extremely disappointed that the federal government did not recognize the collaborative effort between the governor, the Legislature, parents, other education advocacy groups, local school districts and WEA, the steps we have already taken in preparation for Race to the Top money set a framework for investing in a stronger public schools system.”
According to the folks quoted above, the money isn’t that important because we made significant strides toward improving education in our state.
But did we?
No.
What we got was watered-down policy and proof that collaboration between the state and the WEA results in policies that better serve the interests of adults more than kids.
Washington’s failure to qualify as a Race to the Top finalist shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Why not? Because the legislation that was supposed to qualify us was full of good intentions and weak policy.
For example, Washington committed to reforming teacher and principal evaluation procedures, but fell short of including the single most important indicator of effectiveness: whether or not students learn.
When it came to “turning around our lowest-achieving schools,” Washington’s reform efforts were unimpressive. Legislators created a new three-year improvement process, but any glimmer of reform fell flat when you reached the end of the legislation and found that there are no consequences for schools that fail to improve after the three years.
The bill merely creates a working group that will decide what to do next.
While they’re meeting, more students will be deprived of a good education. Oh, and they forbid the creation of charter schools in school turnaround models. (Other states increased the number of charter schools.)
Last month’s announcement just shines one more light on the fact that our policymakers and education system are keeping our kids on a treadmill when they should be going somewhere.
Diana Cieslak is a policy analyst for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s Citizenship & Governance Center and Education Reform Center.
