The image above is taken from the annual Cheese Rolling competition in Gloucestershire, England,  in which teams compete to roll a giant wheel of cheese to the top of a steep hill.  The federal Race to the Top competition is similar, except in this case the states are competing for cheese rather than transporting it—$4 billion, to be exact.

But no one told New York State; our entry in the national competition was as stinky as day-old-limburger.  

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has one foot in the world of educational reform, having come up under Chicago School CEO Paul Vallas, but has also managed to maintain good relations with the unions.  That said, it was clear what he expected from the winning entries: reform, cutting of red tape and all around innovation.  

The details of his remarks can be found here, but it’s pretty clear what he wants: 1) No dumbing down of state standards.  No Child Left Behind required that all schools make Adequate Yearly Progress, but dumbly allowed each state to create its own test.  Unsurprisingly, states have totally gamed this system, producing tests that only show the illusion of progress.

2) A strong system that monitors how individual schools and districts are doing.  When Duncan talks about the need to “identify effective instructional practices,” he means that we have to figure out which curricula work and which don’t.

3) Here, let’s let Duncan speak for himself:

It is no secret that when it comes to schools, talent matters—tremendously. To boost the quality of teachers and principals, especially in high-poverty schools and hard-to-staff subjects, states and districts should be able to identify effective teachers and principals. At the local level we want to see better strategies in place to reward and retain more top-notch teachers—and improve or replace ones who aren’t up to the job.

Attract and reward good teachers while dumping the bad.  

4) Bad schools must be closed and destructive school cultures that have tolerated failure must be gotten rid of.

These four goals shouldn’t be controversial—indeed, they seem like obvious steps forward.  And $700 million was the prize for the winners of Round 1.  But New York totally failed in almost all respects.  

New York State exams are definitely shady—New York kids’ scores keep going up, yet we are flat in the federal NAEP test (see this earlier post for a more detailed description of the NAEP). We have used a hodge-podge of curricula across schools and the state, making it very hard to determine which ones work. As far as having quality teachers—well, let’s just note that it is New York State law that teacher pay cannot be tied to student performance on exams.  Supposedly, Duncan let it be known sotto voce that this law needed to be repealed for New York to have any chance of winning funding.  The law remains in effect.  Finally, New York City has tried to close some of the worst schools, but were recently blocked by a federal judge. Here’s a gripping inside account of the insanity of one of these schools, Paul Robeson High. 

If all this weren’t enough, the state has foolishly capped the number of charter schools at 200, and this has also hurt our chances.

The result is that of the 16 finalists for round one (and it’s amazing we were in the finals at all), we came in 15 of 16.  

We must do better—money is on the table; all we need to do is to grab that cheddar.  More likely it’ll roll back down the hill.