Swift & Change Able

 Democrats for Education Reform, Race to the Top Backgrounder 

Overview

By the end of last week, a broad-based group of educators, researchers, and policy wonks had weighed in favorably on the draft Race to the Top guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education.*

The National Education Association (and a few of its allies, many of whom it directly funds) however, chose to tear a page out of a (very) old playbook and mount what might most charitably called a temper tantrum. Once again, they have chosen to mount a political attack rather than engage in constructive collaboration that could help guide $4 billion in Race to the Top funding toward credible efforts to improve K-12 public education and close achievement gaps.

It’s disappointing - to say the least - that after seven and a half years of complaining about federal education law, and 20 years after the advent of standards-based reform, the NEA is still only able to tell us mostly what it does not want to do. Its comments on the draft guidance, which were issued last Friday, are not surprising; nor are they new. They are the most recent examples of a stubborn, longstanding unwillingness to embrace change, and a stunningly tragic lack of vision, ambition, and spirit.

Here’s a DFER Backgrounder summarizing the game they’ve been running not only for months, but for years: link.

Bonus track: A page out of "Introduction to the Foundations of American Education," Allyn and Bacon: 1979. 

* Here are two coalition letters on which DFER collaborated with others:

DFER with Education Trust, Center for American Progress, and the Education Equality Project: here.

DFER with the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, Education Equality Project, The New Teacher Project, The American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence, Policy Innovation in Education Network, ConnCAN, DC School Reform Now, Advance Illinois, Advance Innovative Education (Louisiana), Tennessee SCORE, Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education: here.