Unless you completely ignore education news, you know Delaware and Tennessee are the winners of the first round of Race to the Top (R2T) grants. The national blogs (see here and here) are aflutter dissecting the winners and losers, trying to figure out what really separates the two. I’m not one to duplicate, however, it is worth looking at how Washington State might fare when we apply in round 2. My initial reaction, “it’s going to be tough.” A few things that stick out:
1) Delaware and Tennessee both have 100 percent district participation, and nearly universal union support. While Washington can certainly get there, we have a few more people to get on board. Delaware is considerably smaller than Washington, and it’s student population is no exception (126,801 compared to Washington’s 1,040,750). Tennessee is closer in size to Washington, with an enrollment of 930,525, although it has about half as many districts.
2) Delaware and Tennessee are members of various assessment consortia. While Washington is part of the Achieve consortium, we are not widely using its assessments. In contrast, Delaware and Tennessee are each members of four consortia.
3) Both Delaware (466) and Tennessee (1,300 annually) have produced more teachers – proportionate to size – through alternate pathways than Washington (650). This will probably cost us a few points.
4) Delaware and Tennessee have more developed evaluation systems. Even with the passage of SB 6696, Washington still has a lot of work to do to create a meaningful evaluation system for teachers and principals. The Secretary Duncan has indicated he would prefer R2T grants fund established efforts before being used to kick start pilots.
Dare I ask, what stands out to you all?
Th obvious question is why we would want to “compete” (for our own tax dollars) in the first palce: RTT requires that states transform their entire system to meet some untried, questionable pedagogies and structures, all for the mere “vistory” of “winning” (back our tax dollars) of about $75 per student, a one-time payment. So we should change our entire structure to “win”, then be left with the bills for these Broad/Gates corporation mandates for the years to come?
RTT is a suckers bet – don’t fall for it.