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Frederick M. Hess's Blog

A Few Fun Facts From the RTT Applications

With the announcement of the round one Race to the Top (RTT) finalists upon us, I can only say I'm glad I declined the invitation to apply to be an RTT reviewer. For those who have had a chance to peruse the applications, you know what I mean. For those of you who haven't, it's worth a look. The notion that any responsible person can read these and determine which deserve how many points on a given criteria... well, good luck.

In any event, here are a few fun facts that emerge when perusing the mounds of words.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Tue, March 2, 2010 9:04 AM  |  Permalink

Getting Ahead of the Curve in Kansas City

Across the nation, districts are only enduring the first phase of what is likely a several year stretch of tough budgets. Why? First, property taxes account for so much of school spending, residential real estate prices are only now bottoming, commercial properties will be falling into 2011, and states adjust valuation on a rolling basis. This means the impact of the real estate bubble likely won't fully play out until 2014 or so.

Second, thus far, districts have been cushioned by more than $100 billion in stimulus funds. Third, going forward, K-12 is going to be competing with demands for Medicaid, transportation, public safety, and higher education--all of which have been squeezed and will be hungry for fresh dollars when the economy recovers. And, fourth, massively underfunded state and local pension plans will require states to redirect dollars from operations. All of this means that the funding "cliff" looming in 2010-11 is steeper and likely to be with us longer than most district leaders have publicly acknowledged.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Mon, March 1, 2010 9:29 AM  |  Permalink

Of "Transparency" and Credibility

Word on the street is that 10-15 "finalists" from the first round of Race to the Top (RTT) are going to be announced Monday. The finalists will be feted and invited to D.C. for a chance to prostrate themselves before Department of Education officials and, presumably (though it's not entirely to clear to this semi-informed observer), the 58 reviewers. That's hardly the only thing that's unclear. In fact, for all the overwrought praise for our earnest Secretary of Education's promises of "maximum integrity and transparency," I'd venture to say that RTT is actually quite opaque--and in ways likely to cause problems down the road.

After all, the Obama administration is in the midst of a self-proclaimed effort to "take on business as usual" and revolutionize the shape of federal education funding. In the President's words, he's hoping to shift federal edu-funding so that "instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform." At the most basic level, what this entails is shifting federal funds from formulas that distribute dollars based on body counts to competitive grant programs that reward certain kinds of behavior.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Fri, February 26, 2010 11:19 AM  |  Permalink

Breaking News: The 77 Percent Effect

Cynics like me have worried that the Department of Education's Race to the Top (RTT) program has, in a time of fiscal crisis, distracted attention from addressing unsustainable state budgets. Such cynicism has been deemed unfashionable by administration allies, cash-starved state and local officials keen to stay in the Department of Education's good graces, and editorial writers eager to say nice things about our earnest Secretary of Education.

Much of this enthusiasm has been driven by the fact that RTT has (in theory) changed the way the federal government and the states do business. We are shifting from a model driven by aid formulas and towards one focused on transformation and performance--or so I've been told. I've been assured that this shift is already evident in state thinking, most visibly in their RTT applications.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Thu, February 25, 2010 10:00 AM  |  Permalink

RTT and the Emperor's Pants

Yesterday, I noted the import of creating clear, coherent, credible, and transparent processes for governing the Race to the Top (RTT) and Investing in Innovation (i3) funds. Making this task especially vital are the enormous sums of discretionary dollars in play. The stimulus fund set-aside for RTT and i3 alone is almost five times the $1 billion a year for Reading First which, just a few years ago, was regarded as a giant discretionary program. And Reading First's travails were enough to unwind substantial progress that had been made in reading policy.

The Department should be holding itself (and should be held by outsiders) to an unprecedented level of transparency given the resources at stake and the disturbing concentration of influence in a Secretary of Education who has ladled out $100 billion in stimulus funds, has $5 billion in discretionary dollars, and is actively collaborating with the nation's biggest education foundations. Unfortunately, asking hard questions about RTT or i3 (much less making snippy comments about them) is a pretty good way for a state or local official, researcher, provider, or advocate to screw up their career.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Wed, February 24, 2010 8:49 AM  |  Permalink

Tough Love For RTT

I like the intuitions guiding Race to the Top (RTT) and the companion Investing in Innovation (i3) fund. I do. I'm a fan of charter schooling, improved data systems, rewarding effective teachers, and a bunch of the other ideas in play. I believe K-12 schooling spends too much time regarding our $600 billion a year in public funds as an entitlement, and too little time thinking about investing wisely and strategically. And I believe the feds can play a useful role when it comes to promoting transparency, overcoming collective action problems, and providing political cover for state and district leaders eager to lead the way.

That said, I've been quite critical of much the Obama administration has done when it comes to RTT and i3 (for example, here and here). This is because I fear that RTT and i3 are well-intended but sloppily conceived and problematically executed efforts to promote ideas I have spent much of two decades championing. I fear that the Department of Education's efforts on this front, despite the adoring early coverage (such as David Brooks declaring RTT a "quiet revolution"), may ultimately do more harm than good for efforts to promote smart transformation.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Tue, February 23, 2010 8:47 AM  |  Permalink

Influence Isn't Deference

I spent the weekend in Atlanta at the annual conference of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. In gatherings like that, folks frequently ask me for thoughts about the policy process (which is amusing if you consider that I've never worked in government or, so far as I know, ever actually, you know, impacted policy). Anyway, I wound up in a couple terrific conversations about how researchers and educators could more effectively shape policy.

I noticed that my fellow Ed Week blogging newbie Walt Gardner tackled this very subject last week. He expressed frustration that policymakers seem too often to ignore what teachers think.

I'm more sanguine on that point. I think you'd find cops, soldiers, doctors, and college professors also feel like their opinions don't receive enough weight. For those who want to insist that doctors have played a big role in shaping health care reform, the evidence suggests that large numbers of doctors, at least, feel otherwise (see here or here). In fact, professionals in any field may feel less influential than they look from the outside. After all, many critics of K-12 have historically worried that policies were too attentive to teachers' interests.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Mon, February 22, 2010 12:10 PM  |  Permalink

Bait and Switch on Common Standards?

We've been told time and again that the current common standards push is guided by the mantra "fewer, clearer, and higher" standards. That's a good thing, since efforts to craft expansive standards tend to crumble under their own weight. Recall what happened to the national history standards panel back in the 1990s, when disputes over who and what should be in and out led the U.S. Senate to resoundingly reject its handiwork.

I've previously written about why it is so tough in the U.S. to craft standards outside of math and language arts that don't devolve into culture clashes, or piles of mush (and even in math and language arts, we know that good standards are no picnic). This has made the "fewer, clearer, and higher" mantra most welcome and suggested that advocates have learned from past mistakes.

So, imagine my surprise when I read this interview with Secretary Duncan's anti-bullying chief Kevin Jennings in the February Phi Delta Kappan magazine.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Fri, February 19, 2010 7:05 AM  |  Permalink

Free Weingarten Now

Yesterday I railed that the "it's for the kids" (IFTK) mantra turns substantive disagreements into name-calling. If I'm "for the kids" and you disagree with me on tracking, testing, or whatever, it follows that you're "against the kids." (As an aside, Knowledge Alliance honcho Jim Kohlmoos wryly asked whether it wasn't IFTK that led me into teaching. Straight up: nope. Cold-hearted guy that I am, I just enjoyed the instruction, the kids, and the content. But, it was easy enough to play along and mouth IFTK banalities just like the next guy. And that's the problem.)

The IFTK lingo becomes a reflex that stifles honest debate and cogent thinking. This brings us to AFT President Randi Weingarten's recent interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show. Pressed by tough questions, the razor-sharp Weingarten illustrated how IFTK helps turn important discussions into vapid and disconcertingly stupid ones.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Thu, February 18, 2010 7:07 AM  |  Permalink

'It's for the Kids' Needs to Go

It's time to banish the phrase, "It's for the kids," (that's "IFTK" for those of you keeping score at home) from the edu-discourse, along with its insipid cousins like "it's all about kids," "just for the kids," and "we're in it for the kids." Actually, it's way past time.

Two things recently reminded how much I loathe IFTK. One was a terrific little essay penned by my old mentor, Harvard University's Dick Elmore. The other, which I'll take up tomorrow, was AFT President Randi Weingarten's painful interview recently on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show.

Elmore bracingly terms "We're in it for the kids" a "monument to self-deception." He argues, "Public schools, and the institutions that surround them, surely rank among the most self-interested institutions in American society"--with school boards "training beds" for would-be politicians, superintendents sketching grandiose visions and then fleeing for cushier positions, and unions sacrificing student interests in the name of teacher job security.

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By Frederick M. Hess  |  Wed, February 17, 2010 7:28 AM  |  Permalink