Here are the finalists for Arne's money...FL and DC among them.

madfloridian

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Thu Mar-04-10 02:00 PM
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Here are the finalists for Arne's money...FL and DC among them.

As the article says, this seems to show approval of the methods of DC's Michelle Rhee...and the huge movement in Florida to give money via vouchers to private schools and to build more charter schools.

From the Washington Post:

15 states, D.C. make first cut in Race to the Top school reform contest

I notice Rhode Island is there also, and we surely know the kind of school the president and Arne favor there.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia survived the first cut Thursday in the Obama administration's unprecedented $4 billion school reform contest.

The announcement of finalists in the Race to the Top competition at 11:30 a.m. carried some political risk because few governors or state education leaders want to be told they are not in the vanguard of reform. It's also seen as a test of President Obama's resolve to push for major changes in public education as he seeks to rewrite the 2002 No Child Left Behind law.

The finalists are: Colorado, Delaware, the District, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee.

..."These states are an example for the country of what is possible when adults come together to do the right thing for children," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. "Everyone that applied for Race to the Top is charting a path for education reform in America."

Oh, Arne, if Florida is an example of doing the right thing for children..if DC and NY methods of treating public schools with contempt are examples of doing the right thing..

then I fear for the future of education in this country.

Rhee is so powerful that even a WP columnist had his column edited when he was critical of her.

Who Censored the Washington Post�s Rhee Item?

Late night weirdness at the Washington Post, a paper that boasts arguably the best education coverage of any daily. A hard-hitting blog post by reporter Bill Turque, which took on both DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and his own newspaper�s editorial page, disappeared from the paper�s website for several hours, only to return with some of the more pointed turns of phrase removed.

Turque, who has clashed with Rhee over his tough reporting, has been covering the fallout from the chancellor�s latest controversial statements�a quote in Fast Company defending her dismissal of over 200 teachers last year. �I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn�t we take those things into consideration?� she told the magazine. Critics, including the head of the city council, erupted and demanded to know why Rhee didn�t say this at the time and whether law enforcement had been alerted.

Turque pressed Rhee to explain her controversial statement�how many of the 266 fired teachers had abused their positions? � and got nowhere. But on Tuesday, he read Rhee�s answer�in an editorial in his own paper. Six teachers were suspended for corporal punishment, two had been AWOL and only one faced allegations having sex with a student. The editorial cited �information released by the chancellor�s office on Monday.�

...."Sometime around 8pm last time, Turque�s piece vanished from the Post�s website. When it returned a few hours later, the phrase describing the Post�s editorials about Rhee as �protective and, at times, adoring� was gone. Other sections of the piece were similarly watered down.

And in NY Bloomberg has total mayoral control of the schools. He rules with an iron hand. Charters are moved into existing public schools and take them over.

Duncan has the final say on all this money. He once said he had 10 billion in discretionary spending.

Duncan has the final call on who wins, but aides say he will lay out in detail his justification if he departs from the expert rankings. Experts and former U.S. education officials say Duncan is the first education secretary to have control over so much money to drive school reform. Congress authorized the funding through the 2009 economic stimulus law but set few conditions on how to spend it.

I have lost faith in this administration's plans for education. They appall me.

I taught over 30 years, and I am sad to see this scornful attitude toward public schools.