Noel S. Anderson, Ph.D.

August 02, 2010 | District

Racing to Someplace: Obama’s Problematic Education “Agenda”

Last week President Obama reaffirmed his education agenda in a speech at the centennial anniversary of the National Urban League in Washington, D.C. His Race to the Top education initiative seeks to infuse over $4 billion dollars through competitive grants to schools by requiring merit pay for teachers for improved test scores, shutting failing schools and converting them to charters or putting them under private management organizations, more accountability and the adoption of national academic standards.

Race To the Top as Obama stated in his speech is “controversial”, given the requirements states and local districts need to achieve in order to receive the federal dollars. The NAACP has been openly critical of his education policy, concerned that it will penalize lowest performing schools with large minority populations.

Now, one of the areas I study is the role of the federal government in shaping urban education policy, and I have to say that Obama’s Race to the Top, even in its early stages, is not really a clearly defined policy. It is shaping up to be simply a large scale request for proposal “RFP” to cash strapped states and local districts to make market based changes to schools in order to receive federal dollars.

Unfortunately, the Department of Education is functioning like a large philanthropic foundation, similar to a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (a big player in public education) and promoting educational reform ideas that have proven not to work.

To illustrate, here are some Race to the Top ideas that do not work:

Merit pay and Test Scores: The reliance on test scores to evaluate teacher performance and subsequent raises has proven not to work. There is too much variability test performance to solidly judge whether a teacher has taught well or not. Plus, test scores can and are being “cooked” in high stakes districts, as illustrated recently in New York City.

Shutting Down Failing Schools and Opening Charter Schools: Data is showing that charter schools are not that much better than traditional public schools in improving student achievement. Further, shutting down schools in under resourced communities, in places like Chicago has not proven to be effective either. Shutting down schools and opening charter schools as a solution is wrong headed, and flies in the face to the research.

Adoption of National Education Standards: There has been some momentum behind states adopting national educational standards since the Obama administration suggested them under Race to the Top. However, a little policy primer here, the federal role in public education is close to non-existent. There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution for public education. Education is a largely a state affair, with each state having its own Constitutional clause requiring a free public education.

So requiring states to adopt national educational standards has no teeth! And the states that have agreed to national standards have done so because they want more cash from the feds, plain and simple. Plus states can agree to adopt national education standards but don’t legally have to implement them in their curriculum and assessments.

I could go on, but much of this I have written about elsewhere. The bottom line is the free market won’t save us in public education. Promoting ideas like merit pay, charter schools and other privatized schemes for education reform fail to address the deeper issue impacting public education, namely poverty.

The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, and there is a direct correlation between income and academic performance. And a significant portion of the poor in this country are children, the ones who populate our nations poorest schools.

What Obama needs is a poverty agenda, with education as one aspect of it. We need a poverty agenda that boldly integrates education, health and housing policy for children. We need to stop bifurcating policy at the federal, state and local levels when we know all poverty related issues are interconnected. We need a bold new plan, not quick strategies that don’t work.

Dr. Noel S. Anderson is Associate Professor of Political Science and Education at the City University of New York - Brooklyn College. His work focuses on urban politics, human development and education and comparative issues in public policy (U.S. and South Africa).