America's Latest go at Education Reform: Arne Duncan and the Race to the Top

The United States continues to be the undisputed leader in secondary and post-secondary education. It maintains over half of the top 100 schools in the world and even the 10 according to US News’ ranking of the most well-known universities around the world. However to leave it at this would be deceiving to the deeper truth of a slipping American education system. Many Americans cannot find the U.S. on a world map and according to one survey many in Los Angeles could not locate the Pacific Ocean. However America’s educational woes exceed beyond the realm of geography. In an international comparison among fifteen year olds in reading, math and science skills a test was conducted among the top 40 developed nations in the world. The survey differentiated between those of highest and lowest standing within each nation (hence double ranking).


American Reading: 12th and 23rd out of 40 nations.
American Math:     25th and 28th out of 40 nations.
American Science: 20th and 27th out of 40 nations.

Even without knowing these exact figures it easy to see that students in America, called “our future” by politicians on both sides of the aisle, have fallen behind. As Obama points out in his address to the Urban League, to the same thing repeatedly over and over and to expect a different result in the definition of madness. Clearly there needs to be a rethinking of the American education system. Like healthcare (which again will be discussed at length in an upcoming article), the education system has long been known to need such reform. The question of how to reform the educational system, both in method and in direction has caused the American education system as a stagnant.

The barriers to education are indeed rather intimidating. For starters there are the teachers’ unions. For some reason the teacher’s unions have remained while in all other occupations the organizational structure seems to have disappeared almost entirely. The reason behind the disappearance of the Unions is largely attributed to their lack of need. In most fields employees now see handling personal issues such as pay and time off at the personal level rather than leaving it up to a representatives as not only desirable but the “natural” way of conducting business. To go into further detail of the pros and cons of unions is a discussion for another day, but for now I think it would be fair to say that the union increasingly seen as inefficient by those unfavorable to them, and cumbersome or powerless for those within the unions. Teachers Unions have been a key voting block for Democrats and for this reason it has been difficult to enact aggressive reforms.

Another pervious barrier to incremental education reform is the school year. Even though the American school year maintains a relatively short 180 days (in comparison to for example Europe), there still remains the problem of physically changing an institution that needs to continue educating hundreds of millions of people. Like the time it takes to repair the ceiling in an asbestos filled classroom ceiling, it takes a long time to shift educational policies when students are mandatorily present. A less metaphorical example of the struggle involved in reforming an active school system is that of New Orleans after Katrina. The tragic destruction of the hurricane forced much of the city out, but it also blessed the school system with the opportunity to reform the school district anew. Those interested in this transformation should look into the 60 minutes on the link bar. Perhaps it is also this radical reform in New Orleans that has allowed Obama’s administration to amp up its more aggressive efforts in educational reform. For this assignment Obama has appointed Arne Duncan the reform minded and former executive of Chicago Public Schools the Secretary of Education to spearhead such an effort of real education reform.

Arne Duncan is graying intelligent with a sideways grin. He has controversial ideas about education including initiating merit based pay for teachers in return for more accountability and supports charter schools in a number of educational scenarios. This is a man known to win national three-on-three street basketball tournaments on the weekends, has played professional basketball in Australia and graduated Magna Cum Lade from Harvard University. All and all Mr. Duncan is successful and continues this success in the program entitled Race to the Top.

Race to the Top was a slice of the Recovery Act and is financed with an initial sum of 4.5 billion dollars and is the principal source of education reform in the Obama administration’s arsenal in education reform. This kind of money is unheard of and gives real heft to the Secretary of Education to make a real and lasting difference in how education will be conducted in the years to come. This kind of money is enough to make Solomon blush but it seems Arne Duncan is putting the money to good use. Critics and proponents alike have deemed the Race to the Top structure of grants as innovative and wildly successful and some even believe it will become the ideal of doing business between the federal government is a number of areas even beyond that of education. Evidence of this can be shown in the upcoming health care debate (yes States have yet to determine who will get what and how any money granted by the federal government will be spend) and in addition according to the Department of Education’s website the Race to the Top program has recently been given an additional 1.35 billion dollars by Congress.

The Race to the Top program’s success, from the federal government’s perspective, is in that it has caused massive reforms of many states (40 participated in the first round) even before the first dime of federal monies was issued. The reason being, unlike past grants, states must compete amongst one another in addition to amassing a set number of “points.” The competition not only encourages reforms beyond that which is asked in some cases but also accelerates the speeds of such reforms. Points are awarded on the basis of school systems completion of certain educational goals, which are set by the Secretary of Education. Instead of saying each school district must do this particular reform, the point system allows greater flexibility to the school districts. This allows areas to improve on what is needed most as well as those which they are most capable of improving (a smart way of upholding the State’s traditional independent control over education while simultaneously pushing for necessary reforms). What these goals and points entail will be discussed later. The number of points needed set knowingly high. For this reason in the first round of The Race to the Top program only nine states in addition to the District of Columbia were able to qualify. As Obama has said in his speech to the Urban League in July, setting a high bar actually encourages more reform, not less, even by those states which were successful in the first round.

The president pointed this out in that 38 states competed in the second round, including all those which had succeeded in the first. To set the bar high for states by the federal government seems to be in stark contrast with that of the previous educational reform effort, No Child Left Behind. While No Child Left Behind is now seen as asking much from the states, but not giving them any financial means of following through, Race to the Top clearly does the opposite with its multi-billion dollar purse. Comparing No Child left behind with Race to the Top also helps define the later program. While Bush’s program gave incentives to states to lower the difficulty of standardized testing, thereby allowing them to get a higher “grade,” Obama’s program seems to do the opposite. To paraphrase Obama, Race to the Top prevents graduates from receiving their diplomas and then not being able to read it.

It seems Race to the Top also directly addresses No Child Left Behind’s shortcoming because while Race to the Top Brings in outside resources to failing schools, even to the point of flipping school of all faculty and staff and turning it into a charter school (in the most desperate situations to allow more flexibility), No Child Left Behind simply labeled the school as failing. Another improvement on the previous program is that Race to the Top uses a wide variety of techniques to determine whether a school is “failing.” In addition to student testing, which has increased in difficulty and diversity so that supposedly there is less “teaching to the test,” Duncan’s program uses data collected from teachers, principals, and the community to better assess the real state of a school’s health. For this reason Race to the Top also has an emphasis on collecting a larger variety of data in order to gage student success. The program also sets aside statiticians and logistics specialists to help gather a deeper understanding of what is really happening in the classroom. Points are awarded to states which take up such reforms as these (inkling data collection and increased difficulty and variety in standardized testing).

All of these things help States and parents better understand what is currently happening in the classroom so effective reforms can take place, but the most important aspect of the classroom is that of the teacher. Teachers are incredibly important to student’s success. Teaching unfortunately is described by many would be teachers as “a nice thing to do but I cannot afford it.” Race to the Top tries to combat innovative and intelligent people from not choosing teaching as a career by introducing the concept of teachers’ merit pay. Like almost all other job fields in the world teachers would now be paid on a number of factors such as student performance, qualifications, and ability. Obama’s administration hopes this will be seen as an incentive to enter the field for prospective teachers. The vast majorities of teachers are beyond hardworking and should be rewarded as such. Now it is true that some underperforming teachers may get the bad end of the deal with lower pay and even removal (Race to the Top will eliminate Tenure). But it makes sense to treat teaching as the professional occupation it is and fire those incapable of doing a decent job. As Arne Duncan says, “kids only get one chance at a good education.”

Personally I am unsure of some of the logic behind Race to the Top. For example the idea of using charter schools, even in the most desperate cases seems to be as passing on a burden to a private institution when Uncle Sam needs to really step up to the plate. But in the end the program will most likely be viewed by non-partisans of the future as successful for two reasons. First the surprisingly successful structure of the grants and secondly the new data which will be amassed because of Race to the Top. Reminiscent of the Reformation in England forced all parishes to record marriages, births, and deaths in all parishes to the delight of historians, perhaps Race to the Top will give the necessary raw data. Even if the “points” of the program fail to cause the desired positive change in American students’ education at least the data may hold the answers to why this was the case and how this problem may yet be resolved.