Superintendent's Message
Kenneth M. Young
Riverside County
Superintendent of Schools
Kenneth M. Young, Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, congratulates a veteran receiving his high school diploma as part of Operation Recognition.
Racing Blindfolded (January, 2010)
For the past decade, California has been running in a high stakes education marathon and doing quite well overall—especially here in Riverside County. Yet, state officials are calling on school districts to quickly and fully commit to Race to the Top (RTTT)—the latest federal education reform initiative. Many are asking if this new race is something California should be running in, and if so, what will the impact be on many of the highly effective education efforts are already in progress across our county? There seems to be more interest in getting schools to run in the “race” than where the race is going.
The timing on Race to the Top couldn’t be more inopportune. The state is asking school districts to sign on to the initiative with few specific program details as to either requirements or funding just days before the Governor releases the 2010-11 state budget—a budget that will almost certainly contain more bad news for schools. School districts are focusing all of their attention on dealing with the ongoing record level budget cuts at the same time they continue to deliver a high quality education to all students. State education and political officials continue to issue verbal assurances in support of Race to the Top, however these assurances are often contradictory and are not reflected in the contractual agreements schools are being asked to sign in order to participate.
Race to the Top proponents insist that the intent is to be “collaborative” and “bottom-up,” focusing on the importance of local buy-in and locally driven initiatives. At the same time, the prescriptive interventions, the nature of the interventions, and the top-down development of the program contradict the notion of a collaborative process that relies on local commitment as much as it does state and federal enforcement.
As the specifics of Race to the Top slowly unfold, the unveiling is less than encouraging to California. One example is the impact on our state academic standards. California has some of the highest academic content standards in the country, but the contracts school districts are being asked to sign in Race to the Top appear to be moving toward lowering those standards in order to create a set of national standards. In reference to school districts and states agreeing to adopt national standards the contracts note: “Common K-12 standards means a set of content standards that define what students must know and be able to do and that are substantially identical across all States in a consortium. A State may supplement the common standards with additional standards, provided the additional standards do not exceed 15 percent of the State's total standards for that content area.” Unless the national standards are set just 15 percent below California’s existing standards, which is highly unlikely given the wide variance that currently exists between the 50 states’ standards, California would be agreeing to “dumb down” our standards.
Before we go running off in a race blindfolded we need to make sure Race to the Top is not going to undermine successful local initiatives that have been built with and for our students and communities. It is not at all clear that this latest “education reform du jour” will deliver on its promise. We have strong concerns that instead, it will cause schools to get sidetracked by pushing schools to redirect their efforts and resources to this untested and incomplete model.
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