The Echo

Diane Ravitch, with Deborah Meier, writes the Bridging Differences Blog (a personal fav. or mine)

Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch have found themselves at odds on policy over the years, but they share a passion for improving schools. Bridging Differences will offer their insights on what matters most in education.Conflicts of Interest and the Race to the Top

By Diane Ravitch on February 16, 2010

Dear Deborah,
It is not surprising that the Race to the Top has generated enormous buzz among educators since it dangles $4.3 billion to states that do what the U.S. Department of Education wants them to do. Now President Obama has announced that he is so pleased with the response to the Race that he intends to add another $1.3 billion in prize money to the competition.

Since this is an administration that claims to be about results, it is surprising, is it not, that they are increasing the prize money in the absence of any evidence that the competition is on the right track?

No, it is not surprising because the competition is in the hands of people who arrived in Washington with an ideology. They are not pragmatists. There is a nexus of power, and it begins with the Gates Foundation, which has a lock on decisionmaking at the Department of Education. If this election had been held five years ago, the department would be insisting on small schools, but because Gates has already tried and discarded that approach, the department is promoting the new Gates remedies: charter schools, privatization, and evaluating teachers by student test scores.

As we both know, personnel is policy. Secretary Duncan put Jim Shelton, a Gates Foundation executive, in charge of the department's half-billion-dollar Innovation Fund. And he selected Joanne Weiss to run the Race to the Top competition. Weiss was chief executive officer of the NewSchools Venture Fund, whose primary purpose is to launch charter school networks. I do not know Weiss, and I assume she is an upstanding citizen; but to my knowledge, she has never been an education practitioner or scholar or policymaker. She is an education entrepreneur, who has sold goods and services to the schools, and who most importantly led an organization dedicated to creating privately managed schools that operate with public money. So, why should it be surprising that the Race to the Top reflects the priorities of the NewSchools Venture Fund (charter schools) and of the Gates Foundation (teacher evaluations by test scores)?

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