The Echo

In this forum, I've decidedly shied away from Rttt of recent, in an attempt to avoid the bile that rises in my throat when those four little words are uttered.  Unavoidable as it is, the one year anniversary of Delaware's winning bid has descended upon us as rumors run rampant that the remaining six Partnership Zone schools are to be named by April 1st.  Knowing full well that while DOE has no intention of leaking the list, odds are that another Christina school will find itself enveloped in the PZ flurry.  There are words to be said...


School board members simply can't avoid the trajectory of failure that Race to the Top has propelled us upon.  Poorly conceived, upon data that was neither longitudinal nor empiracle, the models of reform hurt children far more than they help them.  Rttt has decidedly become about adults... and business.   From light-switch-flippers-come-reform-experts to the sham of the US Sec. of Education, Rttt has brought about an ugliness in education of which I have never seen.  It's fueled a full-frontal attack on front-line educators, those we should value above all else, and has become the basis of union busting at its national core.  In Delaware, DSEA signed on well before school boards, but even then there were grumblings among the rank and file that Rttt would be more bite than betterment.  Many never really believed that Delaware had a shot, much less, would enact the reforms therein.  Few if any saw the fall-out before us:  an assault on educators neither warranted nor productive.  Where has Rttt really led us?

I am reminded of a visit last year to an elementary school when an excited principal showed me her MAP scores.  "These kids right here, the highlighted ones (they were numerically coded), these are the kids my staff has to really work with right now.  Pull-out all the stops.  These little guys are within a few points of scoring a 3 on the DSTP."  What about the rest of the kids in the class?  "Oh, we're working with them, too; but these are ones who we are really targeting." Targeting? Coaching the data to tell you who to teach, who to deploy your best resources to?  Who to educate?  There wasn't a drive to target the kids at the bottom of the barrell, it was the ones who could propel the school into AYP.  Yes, that's data coaching: using data to determine who gets a good education and who doesn't.  In a state where the DOE is investing so much Rttt dollars into Data Coaches, one can't help but see the lines of disparity deepening. And how can the handful of school board members who are Rttt dissidents reform such widespread misunderstanding? What the hell are we to do?

And what exactly is wrong with the example above?  Rttt flows $119 million into education.  But, not into human capital, as we've come call our educators.  It's added administration, but not teachers.  When a school deploys its best resources to target the kids on the cusp of success, it pulls them away from children who are both already successful and seeking challenge and those who have fallen behind.  It doesn't add teachers to the pot, it just re-allocates their time.  This is the class-size waiver war and the earned-unit allocation nightmare.   This is failure.  And Rttt re-confirms this failure.

On March 24th, the News Journal published an editorial by Delaware's Sec. of Education.  It lauds the "new Delaware Way," a path of collaboration that's led to the adoption of the Common Core Standards, the implementation of DCAS, the development of student growth measures that "will help Delaware lead the nation in building student performance into teacher assessment."  Furthermore, "RTTT will fund data coaches, who will meet with teachers twice a month to help dissect student test scores to inform their teaching. The program is being piloted in six districts and a charter school now and will spread statewide in the fall."  All of this excitement culminated in an invitation-only pep rally at Howard High School attended by Duncan and V.P. Joe Biden.  (I wasn't invited.) http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011103250313

Yes, Rttt is one year done, with three to go.  And I've yet to see it in the classrooms.  Of course, I'm waiting on the data - coached to support the goal of proving the Rttt reform models - from the growth model DCAS when the year's trends can be analyzed.  I just don't have the faith that the revolving door of education "deform" that has become the norm will succeed where so many have failed, especially when we turn a blind eye to an empirical method of reform with pr oven results - smaller class sizes in earlier years. 

The insidiousness of Rttt is this:  It's competitive from the top all the ways down to the Sig Grant - the School Improvement Grant.  The fallout of the PZ zone looks like this:  Two demographically identical schools, just blocks apart.  The PZ school has been steeped in a deep and expensive plan to reform it, while it's non-PZ sister continues to suffer.  Now, imagine that instead of buildings, these are students.  PZ dictates that one student, based squarely upon a feeder pattern, deserves a better education than the other.  Rttt deepens disparities in education. And it breaks my heart to see this program heralded as the "Delaware Way."

To add insult to injury, our President spent yesterday spinning a sound byte. According to AP, "President Barack Obama said Monday that students should take fewer standardized tests and school performance should be measured in other ways than just exam results. Too much testing makes education boring for kids, he said."  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110328/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_education

"One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you're not learning about the world, you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math," the president said. "All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that's not going to make education interesting."

"And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in," Obama said. "They're not going to do as well if it's boring."

It is an about face?  More like a slap in the face.  NCLB has teachers bending over back-wards teaching to the test.  Obama's Rttt has funded DCAS and as part of Delaware's plan, DCAS will eventually tie back to teacher evaluations.  We've eliminated critical thinking skills from our schools in efforts to avoid the punishments set forth by NCLB.  We've destabilized schools through the shifting of leadership in order to qualify for competitive grants. In Christina, we are about to unfurl small learning academies in one of our high schools, the success of which will be measured by testing.  Delaware is investing heavily its Rttt money in data coaches to ensure we effectively use the DCAS testing results, to determine whether or not the reform efforts have made for a better-prepared, smarter, more effective workforce of miracle workers... I mean teachers. Liken it to a pregnancy test, if you will:  the ability to read the results doesn't make me (or you) a better parent. 

Funny thing about pregnancy tests - They are never proof-positive. 

Never...
Proof-positive...