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Entrenched interests often protect themselves at the expense of innovation. Barack Obama can’t reconcile that tradeoff. The president spent Wednesday in Wisconsin explaining his revolutionary $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative, which will give states an immediate monetary incentive to reform dilapidated public schools...
...program itself is an innovative one—a creative way for the federal government to incentivize reform of public education without sacrificing its historically local character. It is precisely because of this local character, though, that city and state school boards have been so easily bullied by big teachers’ unions into maintaining the status quo. Race to the Top will not only counter the influence of unions but also defer to the longstanding autonomy of local school boards to implement policies of their own choosing...
States that apply for grant money must demonstrate a will, capacity, and plan to create legal, regulatory, and technological conditions that foster reform in line with the president’s vision for public education...
...president is also encouraging states to make establishing more publicly funded, non-unionized charter schools a priority in their grant applications. While not all charter schools have proven themselves better than traditional public schools, they are the laboratories in which to test innovative new models of education. Extensive experimentation is impossible in traditional public schools and is vital to solving the nation’s education woes. Race to the Top promises to forge an environment that will nourish and support the best of the charter schools rather than allow unions to stifle them...
...unions agreeing to allow standardized testing to be a factor in teacher evaluation so long as it is not used as grounds for firing. While this may lead to bad teachers simply cycling through the worst schools, this compromise is leagues better than the stagnation so characteristic of public-school policy. It is an encouraging sign that Race to the Top is already working before even a single dollar has been spent...