| 摘要 | The Obama administration’s education legacy could hinge on the success of the Race to the Top (RTT) program. Now more than ever, with the Department of Education’s recent announcement of the round-two winners, RTT has received its share of praise and criticism. The praise stems from RTT’s success in fostering policy discussions about the education-reform environment–like the legislative battles on charter schools in New York[1] and Alabama[2]–that can lead to low-cost reforms.[3] Critics have attacked the application process for its subjective criteria and anonymous scoring and have questioned its ability to yield meaningful outcomes.[4] RTT presents something of a Catch-22, as the application guidelines stipulate that state proposals ought to include the support of the same teachers unions that are deeply concerned about many of the required changes.[5] However, while the impact of these efforts on student outcomes will remain unmeasureable for some time, the application and grant-making process is now ripe for scrutiny.
While conditional federal aid is nothing new in K-12 education, RTT is unusual in that it incorporates rigorous competition into the application process with a substantial amount of money at stake. This competition can prove beneficial in two ways. First, it discourages the “compliance” mindset, in which grantees do the bare minimum necessary to seek funds.[6] Second, it may propel states into an irrational escalation of commitment,[7] creating a greater cost-benefit ratio than a traditional grant program.[8]
Research by William Peterson and Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute has raised questions about whether RTT possesses the objectivity required of an impartial evaluation process.[9] While this research has dissected the shortcomings of the RTT application process, the extent of RTT’s subjectivity remains unaddressed.[10] This Education Stimulus Watch report uses independent studies of states’ education-reform track records on certain RTT criteria to examine disparities between projected and actual scores for the first round of RTT. I find a disparity between these scores that raises red flags about the objectivity of the process. . . .
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Daniel H. Bowen (dhbowen@uark.edu) is a distinguished doctoral fellow of education policy at the University of Arkansas.
Notes
1. Sam Dillon, “New York Is Among Finalists for U.S. School Grants,” New York Times, March 4, 2010.
2. Jim Cook, “Gov. Bob Riley Seeks to Legalize Charter Schools,” Dothan Eagle, January 11, 2010.
3. David Brooks, “The Quiet Revolution,” New York Times, October 22, 2009.
4. “Race to the Middle?” Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2010.
5. “Unions v. Race to the Top,” Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2010.
6. Frederick M. Hess, “Stroll to the Top,” National Review 62, no. 8 (May 2010): 26–28, available at www.aei.org/article/101943.
7. With RTT, the Department of Education plays the role of the auctioneer offering a dollar to the highest “bidder.” The states adopt or promise to adopt reforms as a means of outbidding competitors. The “auction” becomes problematic from a state’s perspective (but beneficial from a reform advocate’s view) when it recognizes that it has to keep increasing investments in reforms to receive the reward and not incur a financial loss that results from a mediocre bid without a real chance of winning. However, this requires competitors to view the assessment as one that maintains fairness and integrity. Without a fair and transparent evaluation, states will lack the incentives to “up their bids.”
8. Martin Shubik, “The Dollar Auction Game: A Paradox in Noncooperative Behavior and Escalation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 15, no. 1 (1971): 109–111.
9. William Peterson and Richard Rothstein, Let’s Do the Numbers: Department of Education’s ‘Race to the Top’ Program Offers Only a Muddled Path to the Finish Line (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, April 20, 2010), available at http://epi.3cdn.net/4835aafd6e80385004_5nm6bn6id.pdf (accessed September 3, 2010).
10. Andy Smarick, “The Full Story on Race to the Top,” AEI Education Stimulus Watch, Special Report 3 (March 2010), available at www.aei.org/paper/100095. |
