Aaron Regunberg: Race to the Top’s Bill of Goods

Aaron Regunberg: Race to the Top’s Bill of Goods

Race to the Top (RTTT), Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s state-versus-state education reform contest, was and continues to be a brilliant political move. While I strongly disagree that the reforms attached to the initiative are the changes our schools need to actually begin offering the high-quality education that students need and deserve, I must admit that as a tool—as a means of getting to a specific end—it is hard to imagine a more effective strategy than that used by the designers of RTTT.

Race to the Top has functioned, basically, as a competitive grant. The program laid out a number of educational changes it wanted states to make in exchange for a shot at getting a piece of a $4 billion pot that Sec. Duncan set aside for RTTT winners. At a time when districts were and continue to be so cash-strapped, who would want to take a position against getting millions of dollars from the federal government for our schools? To support Race to the Top was to support extra money for classrooms and students, and to oppose it was to risk losing out on those critical resources. It was the easiest sell in the world to the public, and by and large it remains that way.

But I’m not sure how supportive the public would be if more people understood how the Race to the Top funds have actually been spent. In other states, it seems clear that the costs of the program far outweigh the additional funds it provides. A recent report from the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach found that the in New York, Race to the Top mandates for local districts are actually far more expensive than the extra revenues districts received. In six districts examined by the report, “leaders projected a total four-year cost of almost $11 million. This compares with an aggregate revenue of about $400K in Race to the Top funding – a $10 million deficit representing an increase in average per pupil spending for this single initiative of nearly $400 per student.” In another sample of eighteen school districts, “The aggregate cost just to get ready for the first year of RTTT in September 2012 was $6,472,166, while the aggregate funding was $520,415. These districts had to make up a cost differential of $5,951,751 with local taxpayer dollars.”

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The report went on to describe how this is all the more worrying because, “there are serious challenges to this federal program’s validity, and the research upon which it is based.” In other words, RTTT represents a huge, costly experiment whose expensive mandates are forcing districts to make major sacrifices, including “teacher and staff cuts resulting in increased class sizes; redirected priorities and unmet facilities’ needs; diminishing professional development; a narrowing of curriculum; and sacrificed leadership in curriculum development and nontraditional approaches.” Sound familiar?

In Rhode Island, however, the problem is even more pronounced. Here, it is not just that the additional funding for districts is dwarfed by the costs of their new mandates—it seems that in our state, most of the funding from our Race to the Top grant has not even left RIDE. Instead, that money has gone straight to consultants and outside vendors to develop all the great new testing and evaluation mandates (the ones that, again, have little or no basis in research).

Now, we can argue about whether this is the best use of that money or not—I do not think it is, but I could be wrong. What is clear, however, is that this is not how Rhode Island’s Race to the Top application was sold to the state. When Rhode Island was abuzz with the idea of winning millions of extra dollars for education a few years ago, the public was imagining funding for programs that directly benefited students. Rhode Islanders who were supportive of Race to the Top (which was most of them, including many public officials—again, who would be against getting lots of extra money for students?) had images of local districts getting funding for literacy and math coaches, career counselors, personalization programs, etc. That was a bill of goods that had nothing to do with how the Race to the Top money has actually been used in our state.

For the most part, unfortunately, this complaint is no longer relevant. The Race to the Top train left the station years ago—our state already won the grant, and we’ve been moving forward with the RTTT-inspired changes for some time. What is important, however, is that we correct our previously-held mindset that, because our classrooms need more resources, we have a responsibility to follow the Race to the Top formula so we can get that desperately-needed funding. The fact is, these resources are not going to Rhode Island classrooms or students anyway, so we should evaluate the RTTT policies on their own merit. If you support these “reforms,” then that’s fine; if not, then don’t be concerned that breaking from the RTTT orthodoxy will cost Rhode Island students the funding they require—the only thing we stand to lose is a room full of consultants at RIDE.