(From The Gotham Gazette, March 4, 2010)
By GAIL ROBINSON
To the surprise of many, New York State is one of 15 states (and the District of Columbia) that made the cut in the competition for federal Race to the Top education funds. New York now gets to compete for a share of $4 billion pie — and could get as much as $700 million by some estimates.
The state, though, shouldn’t start spending the money yet. Education secretary Arne Duncan still must select the winners.
Charter school proponents had despaired of their chances after the state legislature refused to raise the cap on the number of privately run, publicly financed charter schools in the state, given the Obama administration’s enthusiasm for charters. At the time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg likened the legislature’s action (or more properly, inaction) to “playing ” Russian roulette with our children’s futures.” And Joe Williams of the pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform called it “the governing equivalent of puking up a bunch of Jagermeister on the sidewalks of Albany.”
UPDATE: The Bloomberg adminisirattion is using the Raise to the Top decision to again press its educaiton agenda on the leislature,. In a statement this afternoon, Schgools Chancellor called fot “lifting the cap on charter schools, evaluating teachers based on whether they’re helping their students to learn, making it easier to remove ineffective teachers and–should we be forced to lay off teachers–ensuring that those who remain in classrooms are the very best, not simply the longest-serving.”
And Bloomerg was even more blunt. “As you know, we have two big strikes against us so far,” he said according to the Daily Politics. “We have a cap on charters and a law that may or may not keep us from using data to evaluate teachers before we give them a problem of lifetime employment. And those things are not going to help going from finalist to winners.”
Just for the record, the Assembly had consented to lifting the cap to at least 400 schools from the current 200 but had set conditions on it that Bloomberg and Klein found unacceptable.