Doyle calls review process flawed; others criticize breadth of school reforms
(From Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 27th, 2010)
By Erin Richards
Wisconsin lost its bid for $250 million in federal education reform grant money Tuesday, as 18 other states and Washington, D.C., were named finalists in the second round of the Race to the Top competition.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the finalists for $3.4 billion in funding during a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Those finalists were Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.
This was Wisconsin’s final chance to win a piece of the $4.35 billion education reform competition, unless a proposed third round of $1.35 billion in 2011 is approved.
Gov. Jim Doyle criticized the federal government’s system for reviewing state applications, while several outside groups criticized Wisconsin for passing weak reform efforts or failing to show it could dramatically change the course of the troubled Milwaukee Public Schools.
“With the blind judging system used by the federal government, it’s hard to know how the applications were scored, but it’s pretty clear that the quality of a state’s education system was not taken into account,” Doyle said in a statement. “The states in the upper Midwest – Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan – are nationally recognized as having the best education systems in the country, and not a single one was a finalist in either round for Race to the Top funding,” he said.
In total, 35 states and Washington, D.C., applied for the second round of the competition.
Doyle and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers said Tuesday that they would continue to work on proposals in the state application for Race to the Top, a $4.35 billion competition that has spurred education reform efforts nationwide.
Duncan said Tuesday that 13 states have altered laws to allow for the expansion of charter schools and 17 states have eliminated the firewall between using student performance data to evaluate teachers.
Wisconsin was one of them. Legislators changed the law so student test data could be used in teacher evaluations, but the data may not be used to fire or discipline a teacher.
Because of that, state Rep. Brett Davis (R-Oregon) said legislation passed to meet Race to the Top requirements “lacked teeth” because Democrats caved to objections from the state’s largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
The MacIver Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank, also said Tuesday that Wisconsin policy-makers were not bold enough in their reform efforts. The nonprofit group also said the state’s long and persistent achievement gap between white and black students may have held it back.
U.S. Rep Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) opposed the design of the competition altogether.
“Making winners and losers out of our kids flies in the face of equal opportunity,” she said in a statement.
Tackling MPS problems
But Joe Williams, executive director for Democrats for Education Reform, a group that has closely followed the Race to the Top competition, said he thought Wisconsin’s greatest weakness was its inability to show it had the capacity to radically improve Milwaukee Public Schools.
“(President Barack) Obama and Duncan are coming from Chicago, and they know that when you change the dynamics for Chicago, you change the dynamics for the whole state,” Williams said. “A lot of the stuff Wisconsin did was progressive, but they did not attack the Milwaukee problem head on.”
The first round of Race to the Top attracted proposals from 41 applicants, including Wisconsin. Only two winners emerged in March from that process: Delaware and Tennessee.
In the first round, Wisconsin’s score placed it 26th out of the 41 applicants.
The $3.4 billion left in the Race to the Top pot will be redistributed in the second round. The 19 new finalists will present their proposals in person in Washington, D.C., and Duncan said 10 to 15 states will be announced as winners in September.
Duncan told reporters Tuesday that reviewers are looking for states’ capacity to deliver the reforms they’ve proposed. He said that no single category – such as teacher effectiveness or more charter schools – determined whether a state was in or out of the competition.
Each application was scored on a 500-point scale, and Duncan said that states generally improved their scores by an average of 26 points in the second round of the competition.
Wisconsin’s leaders revised their second-round application based on the comments of peer reviewers released after the first round. Some of those changes included stressing the state’s new principal and teacher evaluation system, and getting signatures of support from 81% of teachers union leaders.
“Though the lack of funding will slow our progress, we will develop a model curriculum and training for common core standards in English language arts and mathematics as well as stronger, more responsive student assessments,” Evers said in a statement.
He added that the state would continue to build consensus around reforming the school finance system so it is fair and sustainable.
He also said the state will work with all schools, including big districts like MPS, to ensure all students graduate with skills for the workforce or higher education.