Saturday, May 15, 2010

Sit this Race Out ..
... a Letter to Spokesman-Review

Sit this race out -- The Spokesman-Review letter

The Spokesman-Review editorial on May 9 heaped praise on the Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative sponsored by U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The writer urged all Washington school boards to jump on the RTTT bandwagon. Pullman schools would get a whopping $24 per student, while Washtucna will reap a $22 per student windfall. (These amounts could be raised by local PTA bake sales.)

It is obvious that the S-R editorial team never read the RTTT legislation. There are 19 absolute criteria that must be met.

Citizens, those 19 will require a slew of new administrators just to keep books, collect data and harass the instructional staff in the K-12 sector.

In January, Dr. Yong Zhoa of Michigan State University warned the annual convention of the Washington School Directors Association of the evils of RTTT.

The RTTT is a sneaky way to fund private charter schools with taxpayers paying the bill and a mechanism to privatize the world's best-decentralized public schools. Admittedly, the pubic schools need help, and as James B. Conant wrote, "improvements must come school by school and be made with due regard for the nature of the community," not by federal bureaucrats.

Donald C. Orlich
Pullman

Of course this letter was printed after Spokane School Directors had already voted for the RttT.

If you liked the "Savings and Loan" scandal, Enron, the recent financial meltdown, then you will love RttT. It follows a "Rich" tradition of the "Smartest Boys in the Room" looting the public.
==============
Keep in mind that Rep. Adam Smith, Prez. Obama, and his Attorney General Holder all had lots to say about the AZ immigration law but never read the 16 page law.

Anyone read RttT?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You begin to connect the dots - Spokane school board should resign. They've made school policy into a circus. Every time they they vote for change, their constituents have to hold a vote to reject new policy. Fire the administrators and elect a new school board - if they won't do what's ethically right or act responsible then why have a school district at all. That's my advice, don't let them break the district financially - it will mean residents pay more taxes - for nothing less than extortion to a few individuals. If the public ever gets wind, there's going to be hell to pay.

Anonymous said...

Seattle residents ought to vote the math textbooks out. That would fix this district for good. Firing those imbeciles would be too good for them - put them in a classroom teaching with one of their textbooks would be better than jail.

Anonymous said...

It used to be for blasphemy, authors were burned at the stake with their own books. How long must teachers and students endure poor textbooks?