Did Congress Authorize Race to the Top? By Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst

I wrote an EdNews.org article on this same issue HERE

The link to Whitehurst's Ed Week article follows:
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/28/30whitehurst_ep.h29.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/28/30whitehurst_ep.h29.html&levelId=2100

As several legislators have noted this is an unauthorized power grab by Obama/Duncan. This is a Race to the Bank for the buddies of Ob/Dun and a remarkable illegal sham. Those political contributions by the Big Boys ruling America sure do payoff.

Think Enron comes to education and you will have an appropriate image.
EdNews article on Enron parallels to RttT HERE.

"The Race to the Top initiative substitutes the phrase “turning around our lowest-achieving schools” for the language of “supporting struggling schools” in the ARRA, defines low-performing schools entirely differently from how the ESEA does, and requires that applicants impose one of four newly defined intervention models on those schools, rather than one of the five options in the ESEA."
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In Seattle this allowed the District to spend $800,000 pointlessly on New Technology Network guidance for Cleveland High School and then find OSPI awarding the SPS $2.1 million on School Improvement Grants.... on the flimsy premise that Seattle's moves were "Bold and Disruptive" (and this will improve student learning).....

That shows us how far off the tracks OSPI currently is......{Yet to recover from Bergeson era}

Instead of looking for reliable proven practices .... "Bold and Disruptive" gets Seattle $2.1 million.

This is complete an utter nonsense and an enormous waste of public funds.

The Cleveland HS option school proposal is under appeal in Superior Court as it is part of the New Student Assignment Plan .... and the $800,000 New Technology Network contract is also under appeal .... The School Board is in the habit of making Arbitrary and Capricious decisions.

Will the Superior Court judges continue to allow the SPS to avoid following RCW 28A 645.020?
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Whitehust goes on with: ..."Based on the ARRA itself, I don’t think Congress intended to give Secretary Duncan the carte blanche he took. But even if it did, once was enough. This issue is real, because the administration has proposed that the Race to the Top be an annual competition."
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Note about Seattle SIG Grant:
there were 47 failing schools identified in WA
41 applied for grant money
18 received funding
Seattle went 3 for 3 in gaining funds for three failing schools
West Seattle Elementary, Hawthorne Elementary, and Cleveland High School.

A major component of being identified as failing were WASL math scores from the last three years. Seattle has lousy instructional materials for math and lousy results and yet OSPI awards Seattle $2.1 million without even a mention of the Seattle Math situation.

I hear the sound of dollars flushing.