Over at the Hechinger Report they're assessing the education stimulus?the $100 billion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that went, ostensibly, to schools. Race to the Top, the Department of Education's $4.3 billion grant competition, is particularly scrutinized. In Massachusetts, for example, where 250 million Race to the Top dollars found a home, nineteen districts have dropped out of the program. And despite the reputed ?buy-in? of Bay State teachers' unions?which had?agreed to make a ?good faith effort? to implement the substance of Massachusetts's Race to the Top application?they are now reconsidering pledges to employ students' standardized test scores?in judging teachers. Michele McNeil writes that ?Maryland,? another Race to the Top winner, ?made big promises in its application, too. And like Massachusetts, it is struggling with teacher-evaluation issues.? Maryland pledged to?have student test-score?growth?count for 50 percent of an instructor's job assessment, but ?so far, political and policy wrangles have prevented the fulfillment of that promise.? It's not all bad news. But it's a lot of bad news.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow