Thirteen bucks. That's the cost of the ???Race to the Top??? for every man, woman, and child in the United States. (You do the math: $4 billion divided by 300 million.) Chump change, and well worth the investment, considering the flurry of recent state education reform activity motivated by the federal program, right?
Well, hold your ???hooray??? horses. For one, as the Wall Street Journal and our good friend Rick Hess point out, chances are slim that winners of Race to the Top grants are going to actually use the money to drive reform. They are more likely to just fill budget holes instead???which means that we've probably already gotten most of what we're going to get out of the competition.
But second, the money for Race to the Top is just the tip of the education stimulus iceberg???and as Andy explains in his excellent Education Next piece, the other $106 billion has pretty much gone down the drain, at least in terms of school reform. So let's do the math with the whole $110 billion education stimulus in mind. Now we're talking $366 for every man, woman, and child. That's almost $1,500 for a family of four.
So let me get personal: is it worth 1500 bucks to me to see a handful of states lift their charter caps, a couple more promise to take teacher evaluations seriously, and lots of states to sign a letter saying they will do national standards???unless they later decide not to?
I'm an ???education reformer,??? for Pete's sake, and I gotta say: I don't think so.
Ask yourself the same question: If you had to write a personal $1500 check to achieve these outcomes, would you do so? (Of course, President Obama and the Congress already wrote that check for you.)
Take our survey below.
If you had to write a personal check to support the federal education stimulus, including Race to the Top, how much would you be willing to pay?(poll)
--Mike Petrilli
