If Barack Obama was your high school graduation speaker, would you have been a better student?
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appears to hope the answer is “yes” with his department’s new Race to the Top Commencement Challenge – a nationwide sweepstakes to hear the commander in chief at your local high school. As the name suggests, the contest is a riff on the department’s controversial method for dolling out education stimulus dollars – just replace the billions in funding with a speech.
Online voting opened Monday for the six finalists, which submitted essays and videos explaining their credentials. Obama will then pick the winner from the top three finishers sometime next week, a choice based on which school he thinks has made the best efforts at school reform, Department of Educaiton officials said Monday.
It’s worth nothing that four of the six schools are in swing states – Ohio, Colorado, Michigan and Florida – Obama carried with less than 60 percent of the vote in 2008The list is also an even mix of two magnet schools and two run-of-the-mill public high schools and two charter schools, which have become a sticking point between the administration and Democratic lawmakers in their attempt to rewrite No Child Left Behind.
But perhaps what’s most interesting is the approach: pure Duncanist.
In many ways, the White House has made competition the keystone of its push for education reform – improve public education reform for all by forcing states and districts to prove they’re worth the federal dollars.
Officials said it produces faster, better results without the cost. Dozens of states made changes to their school systems for the first round of Race to the Top, yet only two, Tennessee and Deleware, received any money, as Duncan noted repeatedly during the past month.
His detractors, on the other hand, claim it leaves behind smaller districts that don’t have a full-time grant writer (most Race to the Top applications topped 1,000 pages). If public education is a right, they said, it should be funded by formulas as it has decades.
It doesn’t appear that the administration is going to change course on this.
Education started distributing millions earlier this month in school turnaround funds, which states applied for to cure their worst performing schools.. This is in addition to the $650 million up for grabs through Investing in Innovation Fund, which educators can use to solve any of a number of education ailments.
There’s also a $350-million purse for states that find a new way to measure student achievement and the second round of Race to the Top. Applications are due June 23 and June 1, respectively.
As for the speech competition, online voters have until 11:59 p.m. Thursday to decide where Obama could speak this spring. The videos and essays will appear in random order so that no single school can gain the edge.
Or as White House domestic policy aide Heather Higginbottom put it:
“We really feel it’s important everyone gets a fair shot.”
The finalists are:
• Blue Valley Northwest High School (Overland Park, Kansas)
• Clark Montessori Junior High and High School (Cincinnati, Ohio)
• Denver School of Science and Technology (Denver, Colorado)
• Environmental Charter High School (Lawndale, California)
• Kalamazoo Central High School (Kalamazoo, Michigan)
• MAST Academy (Miami, Florida)