Education Week continues to follow reform. In a piece on the competition to develop new testing systems we learn:

Competition opened yesterday for $350 million in federal money to design new ways of assessing what students learn. Rules for the contest make clear that the government wants to leave behind multiple-choice testing more often in favor of essays, multidisciplinary projects, and other more nuanced measures of achievement.

Guaranteed to come to a state near you:

Of the $350 million set aside for new tests, the Education Department plans to award one or two grants of up to $160 million each for “comprehensive assessment systems,” and one $30 million grant that is only for development of end-of-course tests at the high school level. All grants will run for four years.

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States must band together in groups, or “consortia,” of 15 or more to apply for the comprehensive-testing grant, with five states designated as “governing,” or leading, partners. Grant applicants for the high school testing program must also have five states designated as “governing,” but face no other minimum group-size requirement.

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Tests must be able to measure if students are mastering a “common set of college- and career-ready” academic standards, and those standards must be adopted by the end of 2011. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, with the support of 48 states, have led a move to write common standards, which are undergoing final revision. Federal officials have used states’ commitment to those standards as incentives in other programs, such as the main Race to the Top competition.

If we put this much time and money into new tests, and pull together all of these public and private players, sooner or later, we will be hearing calls for testing ALL kids. So, I would suggest you read through this piece and familiarize yourself with the process and the players. Read Race to Top Rules Aim to Spur Shifts in Testing.

So, food for thought on standardized tests from the next generation:

As was the case with No Child Left Behind, the stated goals of Race to the Top sound like no-brainers, but it is in the implementation that this plan fails to fundamentally improve the education system.

Specifically, the continued emphasis on standardized tests is alarming, the large focus on charter schools is unfortunate and the proposals for dealing with failing schools are unnecessarily and ineffectively harsh and disturbingly oversimplified.

Unfortunately, we can’t escape our unwarranted fixation on standardized tests as a method of evaluating students and teachers. I’ve written extensively about this in a previous column, so let me summarize:

“To expect a teacher to teach to a test is unreasonable because it expects the teacher to narrow his or her curriculum, rather than expand it, in the sense of depth rather than breadth of course. This ultimately does a disservice to students … To expect that students from all ranges of the spectrum of human experience can be measured by the same standards is highly ambitious and fairly absurd.”

Read “Race to the Top” a short run to failure by Jesse Goldberg writing for the student newspaper The Lamaron. The author also critiques competition in education in this same piece.

There are powerful forces at play with a vested interest in the institution of education. Couple calls for legislative reform with the common standards initiative, mix it up with the mad dash for the money, and homeschoolers can not afford to ignore these reforms, panic about them, nor play follow the leader figuring their interests will be taken care of.

U.S. Department of Education Opens Race to the Top Competition

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today released the final application for more than $4 billion from the Race to the Top Fund, which will reward states that have raised student performance in the past and have the capacity to accelerate achievement gains with innovative reforms.
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The application requires states to document their past success and outline their plans to extend their reforms by using college- and career-ready standards and assessments, building a workforce of highly effective educators, creating educational data systems to support student achievement, and turning around their lowest-performing schools.

The $4.35 billion for the Race to the Top Fund is an unprecedented federal investment in reform. Duncan will reserve up to $350 million to help states create assessments aligned to common sets of standards. The remaining $4 billion will be awarded in a national competition.

To qualify, states must have no legal barriers to linking student growth and achievement data to teachers and principals for the purposes of evaluation. They also must have the department’s approval for their plans for both phases of the Recovery Act’s State Fiscal Stabilization Fund prior to being awarded a grant.

The final application released today includes significant changes to the proposal released by the U.S. Department of Education in July. After reviewing responses to the draft proposals from 1,161 people, who submitted thousands of unique comments, ranging from one paragraph to 67 pages, the U.S. Department of Education restructured the application and changed it to reflect the ideas of the public.

“The public’s input on this application was invaluable to us,” Duncan said. “The comments helped us clarify that we want states to think through how they will create a comprehensive agenda to drive reform forward.”

States are after the money – an overview from Christian Scinece Monitor:

Schools sprinting to win Obama’s Race to the Top billions

And articles, editorials and opinions from the states:

Liftoff: CA State Senate Passes Race to the Top Education Reforms

Editorial: Don’t let propaganda and fear prevent Michigan from winning $600 million for state education
Bogus fears shouldn’t prevent adoption of reforms to gain $600 million for schools

Minnesota poised to get major federal education grant
Experts say the state’s history of innovation in education give it a competitive edge in the race for a slice of the $4.35 billion stimulus pie.

Rules for Race To The Top Funds Could Hurt NY

North Carolina Launches New Race To The Top Website
Source: Governor of North Carolina Posted on: 9th November 2009
RacetotheTop.nc.gov will seek input on educational innovation and reform.

State to pursue school reform grant
By Diane Knich – The (Charleston) Post and Courier

A sinking feeling about the ‘race to the top’
By Russ Dondero
The Forest Grove News-Times (Oregon)

Gov. Gregoire highlights local schools meeting goals of Race to the Top initiative

Wisconsin could be a contender: State lawmakers position the state to land a piece of Obama’s $4.3 billion education package

Most encouraging line (from the Governor of MI’s site): “The Obama Administration is requiring each grant submittal be signed by the state’s governor, state superintendent and education board chair.”

These are defined on White House blog as:
• transforming our lowest-performing schools
• using timely information to improve the way we teach our children
• outstanding teachers and principals in our classrooms and our schools
• higher standards and better assessments that prepare our kids for life beyond a classroom

Excerpts from his remarks:

America’s national mission: improving our schools not in unrealistic ways, not in abstract ways, not in pie-in-the-sky ways — in concrete ways we are putting our resources behind the kinds of reforms that are going to make a difference.

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And I want to get into some details about this because I want you, as parents, as well as the educators, to understand what the data and the science and the studies and the research show actually make a big difference in terms of school improvement — because that’s what we are basing this stuff on. We didn’t just kind of make it up, didn’t just do it because it sounded good, this is what the research shows is really going to make a difference.

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The first measure is whether a state is committed to setting higher standards and better assessments that prepare our children to succeed in the 21st century. And I’m pleased to report that 48 states are now working to develop internationally competitive standards — internationally competitive standards because these young people are going to be growing up in an international environment where they’re competing not just against kids in Chicago or Los Angeles for jobs, but they’re competing against folks in Beijing and Bangalore.

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I also challenge states to align their assessments with high standards — because we should — we should not just raise the bar, we should prepare our kids to meet it. There’s no point in having really high standards but we’re not doing what it takes to meet those standards. And I want to be clear. This is not just about more tests, because I know that in the past people have been concerned about, you know, is this about standardized tests, or are we going to have our young people being taught to the test? That’s the last thing we want.

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And that’s why the fourth measure we’ll use in awarding Race to the Top grants is whether a state is focused on transforming not just its high-performing schools, not just the middle-of-the-pack schools, but the lowest-performing schools. (Applause.) We’ll look at whether they’re willing to remake a school from top to bottom with new leaders and a new way of teaching, replacing a school’s principal if it’s not working, and at least half its staff — (applause) — close a school for a time and then reopen it under new management, even shut down the school entirely and send its schools — send its students to a better school nearby.

These remarks are about public schools but that gives little comfort that homeschoolers will not get swept up in this reform. For homeschoolers, assessments and data collection are the broom and dustpan of this reform. Homeschoolers have seen many reforms and survived, but, not without study, understanding and effort.

Some reading:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative

Forty-Nine States and Territories Join Common Core Standards Initiative

Homeschooling in the Age of Obama

Common Core Standards In The News