Messing with Title I
As we’ve said here before, it makes no sense to insist that states that want a shot at Race to the Top grant money sign on to what is a pig in a poke– a common curriculum that hasn’t been written yet. But at least that’s an optional project that many districts and states for different reasons have chosen not to participate in.
Tying federal funds for Title I – a program that virtually all schools, public and private, participate in–to these same unseen standards is something else. Catherine Gewertz at Education Week’s Curriculum Matters blog reports:
You might remember that President Barack Obama has proposed tying Title I money for disadvantaged students, in part, to whether states have adopted the common core.
Apparently this proposal offers an alternative. States, according to Gewertz, ” don’t have to adopt the common standards if they work with their higher education systems to draft standards that are just as good, or certify that the ones they already have are equivalent.” (An alternative that’s not available to Race to the Top applicants.)
Still, I don’t find the promise of an alternative especially comforting. What does “just as good” mean? Who decides what’s “equivalent’? It sounds as though it will lead to just another bad top-down decision.
And, besides, I don’t really think one size fits all, either in shoes or in education.
