Just as Judas sold out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, New York State sold its constitutional right and responsibility to educate its children. The State's price was a little higher but in the end it sold out millions ----- of our students.
New York, on the brink of technical bankruptcy in 2010, agreed to accept $780m from the federal government to implement "Race to the Top," the Obama administration's answer to the failing national education system. With this new, one size fits all, agreement in place, the federal government, in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, will oversee education policy for New York State public schools including: curriculum, student testing, teacher evaluation and remediation. No longer will NYS, or more disturbingly, will local school districts be involved in making these decisions; the decisions will be made by the federal government.
This particular post questions the value of mandating the unproven, highly, contentious, federally endorsed "CoreCurriculum" <http://listserver.aasa.org/t/90916/9317947/8544/0/>to an already high performing region. Subsequent blogs will look at the other mandates within "Race to the Top," including:
1 New, required, standardized student tests
2 APPR, a costly, complicated teacher evaluation process with 97 criteria
3. Lengthy, tiered, mandated student remediation
4. The cost of implementing, “The Race to the Bottom.”
5. Where are our local politicians when we need them?
For decades LI schools have been ranked among the best school districts in the country. Year after year graduation rates exceed 95% and a half dozen or more districts consistently graduate 98 to 100%. A disproportionately high number of these students are accepted to the best colleges and universities in the country. LI also leads all regions of the country in the number of National Merit and Intel winners. Now, all this and more will be compromised by a new, controversial, unsubstantiated curriculum, known as the Common Core, which is mandated by officials in Washington DC.
Devoid of reason, extraordinarily high achieving schools will no longer be permitted to teach the curriculum (knowledge, skills and competencies) which has been the foundation of their success. Long Island's excellent superintendents, outstanding administrators and superb teachers have been told that their instructional philosophy and methodology will be superseded by the pedagogic inclination of Department of Education bureaucrats who were educated in private schools, sent their children to private schools, and never spent a single day teaching in a public school. Now, the future and success of Long Island’s children should be left in their hands?!
The fact is that if LI were a separate state, it would rank as "number one” in the nation. It is apparent that such rankings mean nothing to these functionaries. It is apparent that for the bureaucrats, outstanding academic results do not matter. In fact, the new mandates prove that documented success should be ignored and made subservient to unproven, didactic theories.
For LI school districts, the State's decision to abdicate educational control to the federal government not only ignores the US Constitution but also totally undermines a proud tradition of local control in New York State. Long Island schools have demonstrated that the educators know how to excel within the state and across the nation. New, educationally unsound mandates can only depress achievement levels. These ill-advised, costly State and federal requirements can only help LI to win one of two competitions------"the race to mediocrity" or the “race to the bottom!”
