Is Education Too Big to Fail?

An interesting take on Race to The Top by school leaders from districts in California which do not wish to participate in the federal grant.

The RTTT initiative provides $4.5 billion nationally for qualifying states. California may be eligible for up to $700 million. Based on projected estimates, for many districts this would mean eligibility to receive one-time funds equaling about 1-2% of the average operating budget over the next two to four years. So while the RTTT has been "sold" as a major game-changing investment or "bailout" of public schools, local school districts know better.

So while Wall Street was given hundreds of billions of dollars with little to no conditions, schools are offered a fraction of the Wall Street monies with restrictive and costly mandates. Is not public education too big and too important to fail? All this said, districts were left questioning whether this money was a big enough carrot for large scale reform required of RTTT.

I wish there were more news about RTTT so that people could have made a rationale decision about it. Instead, there was a quick deadline. No time to be deliberate.

Will that come back to haunt us?