Here are the finalists for Arne's money...FL and DC among them.

[madfloridian]

As the article says, this seems to show approval of the methods of DC's Michelle Rhee...and the huge movement in Florida to give money via vouchers to private schools and to build more charter schools.

From the Washington Post:

15 states, D.C. make first cut in Race to the Top school reform contest

I notice Rhode Island is there also, and we surely know the kind of school the president and Arne favor there.

Fifteen states and the District of Columbia survived the first cut Thursday in the Obama administration's unprecedented $4 billion school reform contest.

The announcement of finalists in the Race to the Top competition at 11:30 a.m. carried some political risk because few governors or state education leaders want to be told they are not in the vanguard of reform. It's also seen as a test of President Obama's resolve to push for major changes in public education as he seeks to rewrite the 2002 No Child Left Behind law.

The finalists are: Colorado, Delaware, the District, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee.

..."These states are an example for the country of what is possible when adults come together to do the right thing for children," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. "Everyone that applied for Race to the Top is charting a path for education reform in America."

Oh, Arne, if Florida is an example of doing the right thing for children..if DC and NY methods of treating public schools with contempt are examples of doing the right thing..

then I fear for the future of education in this country.

Rhee is so powerful that even a WP columnist had his column edited when he was critical of her.

Who Censored the Washington Post’s Rhee Item?

Late night weirdness at the Washington Post, a paper that boasts arguably the best education coverage of any daily. A hard-hitting blog post by reporter Bill Turque, which took on both DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and his own newspaper’s editorial page, disappeared from the paper’s website for several hours, only to return with some of the more pointed turns of phrase removed.

Turque, who has clashed with Rhee over his tough reporting, has been covering the fallout from the chancellor’s latest controversial statements—a quote in Fast Company defending her dismissal of over 200 teachers last year. “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?” she told the magazine. Critics, including the head of the city council, erupted and demanded to know why Rhee didn’t say this at the time and whether law enforcement had been alerted.

Turque pressed Rhee to explain her controversial statement—how many of the 266 fired teachers had abused their positions? — and got nowhere. But on Tuesday, he read Rhee’s answer–in an editorial in his own paper. Six teachers were suspended for corporal punishment, two had been AWOL and only one faced allegations having sex with a student. The editorial cited “information released by the chancellor’s office on Monday.”

...."Sometime around 8pm last time, Turque’s piece vanished from the Post’s website. When it returned a few hours later, the phrase describing the Post’s editorials about Rhee as “protective and, at times, adoring” was gone. Other sections of the piece were similarly watered down.

And in NY Bloomberg has total mayoral control of the schools. He rules with an iron hand. Charters are moved into existing public schools and take them over.

Duncan has the final say on all this money. He once said he had 10 billion in discretionary spending.

Duncan has the final call on who wins, but aides say he will lay out in detail his justification if he departs from the expert rankings. Experts and former U.S. education officials say Duncan is the first education secretary to have control over so much money to drive school reform. Congress authorized the funding through the 2009 economic stimulus law but set few conditions on how to spend it.

I have lost faith in this administration's plans for education. They appall me.

I taught over 30 years, and I am sad to see this scornful attitude toward public schools.

[Kalyke]

1. Mad.... tell me more about this. I live in Tennessee.

I think our moderate Dem governor has done as decent a job as he can with the schools despite the money, but your post indicates these states get the money if they move away from public education and more into the corporate charter world.

[madfloridian]

2. Yes, I think so. Arne has been clear they must allow more charters

and allow more and more testing.

[donco6]

5. In most plans, the state must identify the "bottom 5%" for "turnaround"

Which usually means chartering from a list of approved charters - all corporate.

[donco6]

3. If it wasn't bad enough in Colorado -

Now we're really going to see the shit hit the fan.

[saracat]

4. K+R This is seriously, combined with everything else, pushing me over the edge.

The Admin is aiding and abetting the Democratic Party is standing for nothing! Public Education is a cornerstone.

[Fresh_Start]

6. The dems need to hire their writers because clearly

they are great at hiding crap under glowing words.

[sabrina 1]

7. 'NCLB' was a corporate written and sponsored

'educational' system and is among the worst in the world. I remember being stunned to see that such Democrats as Ted Kennedy and Kerry had signed the bill. Later, airc, Kennedy said he had been deceived during the negotiations.

But the full burden of that corporate system fell on the nation's teachers, none more than those who teach in the poorest districts where any educator worth the title, knows that there are issues beyond academics that need to be addressed before we start talking about 'scores' and 'testing'.

I would like to send Bush and his business cronies and now Arne, into one of those districts for just one month with a mandate to either 'improve scores' or 'lose their jobs'!

Rather than firing the people who are willing to take on these challenges, how about supporting them? I have only one friend who is a teacher who works in one of those districts. No one wants to work under the conditions these teachers face. He does it because of the need, but he is constantly frustrated and out of his meager salary, buys teaching materials, and even sometimes snacks for children who come to school hungry. He is a great teacher and human being, but I'm sure Arne and her Bush businessmen cohorts would fire him too because he worries more about just getting these children to come to school at all, than test results.

I had hoped with a change of administration, the whole NCLB system would eventually be scrapped. How disappointing to see that contrary to providing real education, Democrats are not only supporting this failed system, but 'improving' on it.

It's all about privatizing and money and greed and the very title 'No Child Left Behind' could not be more cynical.

I think they've finally lost me completely ~