The EdVocate West

Hope Rises from Below (not from Sacramento)

May 26, 2010 at 1:09 am arunramanathan Leave a comment

At the Education Trust-West, we’ve been tracking the state’s efforts on Race to the Top pretty closely. After we lost the first round and ended up in the lower tier of applicants, we encouraged the state to re-apply. After all, it would be hard to do much worse and given the stakes for our kids, it was worth the effort. During our initial meeting with them, our leaders seemed so depressed by their first round score that there wasn’t a whole lot of willingness to try again. But when they came to their senses, we were pleased when they chose a strategy that placed our best foot forward – leveraging the good work of a group of reform-minded school districts.

Now that we are entering the final stages of the application process, we can see, based on this MOU, that the state is not making the mistake it made in the first round – prioritizing consensus over reform. In a state as large as ours, the notion that you can achieve consensus on school reform, particularly with Sacramento interests as hidebound as CTA and ACSA standing in the way was unlikely from the beginning. But in a state as large as ours, you are also likely to have a sizable number of education reformers committed to acting on behalf of the best interests of students.

These are the folks who represent the possibilities for the future for California. And as we have watched school districts and others engage in the process of putting together a Race to the Top Application for California, it is clear that we do have leaders who are willing to embrace serious reforms and be accountable for their implementation. After spending some recent time in Sacramento, listening to lunatic arguments of the entrenched interests, watching the reform elements work together and witnessing the results of their work is really refreshing.

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