Last week, the state of Wisconsin received the ""Billy Madison"" treatment in the Department of Education's Race to the Top. At no point in Wisconsin's rambling, incoherent proposal were they even close to anything resembling a rational thought. Everyone in the federal government is now dumber for having read it. They awarded us no points, and may God have mercy on our souls. Or at least the souls of Wisconsin students.
This is the situation Wisconsin finds itself in after officially failing to make the list of finalists for the first round of Race to the Top funding. The Department of Education released its list of 15 finalist states and Wisconsin was nowhere to be found. After months of posturing from the legislature, Gov. Jim Doyle, gubernatorial candidates and numerous other Wisconsin political personalities tried to wrangle funds from Uncle Sam, which included a controversial attempt to take control of the Milwaukee Public School system away from the school board.
These efforts remain in tact but the spirit behind it remains as state governments and school districts across the country who are still scrambling like chickens with their heads cut off to make any changes they possibly can, regardless of whether they are well thought out or whether there is actually evidence that they will benefit students. Following a decade of school districts trying to keep up with the Bush administration's badly planned and poorly executed No Child Left Behind initiative, one would think the Obama administration would have learned a lesson from that fiasco, but they too have fallen into the trap of thinking federal meddling in public schools will solve our nation's education issues.
There is nothing wrong with the U.S. Department of Education providing funding to poor school districts. Despite what political-point-scoring legislators may say, there are problems that can be solved with money so long as school districts spend it responsibly. But Race to the Top does not encourage school districts to act responsibly, it encourages them to enact change merely for the sake of change.
In the case of the Milwaukee Public School system, this is exactly what would have occurred. The takeover proposed by state Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, would give the mayor the ability to appoint the superintendent, and the superintendent would have the power to write the budget with the school board having no power to make changes, effectively stripping the board of power.
This isn't the kind of change Milwaukee students need. Milwaukee students need proven administrators and principals in their schools that can manage effectively. They need effective teachers in their classrooms who aren't required to teach to the test. They need change on a micro level, not the macro level that Race to the Top ends up creating. This shouldn't be determined by a group of people sitting in Washington, D.C., especially when that group is led by a man like Arne Duncan who has never been a teacher. Instead Wisconsin legislators should be talking with the teachers' union, superintendents' union and the state School Board Association, none of which were ever contacted about preparing Wisconsin to receive Race to the Top funds.
Race to the Top was not a bright idea in the first place. It is as arbitrary as the academic decathlon Adam Sandler went through against Bradley Whitford to get control of his father's business. The pageantry here is obscene, particularly when we are parading children around for it. It may not be politically popular to give money to bad school districts, but sometimes that is a necessary reality we must face.
Race to the Top funds should not be given to the states who make arbitrary changes just to create the illusion of progress, it should be given to the individual school districts like Milwaukee who need the money the most in order to ensure our nation's educational tradition. Milwaukee Public Schools are failing, but only because the state of Wisconsin and programs like Race to the Top are failing ahead of it. We need to find a way to give Milwaukee the money it needs and then let it fix itself in practical ways Otherwise today's kids aren't going to end up any more intelligent than Billy Madison.
