Race to the what?

New doubts about the Chicago Public School's performance pay system for teachers make it clearer that Colorado is desperately trying to recreate a failure.  

An early analysis of the system from Mathematica Policy Research "found no evidence that the program raised student test scores."    The system "did not have a detectable impact on rates of teacher retention" either, according to the study.

Why should we care in Colorado?  Because our entire anything-but-teaching education reform effort now centers on doing whatever U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan did while he was chief of Chicago's public schools.  He started the new performance pay system.

We already know that he misled America about the academic results he got in Chicago's schools.  This is just more evidence that his miraculous results in Chicago are no more real than the so-called Houston Miracle that led President Bush to pick Roderick Paige as his secretary of education.

The continuing and growing doubts about Chicago should get us thinking.  Maybe we should work on really improving our schools, rather than blindly following the latest "reform" fad.  

Not likely.  For one thing it would cost us money to make sure every child in Colorado gets a good education.  And we're broke.  Blindly following the Duncan Dream could actually make us money.  Last week the state reapplied for a Big Cash Prize in Duncan's Race for the Top contest.  Winning could get us $175 million.

There's a catch, of course.  We can use the money to restore any of our cuts or to teach students, it all has to go to "reform" administration costs.

On the plus side, wining doesn't require educating students, all we have to do is convince the Secretary that we'll adopt his free-market-solves-everything education ideology without asking any questions.

One question we're consistently not asking is "Race to the what?"

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