Race to the Top comes to Massachusetts

I'll post at greater length on this tomorrow or Friday, but I wanted to get something up here so those who wish to could write to their legislators.

Tomorrow at 1pm, the Joint Committee on Education will be taking testimony at the State House regarding bills dealing with Race to the Top. Specifically, there are currently bills before the Legislature--proposed by Governor Patrick and Mayor Menino, among others--that would lift the current cap on charter schools and would allow merit pay for teachers (and principals).

I'll be taking the train in tomorrow to testify against those bills.

The charter school discussion often gets heated, but at the end of the day, they don't, across the board, perform any better than other schools (some do, some don't: check out the MTA on charter schools here). They aren't a magic answer. Lifting a cap which has been a considered move by the Commonwealth is nothing more than a money grab. We, as a state, have a position, but we're apparently entirely willing to abandon it at the slightest hint of possible funds. At which point, incidentally, we will then have more charter schools to fund once the federal money dries up.

As for merit pay, the statistics are in on that as well: it doesn't work. Do you really think your child's teacher is going to teach harder if his pay is tied to your child's MCAS score? And how, in a city with a 40% mobility rate, are we going to decide which teacher is responsible for which children?

I'll post my testimony once I type it up. Hope some of you will be writing to the delegation on this.