And speaking of Race to the Top

It turns out that maybe that much-vaunted evaluation system doesn't hold up under scrutiny:

Tennessee and Delaware, the first two states to win education funding through President Obama's $3 billion Race To the Top competition, were chosen through “arbitrary criteria” rather than through a scientific process, according to a new report by a non-partisan research institute.

The report called, “Let’s Do the Numbers,” by William Peterson and Richard of the nonprofit, independent Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, says that the 500-point system created to decide the “best” proposals for education reform is based on false precision.

Those changes that Race to the Top requires, much supported by Joel Klein, who runs NYC public schools?

...it seems important for Klein to remember that under his tenure and his business approach to public schools, the percentage of African American and Hispanic children accepted into gifted and talented programs -- based entirely on a standardized test score-- dropped from 46 percent to 22 percent, according to education historian Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System."

And, she said, under Klein, the number of black students admitted to selective high schools plummeted. Of 900 freshmen, in 2004 there were 83 black students; by 2009, only 7 black students qualified; Hispanic students dropped from 96 to 17.

Meanwhile, in 2009, when Klein announced the expansion of charter schools, he didn’t mention that of 51,316 public school students in the city who were homeless, only 11 were enrolled in charter schools.

Let's hope Patrick--and not only Patrick--is backing off from this disaster.