Race To The Bottom

That gurgling sound you hear? "Our entire state's going down the tubes." Those were the words San Francisco Superintendent of schools Carlos Garcia used to describe the current state of the Golden state. He was referring, specifically, to the already spare education budget and the proposed additional cuts that will almost certainly take place before the new fiscal year starts in July.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was in San Francisco for a meeting with California's mayors, and he told them they were probably going to be on the outside looking in when a five billion dollar federal program to improve schools called "Race To The Top" is rolled out next fall. Superintendent Garcia didn't have to read it in the newspaper. He got to hear the news firsthand. "I have huge hopes for what California can do," Duncan said. "I'd love to have California at the table, but California has things it needs to change."
And now my mind turns, as it often does, to Bill Murray. At the beginning of the movie "Stripes," Bill comes home from a pretty awful day to find out that his girlfriend is moving out. She tells him that his act isn't cute anymore, and she kept hoping that he would grow up. As she walks out, our hero cries after her, "Talk about massive potential for growth!" That's pretty much where California is right now: looking up.
This is the way the education biz works: Prove that you don't need the teachers' assistants in your classroom and you get funded for those assistants for anther year. Low test scores are a sure sign that you're wasting money, so it's time to cut something. Become a lean, mean, educating machine. In the wake of his budget Titanic hitting the iceberg called reality, the Governator has decided to cut the school year by seven and a half days. By contrast, Duncan said the reforms he has in mind would lengthen the school day so that students could take classes for longer than the typical six hours. Another way to "improve schools" is to close the ones that are low performers. An interesting notion. Perhaps teachers could use this approach on low-performing students. But we can't can we? It is public education, after all. We appear to be headed in opposite directions, through the looking glass.