RttT Follies

The Race to the Trough continues to grow more entertaining with each passing day.

It simply passeth understanding how many newspaper editorialists use the looming budget crunch to argue for the necessity of doing whatever Arne Duncan wants in order to enhance their state's chances of getting Race to the Trough funding.  Cash from the Trough cannot be used to plug budget holes; it must be used to enact the state's promised "reform" package; and if states don't use it for that, Duncan has repeatedly said he will claw it back. 

It should be great drama to see whether he actually will or not.  One thinks he must be sweating bullets over the prospect of not getting Congressional authorization of an additional $23 bn to fend off teacher layoffs.  The irony is that this is his and Obama's teacher-trashing talk coming back to bite him.  After all, it's hard to credibly say we shouldn't be laying teachers off after stumping the country speechifying about how we need to fire bad teachers.  But that tends to happen when you say stupid things.  It's going to be terrible PR if Dunc tries to take RttT cash back from some state that uses it to avert teacher layoffs (and it's going to be hard for them not to, since that's what our most enlightened newspaper editors and probably broad swathes of the public think the money is for -- it is, after all, part of the ARRA economic stimulus plan). 

Then there are states like New York that legislated major -- and expensive (and stupid) -- re-vampings of their teacher evaluation schemes in order to earn their spot at the Trough.  What if after all this legislative heavy-lifting, they come up empty-handed, but with this expensive new law on their books to evaluate and fire teachers -- and they have to implement directly following budget-forced teacher layoffs?  Boy, is there going to be back-peddling or what?  Stuck with a law on the books that nobody now wants or can pay for, I predict that yet greater hilarity will ensue when the billionaire-backed DFER types start suing states to implement.  It will make such a lovely, ironic twist on the education finance adequacy lawsuits.

And Sarah Palin will no doubt occupy the White House by then.

So much to look forward to.