Calvert Institute Publications

Maryland's 'Race to the Top' Application: Failure Revealed
George Liebmann
The Obama Administration's education reform effort continues Washington’s enthusiasm for intellectually bankrupt 'top-down' reforms. As in foreign policy and policies relating to financial regulation, there is essential continuity between the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. The Obama reform approach essentially abandons any significant effort to alter failed grant in aid programs. The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, with its destructive embrace of restrictions on school discipline, its requirement that large sums be spent on student classification and administrative paper-shuffling, its adherence to now-discredited ‘inclusion’ theories, and its charter for expensive lawsuits is to be maintained. So is the central thrust of the No Child Left Behind law, with its incentives to rote 'teaching to the test' and its encouragement of debasement of state testing standards.