Sit this race out

The Spokesman-Review editorial on May 9 heaped praise on the Race to the Top (RTTT) initiative sponsored by U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The writer urged all Washington school boards to jump on the RTTT bandwagon. Pullman schools would get a whopping $24 per student, while Washtucna will reap a $22 per student windfall. (These amounts could be raised by local PTA bake sales.)

It is obvious that the S-R editorial team never read the RTTT legislation. There are 19 absolute criteria that must be met.

Citizens, those 19 will require a slew of new administrators just to keep books, collect data and harass the instructional staff in the K-12 sector.

In January, Dr. Yong Zhoa of Michigan State University warned the annual convention of the Washington School Directors Association of the evils of RTTT.

The RTTT is a sneaky way to fund private charter schools with taxpayers paying the bill and a mechanism to privatize the world’s best-decentralized public schools. Admittedly, the pubic schools need help, and as James B. Conant wrote, “improvements must come school by school and be made with due regard for the nature of the community,” not by federal bureaucrats.

Donald C. Orlich

Pullman