This is certainly a heated discussion, but where is it going?

The argument in favor of competitive funding seems to be the fact that we don’t like formulaic funding. Apparently, we don’t like formulaic funding because it doesn’t work. But does competitive funding work? I don’t think we know. What we do know is that competitive funding is not formulaic funding and that formulaic funding is something we do not like.

This is an example of a common logical fallacy: “If not A then B.” It has a strong emotional pull because it begins by attacking something people are generally against and concluding that something more popular, therefore, is inherently superior. But it is correct only in the most limited binary circumstances. It’s the same “ill-logic” that Intelligent Design fanatics use: Since it isn’t technically possible to prove every bit of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, there must have been an Intelligent Designer, right? That’s sort of like saying that if it’s not sunny, it must be raining. So if the status quo in education is intolerable—and I certainly believe that it is—then anything that is not the status quo is obviously a move in the right direction. Then again, most of us didn’t take Logic 101 in college so perhaps that’s why this faulty line of reasoning is so popular these days.

I’m not having trouble with the policy here, but the logic is driving me up a tree—and I’ve been up this tree for about a year now waiting for better minds than mine to tell me that it’s safe to come down.

Nobody on any side of any argument here is arguing for the status quo in education, which is intolerable. But that doesn’t mean that any alternative is automatically better. And when we seem to have only one alternative to work with at a time, the “If not A then B” logic pushes hard on our emotional buttons and coerces us to support ideas that aren’t supported by strong empirical evidence or even strong theoretical guesswork.

Since Race to the Top is the iconic example of competitive grant programs in education, let’s take a closer look at what it accomplishes. Some states will change their laws even before the program starts but we don’t know if those changes will lead to improvements in student achievement. A small number of states will get money to do certain things the government likes but we don’t know if those things will improve student achievement. Most states won’t get any Race to the Top money (and it’ll be very strange indeed if one or two of the losers ends up making more progress in the coming years than one or two of the winners, but Race to the Top enthusiasts will surely use their “If not A then B” attack to destroy that bridge long before we have to cross it). Strictly speaking, giving money to some states and not others is inequitable. But just how inequitable is it at this time? My hunch is that Race to the Top accounts for less than 1% of all education spending. This does not seem like a lot of inequity on my balance sheet. But it’s definitely some, and if Race to the Top is used as a model for something more significant, like Title I funding, we could have a real equity problem on our hands.

Assuming that Race to the Top’s scoring and selection process even makes sense, if we look at the list of criteria by which state applications are scored, we see many things that haven’t worked, or are at best inconclusive. Have charters worked? Have standards worked? Does having significant LEA support work? Do longitudinal data systems improve student achievement? If I had the criteria in front of me, I could probably go on forever with questions like these.

Race to the Top involves funding many things that have not been shown to work. Maybe they will this time, maybe they won’t; maybe some things will work in some states, maybe other things won’t. Apparently, the fact that nobody knows for sure is not a problem because we feel that Race to the Top’s nature as a competitive funding program is inherently right because formulaic funding is inherently wrongly, and all attempts to use formulaic funding represent, by default, a perpetuation of the status quo, which is intolerable.

I think I’ve seen this movie before. The world is coming to an end. We have only one chance to save ourselves (it’s probably Tom Cruise or Will Smith but I can’t be sure). Ironically, the choice has already been made and now being against the choice is somehow construed as being in favor of the status quo, which is intolerable. Supporting the choice means supporting an unknown and unpredictable idea. Not supporting the choice makes one a crybaby, a naysayer, or both.

Whatever happened to the value of being a reasonable skeptic? What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned “I’m from Missouri” attitude? I was in our nation’s capital six weeks ago sitting on the first baseline at Nationals Park watching Strasburg mow down the Pirates with a record-setting 14 K’s. Now he’s on the DL. Whoops! Even things that work sometimes don’t work. Life is uncertain. This is why some of us eat dessert first.

So what is Race to the Top funding? A bunch of things that haven’t been shown to work. Isn’t that precisely why we don’t like formulaic funding?

How about this for a policy: If something works, let’s fund it. You want to skyrocket the national debt so we can have ten thousand KIPP charter schools, I’m all for it. You want to raise a few billion to scale TFA from 5000 kids a year to 50,000—and figure out how to add a component that makes these hard-working and extremely talented folks stay in the classroom for at least ten years or so? Send me to China and I’ll borrow the money on my MasterCard.

Let me state unequivocally that I am against funding things that do not work and in favor of funding things that do. I just can’t find proof that the things we’re funding in Race to the Top are things that do. Nor is it clear to me why the exact menu of Race to the Top offerings couldn’t be funded formulaically instead. Ultimately, this is where this very tedious and positively pointless argument about the inherent rightness of competitive funding breaks down for me.

If the federal government thinks something is good for kids, why wouldn’t it want to have it in all 50 states? Didn’t we have testing in all 50 states? Didn’t we have some kind of “highly-qualified teacher” component in all 50 states? Didn’t we have a parental notification and school choice mechanism in all 50 states? I think we’ve done this “all 50 states” thing before.

In the case of NCLB, this may not have worked out exactly the way we wanted but it did demonstrate that the federal government can play a significant role in altering education in all 50 states. If Race to the Top is so great, why use it to alter education in only a few states? Why not just say, “Hey States, if you want your Title I money, ya gotta adopt CCSSI, open up the floodgates on charter schools, and tie your teachers to test scores.” That many not be popular throughout the land, but at least it’s honest—and equitable. Of course, this would rankle the equity folks, too, I imagine, who might ironically find themselves in league with the state’s rights folks on this one. Strange bedfellows indeed.

The federal government can do pretty much whatever it wants to do with its 10% of the educational funding pie. If the 20 or so things on the Race to the Top scorecard are so good, why shouldn’t they be funded equally for everyone? And if Race to the Top is really just an experiment, why not be honest about it? I don’t know that too many people would be upset by some thoughtful innovation funding. Why couldn’t Race to the Top and i3 have been combined into an even larger pool of resources to support new and promising ideas? Then states and organizations could have competed together for projects large and small, an approach to competitive funding that might have proven more equitable.

If the argument against formulaic funding of Race to the Top reforms is that the funds would be spread too thin, I think we know what to do about that: cut less valuable reforms from the list, get a little more money, or both. Again, is there anyone of any particular political persuasion in Washington who wouldn’t favor funding things that work for all American children? Or is the problem really that we still don’t know what works and that we are so embarrassed by this that we’ll forgo the more responsible process of validating important ideas and funding only those that work?

While we’re arguing about the inherent rightness of competitive education funding, let’s not forget the formulaic funding component of Race to the Top. States are capped, prior to applying, on what they can receive, are they not? How were these caps determined? Surely not by formula based on the number of kids in a state. That would be inherently wrong, a validation of the status quo, which is intolerable. But if not by some formula, then how were the caps determined?

As it turns out, Race to the Top isn’t a real competition in the true sense of the word because there is no proportional relationship between the quality of a state’s application and the size of its award. The size of a state is the most significant gating factor both on what it can propose to accomplish and the amount of funding it can receive. Rhode Island can’t strut in with a 500-point application and scoot out with a cool $2 billion, even if that perfect score is a hundred points higher than its nearest competitor. As a small state, the best it can do is a small share. So it seems that even the most competitive of competitive funding programs still employs a formulaic funding mechanism. If that ain’t puttin’ lipstick on a pig then I don’t know what is.

Perhaps formulaic funding isn’t dead after all. It would seem that Race to the Top, in its contrivance and opacity, to some degree also perpetuates the status quo, which is intolerable.

When I hear so many smart people saying that competitive funding is obviously so much better than formulaic funding, I kinda want to know what evidence they have that doesn’t rely on the “If not A then B” argument. Ideology I understand. “If not A then B” is standard ideological logic. But I had hoped we’d have by now moved into a post-ideological period of education reform—no single ideology having been shown to be any more successful than any other, and all ideologies having been shown to be ridiculously narrow and inflexible in the face of such a broad and dynamic problem.

I have my own ideology, too, of course. I am ideologically opposed to giving any educational entity any money unless they spend it on things that work, just as I’m opposed to my own clients spending money on my own company if they are not committed to using the services we provide. I hold this position for any approach to educational funding—formulaic, competitive, randomized, pork barrel, earmark, nepotism, racketeering, lottery, patronage, sports betting, hush money, hedge funds, collateralized debt obligations, stud poker, Ponzi schemes, credit default swaps, quid pro quo, Blogojevichistic campaign financing, or Bayesian statistical algorithms. At the same time, I get nervous when the federal government gets into the business of crowning princes and leaving paupers to fend for themselves—that’s what philanthropists are for.

People who want to make the “If not A then B” argument and cast formulaic funding as the “not A”, better hope that Race to the Top displays peak performance. They better also hope—and this is really unfortunate aspect of the position—that non-Race to the Top-funded states perform poorly, and that nobody remembers what I just reminded them of regarding the formulaic funding component of Race to the Top. And if Race to the Top can be shown conclusively to have contributed to improvements in student achievement, what then? What will have been proven about the rightness or wrongness of methods of educational funding? Not much.

Let’s imagine that states adopting CCSSI’s work, tying teachers to test scores, and raising charter school caps, do 20 points better on average over five years than states that don’t do any of these things. Then what will we do? Obviously, we’ll want to do all three of these things in all the other states, right? But won’t formulaic funding be the best way to do that? Or will we go round after round keeping weak states down simply to prove that competitive funding is superior? How far and for how long will we push ideology over logic just to make sure we don’t get egg on our face?

How about this for a theory of education funding: Things that work get funded for everyone; things that don’t get funded for no one. If we have something unproven that looks promising, let’s fund an experiment of it, let’s keep the funding small, the implementation innovative, and the stated intent experimental. Is this not a reasonable approach?

Small amounts of money, like those associated with the i3 competitive grant program are perfect for figuring out what works in a fiscally responsible way that does not impact educational equity. I just heard today that KIPP and TFA were up for $50 million. Good for them! But this doesn’t prove that competitive funding is inherently superior to formulaic funding. It’s just a reasonable mechanism for funding innovation where the practices appear promising and the amounts of money are so small relative to the whole that equity is not a serious practical concern.

Competitive funding is appropriate when we’re funding unproven but innovative ideas on a small scale. Formulaic funding is appropriate when we’re funding proven ideas on a large scale. This is neither complicated nor controversial. Nor does it privilege excellence over equity.

I don’t know whether the size of Race to the Top is too small to worry about or large enough to be considered a legitimate source of unfairness. I’m sure an economist somewhere can figure out what percentage of federal money it is reasonable to spend on educational experiments and what part should be reserved for more traditional applications.

It’s not the funding method that makes the difference here, it’s the things we fund. Race to the Top is a laundry list of guesswork reforms, and don’t forget that every winning state will implement these reforms differently, adding yet another layer of guesswork to the program. Some states may not even do the things they say they’ll do, and we still don’t have a detailed explanation from the Secretary about accountability. For such an important program, this seems like more than a minor procedural slip-up and less than a shrewd PR strategy.

I sincerely hope that we see clear and unambiguously positive results from Race to the Top (and, unfortunately, for competitive funding ideologues, I guess this means rooting against similar improvement by non-Race to the Top-funded states). But regardless of what happens, will it have much to do with the nature of education funding models? I don’t think so. I also don’t think it will tell us that formulaic funding is inherently wrong, especially since Race to the Top has a formulaic funding component.

I think we’re arguing the wrong issue this week. I’m sure we can come up with dozens of different funding models for federal education spending. That’s not the problem. The problem is that after 20+ years of education reform, and record amounts of funding of all kinds, we still haven’t made much progress, and we still don’t know what works.

As I have in the past, I’ll close by recalling Mr. Finn’s thesis from his rather prescient article, “The End of the Education Debate”. Reform as we have known it is winding down toward entropy. So let’s leave our tired ideologies behind this time and brush up on our physics while we’re at it. Maybe we can conquer inertia by bringing a little Brownian motion to bear as we search for better ways to improve our schools.

A new paradigm of reform is clearly required and I guarantee you that next time out, funding models will be the smallest of small potatoes. Who among us will articulate this new vision? Who will be the outlier, the one taking all the heat from those who have staked their claims, their ideologies, and their reputations to the conventional wisdom? Who will develop the models that make education work for all of our kids in all of our states?

Gather ye billions while ye may, and spend them as ye like. If you’re funding testing, standards, charters, vouchers, merit pay, or any of the other “fan favorites” from the last little while, it probably doesn’t matter how you fund things because what you’re funding probably isn’t going to work very well anyway—and that, my friends, is even more intolerable than the status quo.

Some—on this blog and elsewhere—have taken the position that competitive grants to fund education improvements are somehow bad for poor kids. The idea seems to be that only wealthy jurisdictions will have the skills to put together winning proposals, so poor kids would be more likely to benefit if the dollars were simply handed out like the vast majority of federal dollars are—through formula grants, whether or not their schools do anything good.

I think they’re dead wrong.

For starters, most of the programs they are talking about—including the Teacher Incentive Fund and the Invest in Innovation Fund—require grantees to make these students their priority. Indeed the teacher dollars can only be spent to develop and implement performance-based compensation systems in high-need schools.

Moreover, the states currently in the lead to win funds from the biggest competitive program, Race to the Top, belie the notion that wealthy states have an unfair advantage. Of the 19 new finalists announced last week, ten have poverty rates higher than the national average (including cash-strapped California, which made major changes from its first application to better its chances this time). And first-round grant winner Tennessee is hardly a rich state.

Even more important than who gets the money is what the winners have to do to keep it. I’ve been around for a long time, through years when federal dollars were plentiful and years when they were scarce. Never before, though, have I seen as much change in critical state policies as I have seen in the six months during which states have been competing for Race to the Top.

Of special importance to poor children, Race to the Top has prompted states to stop passing the buck on long-standing inequities in school quality. At least 15 changed laws to increase their authority to intervene in their lowest performing schools, where large numbers of low-income students and students of color languish. In Massachusetts, for example, the commissioner now has broad authority over the critical issues of staffing and budget in low-performing, stagnant schools and districts.

What’s more, at least 17 states have changed laws to improve their teacher evaluation systems—a key to increasing equitable access to effective teachers. Colorado, for example, passed legislation that requires teacher evaluations to include student-growth data starting in 2014-15. Instead of continuing the longstanding practice of passing not-so-good teachers along to teach in the poorest schools, Colorado teachers who get two years of ineffective ratings won’t be teaching at all.

We know that every state that changed various policies to compete for the dollars won’t necessarily win extra funds. But students in those states will be far better off as a result of those important policy changes.

Obviously, only time will tell how all this adds up on the ground. But I’m betting that the real winners in competitive grant programs will be the students.

Frankly, these competitive dollars are still pretty small compared to the many billions of federal dollars that continue to go to school districts by formula, no matter how horribly some of them serve the poor and minority students these dollars are intended to benefit. But it seems to me a wise use of limited taxpayer dollars to spur states and districts to innovate and make the tough changes that will help them reach our goal of a far fairer—and far better educated—America.

The Framework worries that “by emphasizing competitive incentives in this economic climate, the majority of low-income and minority students will be left behind and, as a result, the United States will be left behind as a global leader.”

I think they have it backwards. What is leaving the majority of low-income students of color behind and threatening our economic leadership is the status quo. The competitive grant process is a much-needed corrective.

For years, federal education funds have been distributed equally, by formula. If that were a formula for success, our schools would already be graduating high percentages of children from all races and ethnicities, well-prepared for college or employment. But that hasn’t happened. Persistently low graduation rates and the increasing numbers of low-income students of color who have been forced to take remedial coursework in college tell us that distributing funds equally has served only to enable, subsidize and perpetuate the inadequate education that too many students are getting. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results has been put forward as one definition of insanity; it is at least a definition of futility. We clearly need to do something different.

By contrast, the Race to the Top process rewards states whose rules enable them to do the right thing by their students, teachers and taxpayers by conditioning funding eligibility on states’ willingness to position themselves to make the best use of federal dollars.

It seems to be working. It’s working, of course, for the states that receive funding. But it is also working for the 23 states that, in order to compete for Race to the Top funding, made the changes called for by Race to the Top rules. It is working for the 35 states that have signed on to common national academic standards. And it will go on working whether or not they are ultimately selected for Race to the Top funding.

For the Race to the Top eligibility requirements aren’t designed just to require states to jump through procedural hoops. They’re designed to incentivize them to do the things that research tells us are necessary preconditions to giving students a good education: making sure that students learn what they need to know before they move to the next grade, permitting public charter schools to offer education options for students who choose to attend them, and treating teachers as the professionals they are--rewarding them when they succeed, supporting their need for professional development, and holding them accountable when their results fall short of what their students need and deserve. States that make those changes have taken the first big steps toward better schools and better-educated students—whether they get a Race to the Top grant or not.

Don’t these requirements simply embody what every successful business or institution does, developing metrics that tell them whether what they’re doing is working or not? For baseball it’s batting averages and win-loss records. For business it’s number of customers and profit or loss. For our schools, it’s what and how much students are learning.

When it comes to our schools, possibly the most critical of our social institutions, why would we do less?

While I disagree strongly with a number of their arguments, the civil rights groups are right on one important point: unless and until we have equal education opportunities for children, regardless of ethnicity or income, we are shortchanging them.

The question is simple: what is the shortest path to achieve this goal in all states?

Long before and even since Brown vs. Board of Education, our current education system has failed to serve all students equally. However, as others have pointed out, nearly every well-intentioned effort to narrow income and ethnic “achievement gaps” over the last few decades – including tweaking professional development, reducing class sizes, opening after-school programs and generally throwing more money at the problem – have not reduced achievement gaps. They still exist in nearly every region of the country.

The oft-repeated Einstein quote applies: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” One thing is clear – our nation must make a substantial departure from our current approach if we are to truly serve all students equally. And the Obama administration has.

In a brief time, the competition for Race to the Top dollars has already had a major impact on state and local education policies. It’s driven significant statewide policy changes like common core standards, more effective teaching and data-driven decision-making and plans to jumpstart our nation’s lowest performing schools. These strategies, which are purposely designed to lift up traditionally disadvantaged students, are being widely adopted before federal checks have been cut. In contrast, the steady increases in Title I funding over several decades, while important, have not sparked significant policy changes to dramatically improve conditions for students most in need.

Race to the Top does not solve all problems. Every state still has significant work to do and numerous federal formula grant programs into which they can tap. But Race to the Top has catalyzed action toward strategies that seek to wipe out achievement gaps.

The civil rights groups take issue with the “competitive” nature of Race to the Top. Competition is a relatively new concept within public education, but it is one that can be used to bring about dramatic change.

We introduced The Broad Prize award nearly 10 years ago, primarily to recognize school districts making the best progress in raising student achievement and reducing achievement gaps nationwide, but also to encourage school districts to compete with one another to make faster gains. Our premise: competition is an important motivator to encourage people to respond better and faster.

Since then, we’ve seen school districts compete with one another to become finalists for the award. But we’ve also seen the award trigger best practice-sharing across district lines, with numerous school districts now collaborating and partnering with one another to improve. For example, California’s challenged Fresno school district formed a voluntary partnership several years ago with Broad Prize-winning Long Beach and has since shown significant student academic improvement. Sharing effective practices among school districts grew out of a competition. States can do the same.

All of us working in education must be intolerant of injustice and inequality. But it is precisely because we are urgently intolerant of these failings that we must use competition as a tool to both motivate states to adopt policies that create the conditions under which schools can make dramatic gains and encourage collaboration across states for the benefit of all.

President Obama’s education reform agenda is aggressive, forward-thinking and actually helps the most underserved schools and school districts, not hurt them.

Yes, RttT and i3 grants are based on competition, but the effort has triggered needed change. States and school districts finally see the advantages of serving the best interest of students -- especially those in the lowest performing schools where the need is greatest.

Where the No Child Left Behind Act forced the system to be responsible for raising achievement for all children, RttT accelerates change through innovative reforms. It engages states, school districts and unions around success. These models of success can serve as pilots, be replicated and ultimately improved. That’s the nature of innovation.

The civil rights coalition’s framework is well-reasoned and important. We all should be concerned about a school system that has persistently short-changed poor students and students of color for generations. Yet, how much sense does it make to cling to institution-driven solutions when meaningful, student-centered reform is finally within our grasp? Isn’t it time to move away from a system geared around adults and old ways and focus on students?

KnowledgeWorks has transformed or is transforming schools in some of the nation’s most economically and socially challenged communities. In our Ohio transformation work, we improved the quality of teachers, provided rigorous curriculum and instruction with aligned assessments gave students the opportunity to earn college credits and made school courses relevant to the interest of students and their future aspirations. We saw test scores and graduation rates rise among African-American students including a 29 percent increase in graduation rates among African-American students over a six-year period.

Comprehensive reform must start with the fundamental belief that every child is a learner and that our system must cater to the needs of that learner (click here to see KnowledgeWorks students Brandon, Eric, Diffini and Marcus as examples), but we all must be committed to the hard work to see reform through.

Piecemeal reforms of the past clearly have not worked. This streamlined, competitive process holds great promise as the proverbial rising tide that can lift all boats.

When approximately 8% of a local school district’s budget attempts to dictate 100% of its programs and operations, something is wrong! The amount of federal dollars available for public education is relatively small in comparison to state and local funding support. To take the few dollars that are available and make them competitive is also wrong! Schools and districts in states that have the resources to compete will obviously fare better than those that don’t. And let’s not forget the logical conclusion that one must draw when successful grant applicants succeed in their targeted mission. Where will the funds come to replicate their success nationwide for all children in our schools?

Certainly the politics of a successful national education program will bolster the administration’s position for re-election. But to grant only a few states with “carrot” money at the expense of the majority of states is short-sighted. Let us not forget that these federal dollars are to be used for all of this nation’s students. We need more funds (federal, state, and local), not less. Our priority should be to fund public education to the highest levels possible. And when that’s not sufficient to dig deeper and find the dollars. Let’s stop short-changing the next generation of youth sitting in our schools today!

Yes, the administration should modify its education proposals to adopt all 17 recommendations in the Civil Rights Framework, one of which explains better alternatives to competitive grants. Unlike the administration’s proposals, the Framework’s alternatives are research-based, and the Framework calls for “a shift of focus from competitive grant programs to conditional incentive grants that can be made available to all states, provided they adopt systemic, proven strategies for providing all students with an opportunity to learn.” Every child deserves the opportunity to learn.

The 16 other recommendations in the Framework also deserve attention on this blog.

If so obvious a question needs to be debated inside the Beltway, the answer’s pretty clear in the nitty-gritty world of schools and classrooms, where resources are being cut to the bone. Competitions like Race to the Top mostly reward the advantaged and punish the disadvantaged. The civil rights groups and other critics have taken the needed step of stating the obvious--with considerable restraint and politesse. Their doing so is particularly important since the Administration proposed almost no increase for the core Title I grants distributed according to poverty criteria, while seeking to increase the unfair and unequal RTTT.

It’s a mind-bogglingly tough sell for President Obama to suggest, as he did to the Urban League last week, that any critic of Race to the Top is a defender of the status quo, uncomfortable with change. On the contrary, the new failing status quo is the test-and-punish paradigm of No Child Left Behind. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results and other data reveal NCLB’s failure to improve student achievement and close achievement gaps. Despite early hype, it’s now clear that Secretary Duncan's RTTT-type reforms produced little progress and considerable dislocation and harm in Chicago.

Unfortunately, rather than support effective approaches to educating low-income students, the Administration forces states and districts to implement bad policies just to get money to stay afloat.

Beyond the Beltway, the civil rights groups’ statement is evidence of a growing consensus that education policy needs to change direction, not plow ahead on the path set by President George W. Bush. Congress seems to be leaning against competitive grants and against Duncan’s misguided four mandated models for “improving” low-scoring schools. But there remains a lot of political pressure for Congress to take the wrong path. So, now is the time for parents, teachers and others who share the growing consensus to drive the message home by meeting with members of Congress during the summer recess and demanding a new direction for our schools and children. A useful approach is to support the Forum on Educational Accountability’s recommendations to Congress.

Competitions are always won by the strong, never the weak. The civil rights coalition statement pointed out that millions of poor and minority children live in states that will lose the Race to the Top, as well as those that fail to win competitive grants under the Blueprint.

Competition does not lead to equity, but to a few winners and many, many losers. What a bizarre concept for the US Department of Education. The market dissolves any sense of the common good, any obligation to take care of the stragglers. They lose.

When a system is broken, dysfunctional, and inequitable, investors with a long term view--governments and foundations--needs to take strategic action to promote improvement. That's exactly what Ed.gov did with RttT and i3. Guidelines specifically focused on efforts that will benefit low income and minority students. Proposals and policy changes indicate that the concept worked even better than expected--most states now have a comprehensive strategy to raise standards, use data to drive improvement, intervene in low performing schools, expand options, and improve teacher effectiveness.

The worst possible next step, as proposed by the Opportunity lobby, is to spread money like peanut butter. We've done that for 40 years and all we have is a more expensive version of a deeply inequitable system. Competitive government grants targeting the least well served are the best way to promote dramatic improvement. Entrepreneurs are developing learning tools at an extraordinary rate; I've looked at more than a dozen new learning systems in the last month. Innovation is the most rapid and efficient path to equity and excellence. Reduce barriers, provide incentives, promote equity and watch the results!

The Obama administration's education-reform agenda was already in trouble with the teacher unions. Now it's in trouble with the old-line civil rights community, too. I'm tempted to say this is clear proof of the agenda's wisdom and promise as well as the administration's pluck. But I won't. Instead, I'll mourn the inability of these groups to grasp what is really in the interests of poor and minority kids--and their failure, almost half a century after ESEA was first enacted (and the Coleman Report released), to see that the old input-centric approach to education reform doesn't work. To understand (and rue) this failure, you need only read Rod Paige's (and Elaine Witty's) recent book, The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It Is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time. And while you're at it, also check out Rod's explanation of what ails the teacher unions: The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education. Then cheer Messrs. Obama and Duncan for persevering with what's actually in the interest of kids rather than adult interest groups.