WSWS: Obama education plan boosts privatization, victimizes teachers

The Obama administration on Monday named Tennessee and Delaware as initial winners in its “Race to the Top” education initiative. The two states, which were granted a combined award of $600 million in federal funds, were those in which local and state union affiliates carried out the greatest collaboration in undermining public education and teachers’ job security.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the Race to the Top program last year as the centerpiece education program of the new administration, offering up to $4.5 billion in federal funds to those states that were the most “innovative” in their policies.

As the World Socialist Web Site warned at the time, this had nothing to do with achieving education excellence or improving conditions in the schools, and everything to do with promoting a political agenda of privatization (charter schools) and destruction of wages, jobs and working conditions for teachers and other school workers (“accountability”).

Only 16 of the 50 states were selected as finalists. Tennessee will get $502 million and Delaware, a much smaller state, $107 million. Both states have Democratic governors who were better able to make deals with the unions and insure their support for the bid for additional federal funds.

Both states have merit pay plans for teachers, which allow principals to award pay raises based on alleged “performance,” which means, in practice, discriminating against teachers who defend working conditions and job security against management demands.