We already know that Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care reform is almost identical to President Obama’s health care reform. But health care is only one of the two fastest growing sectors of our economy. Surely Romney has a fundamentally different approach to education than Obama does, right?
Maybe not.
Politico reported from a town hall in Miami yesterday:
“I think Secretary Duncan has done some good things,” he said. “I hope that’s not heresy in this room.”
The Duncan-Obama Race to the Top (Rtt) program epitomizes everything that is terrible about the liberal approach to education policy. It does not, as Politco says, reward sates “for reaching specific goals.” What it does do is bribe states, with a $4.3 billion stiumlus slush fund, to adopt a slew of policies, including national standards, approved by liberal government bureacrats.
Forty-one states wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and administrative man hours trying to persuade Obama Education Department bureaucrats to give their states RttT stimulus money. Louisiana’s application alone was 260 pages, with a 417-page appendix. And in the end, the Obama Administration just wound up giving the cash to their government union political allies. What a colossal waste of time and money.
Secretary Duncan loves to talk about the “competition” that RttT inspired among the states. But there is a fundamental difference between the competition for federal government funds and real market competition. When Apple competes in the mobile music industry, it does so by winning over consumers with a better product. When Amazon competes to become in online retail, it does so by serving customers needs better. Not so with RttT. When states compete, they do so by trying to figure out what will make government bureaucrats happy.
Instead of states spending their money and manpower to improve schools and educate children, RttT asks them to put taxpayer dollars toward constructing massive grant applications. The incentives are all flowing in the wrong direction. Instead of focusing on making parents happy by devoting resources to make a better education product, states have been devoting resources to make Washington bureaucrats happy with a better grant application product. Filling out grant applications has never educated a single child anywhere ever. But grant applications are what RttT is all about, and they have made RttT the biggest waste of your education dollars ever.
Is this an approach to federal education policy that Romney supports?
