The ESEA reauthorization issue that most intrigues me is the extent to which Secretary Duncan is serious about moving ED away from compliance and toward incentives. He's alluded to this from time to time, and I wrote about it briefly about a month ago.
This week's announcement that he wants another RTT-style program fits the same mold: a new competitive grant program, not a Title I-style formula-based program.
Now according to EW's Alyson Klein, he??talked up this same issue before the nation's mayors.
Here's the quandary. This sounds really interesting and potentially very exciting. But I don't know what this would actually look like in practice. How do you change Title I or IDEA, the war horses of ED K-12 spending and presumably permanently formula program? Or is Duncan just thinking about new programs that take the incentive/competitive form?
When the budget comes out in two weeks and when they release an ESEA plan (TBD), this is what I'll be looking for.
--Andy Smarick