{"id":252,"date":"2010-07-31T19:56:16","date_gmt":"2010-07-31T23:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/?p=252"},"modified":"2019-04-18T20:02:45","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T00:02:45","slug":"peters-says-race-to-the-top-federal-power-grab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/2010\/07\/31\/peters-says-race-to-the-top-federal-power-grab\/","title":{"rendered":"Peters Says Race to the Top Federal Power Grab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>From the Dothan Eagle<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Alabama has failed so far in its attempts to get federal Race To The Top program funds, and that\u2019s a good thing, according to Alabama State Board of Education member Betty Peters.<\/p>\n<p>The state recently learned that it won\u2019t be among states receiving $4.2 billion in federal aid. Reasons given for the state missing out on being among Race to the Top  funds winners were a lack of charter schools, missing a deadline to agree to common standards and a reluctance by the Alabama Education Association to agree to evaluating educators based on their students\u2019 test scores.<\/p>\n<p>Peters said the Race to the Top program was a power grab by the federal government that would infringe upon states\u2019 rights guaranteed by the 10th Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>Peters said adopting common standards would take away too much local power to determine what children are taught.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEducation has always been a state, local and family matter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Peters  said that by standardizing curriculum, the nation\u2019s schools run the risk of reducing competition among textbook publishers, potentially creating lucrative monopolies for some who secure large government contracts.<\/p>\n<p>Peters also said standardization would likely eventually lead to state leaders being handcuffed with regard to what steps they could take to improve education in their state.<\/p>\n<p>Peters said Race to the Top also asked board members to approve vague policies and standards that weren\u2019t fully explained to board members or the public. Peters pointed to the program\u2019s aim of evaluating teachers based on student test scores as an example.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am not going to hang this around teachers\u2019 necks and award tenure based on assessment when I don\u2019t know what the assessment is going to be,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Dothan Eagle Alabama has failed so far in its attempts to get federal Race To The Top program funds, and that\u2019s a good thing, according to Alabama State Board of Education member Betty Peters. The state recently learned that it won\u2019t be among states receiving $4.2 billion in federal aid. Reasons given for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-federal-programs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bettypeters.com\/bettypeters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}