I'm Skeptical Of Obama's Race To The Top Program

First of all let me say that I don't trust much of anything the government does. After all, look at where we are as a nation with the economy in ruins, unemployment still around 10%, and more debt everywhere than ever before in our history.

So, it should come as no surprise that I have lots of doubts about President Obama and his Race To The Top program for schools. It seems every president has his pet school program. For Bush it was No Child Left Behind and look where that got us: nowhere.

Now we have Obama pledging to give around 4 billion of our tax dollars to states that jump through some hoops and make the right changes as judged by the President and his people. Texas, not wanting anything to do with the Federal government, never even was in the running for these so called Obama school grants. There were only 36 initial applicants so that means that a lot of other states never bothered either.

Right now, as of 7/27/2010 there are 18 finalists and you can read about the whole process here at the government education website. It seems the states can win money at each phase of the process and Tennessee and Delaware have already won money in phase 1. The ed.gov website itself calls it winning grants and that seems like the wrong choice of words to me. Is that what our public education system is depending on: the need to "win" money and grants to survive?

How many times have we talked about better teacher accountability and all the other things that go along with making our schools better? This has been going on for 30 years now where we have been aware that schooling in other countries is superior to ours. And here we are, still throwing money at it hoping it will get better.

Every president has got to seem concerned about our public school system: it is part of the job requirement. But every president has failed and I don't think Obama will be any different. All he knows how to do is to spend money anyway and that is not making things better as we are all seeing first hand.

OBAMA PELL GRANTS FOR MOMS

Whenever he talks about education or student loans, the new president talks about his Obama Pell grants. You then see lots of ads for them and ads from different colleges trying to get your interest. But where do you really find out about Pell grants.

You can go to the government web site ED.gov to find out more about the Pell grant program and you can also go here as well. You can see the information below from the last site:





















It seems that Obama's Pell grants aren't much of an improvement over what was already available. Every President seems to talk big about education and then nothing really gets done. Our school system continues to deteriorate and costs keep going up. An extra $200 isn't worth even bothering to talk about but he sure makes it sound like he is really getting things done. Just a big ole pep talk full of empty promises if you ask me. Obama stimulus grants continue to bail out the big corporations but there is nothing for us little guys.