January 14, 2010 09:29 PM UTC

Would McInnis Kibosh "Race to the Top?"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Interesting story in today’s New York Times:

Texas will not compete for up to $700 million in federal education money, Gov. Rick Perry said on Wednesday, calling the Obama administration’s main school improvement grant program an unacceptable intrusion on states’ control over education.

Mr. Perry’s decision, days before a Jan. 19 deadline, interrupted months of work by Texas officials and a consulting company financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to prepare the application for the federal grant competition, known as Race to the Top. Texas had been eligible to win up to $700 million of a total of $4 billion the department will award for encouraging charter schools, improving teacher instruction, overhauling schools and joining an effort to adopt common academic standards.

“We would be foolish and irresponsible,” Mr. Perry said, “to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special-interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington.”

Now, Texas’ decision to forego $700 million in needed public education funds is pertinent to Colorado for two reasons–first, GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis talked at length recently about his close ties with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. According to McInnis, Perry asked him to “join” a “group of states”–which McInnis hastens to note are ‘not extremists’–once elected, who are ‘deeply concerned’ about the federal government. After Gov. Perry suggested last year that Texas could secede from the United States, well, similar talk from McInnis is worth paying attention to.

Secondly, Colorado is–under the present Bill Ritter administration–hard on the heels of hundreds of millions of “Race to the Top” dollars of its own. As the Denver Post reports:

The state Senate broke with tradition on its largely ceremonial opening day to speed along a teacher- tracking bill that could help the state qualify for hundreds of thousands in federal Race to the Top dollars.

The legislation would allow institutions that teach teachers and principals to track how effective their training programs are by how well their graduates perform in the classroom. It’s been fast-tracked to meet Tuesday’s application deadline for the federal grant program.

Well, here it is, another golden opportunity for McInnis to do something other than criticize from the sidelines–would McInnis be competing for these federal education funds like Ritter and Lt. Gov Barbara O’Brien are? Would he support SB10-036 as Governor? If not, why not?

There is no reason why a qualified candidate for the state’s highest office can’t answer.