Will MA forfeit education stimulus dollars?

EdNews.org passes on this AP report on US Ed Secretary Arne Duncan’s threat to stonewallers on charter schools.

As part of the federal stimulus package, there is a $5 billion fund to promote innovations, and President Obama is a clear proponent of charters. So what if a state does not promote charters, has caps, makes excuses, and all the rest? Ah, so glad that you ask a question pertinent to our dear Bay State.

States will hurt their chance to compete for millions of federal stimulus dollars if they fail to embrace innovations like charter schools, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday.

Duncan was responding to a question about Tennessee, where Democratic state lawmakers have blocked an effort to let more kids into charter schools.

“States like that would not be helping their chances, I can say that,” Duncan told The Associated Press during a visit to a high school in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va.

Duncan went on to say that

“We want to reward those states that are willing to lead the country where we need to go and are willing to push this reform agenda very, very hard… There are a number of states that are leading this effort, and we want to invest a huge amount of money into them, a minimum of $100 million, probably north of that…”

Read his lips:

“And the states that don’t have the stomach or the political will, unfortunately, they’re going to lose out,” Duncan said.

He was speaking Tennessee where the charter cap is restrictive. It’s at 50. Our Commonwealth Charter cap is at 72. No, my friends, the Readiness School proposal, which seems to be bent on, as a friend put it,

leaving student choice, principal’s choice of teachers, and the evaluation measures up for “negotiation” with local school committees (who all have the union looking over their shoulders)

won’t do.