USA Today breaks down the tenets of Race to the Top grants.

Writer Greg Toppo gleans a consistent message from Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama on the reforms they want to see pursued by states, and in support of a solid reform plan the administration plans of handing out upwards of $4 billion in grants to ease the financial burden of making some drastic changes. Very simply, the administration wants:

•Tying teacher and principal pay – and school assignments – to student test scores.

•Adopting internationally benchmarked academic standards.

•Turning around their lowest-performing schools.

•Building long-term student tracking systems.

•Loosening legal caps on the number of charter schools that states allow each year.

The article quoted Rick Hess, an education policy analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, as agreeing that charter school expansion and merit pay programs are laudable. But he is concerned that in such a scramble to get dollars, states will patch together poor plans.

“We’re institutionalizing impatience,” he says. “There’s not much room for thoughtful conversation.”

I disagree. First, many states have tested, argued about, researched, studied these types of reform. They’ve been a part of the education conversation for a long time, and they are mature. But states needed, among other things, a way to overcome inertia and status-quo-itis, which is the opportunity offered by Race to the Top.

Second, the reforms outlined are goals. States can, and perhaps should, begin by assessing what they can reasonably accomplish, and then set goals and guidelines that, like Duncan and Obama’s guidelines, offer a goal and a timeline, but leave flexibility about how to reach that.

Even a pilot reform program that was poorly constructed would be better than none at all: it would provide a place to start from, and a list of pitfalls to avoid in the future. But if we wait until we can produce the most elegant education reforms with absolute consensus, wrapped with a bow, we will have failed another year, or two, or three classes of children. We have had a chronic problem of inaction. Missouri, if we act, will probably not do everything perfectly. But we will practice, and improve and reach our goals faster if we begin today.