As a presidential aspirant last year, Barack Obama gained the
support of the National Education Association — and the scorn of
school choice activists — when he declared his skepticism of the
school choice and accountability measures in the No Child Left
Behind Act. Then in the early months of this year, the
newly-elected president further pleased teachers unions when he
tacitly allowed congressional Democrats to shutter the D.C.
Opportunity Scholarship Plan, the school voucher program that
helps 1,716 Washington students attend private schools — even
though he avoided sending his own children to D.C.’s abysmal
public schools.
Declared
Cato Institute Director Andrew Coulson this past May in the
Washington Post: “[Obama] has sacrificed a program he
knows to be efficient and successful in order to appease the
public school employee unions.”
But these days, it’s been the NEA and the American Federation of
Teachers that have been spitting mad, while school choice
supporters have reasons to smile. Why? Because Obama and his
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, are using federal stimulus
funds and their respective bully pulpits to force states into
spurring the growth of public charter schools, the
government-funded-yet-privately-operated schools that are the
nation’s most prominent and successful version of choice. And
proving the adage that money talks, cash-hungry states are
scaling back or eliminating restrictions on the growth of charter
schools in order to qualify for the money.
Teachers unions, who expected more from Obama, feel betrayed.
Complains AFT President Randi Weingarten: “It looks like the only
strategies they have are charter schools… That’s Bush III.”
It is just another sign that teachers unions can no longer count
on Democrats for unquestioned support. Advancing high-quality
alternatives to woeful traditional public schools has become as
important to the big-city mayors and civil rights groups as it is
to fundamentalist Christian families and single urban mothers.
And though many Republicans and conservative elements of the
school reform movement may decry the tactics as either federal
overreach gone amuck or support for a concept inferior to
vouchers, Obama and Duncan may actually achieve the school choice
they have unsuccessfully sought for so long.
The expansion of charter schools comes courtesy of a series of
legislative afterthoughts in the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act. Better known in school policy circles as Race
to the Top, the sections set aside $4 billion in federal stimulus
funding (along with another $6 billion in this year’s federal
budget) to support state initiatives aimed at improving student
achievement.
Using the wide sway given to him under the law — and befitting
the school reform reputation he gained during his seven years
overseeing Chicago’s public schools — Duncan has issued
guidelines that restricts Race to the Top funding to states that
have aggressively implemented strict accountability measures,
enacted measures to turn around (or shut down) failing schools
and allow student test scores to be used in evaluating teacher
performance. Twenty-one states, in particular, wouldn’t be able
to get Race to the Top funds until they abolish restrictions on
the number of charter schools to operate and finance the schools
at the same levels provided to traditional public schools.
With tax collections declining by as much as $28 billion during
the first three months of this year — and a lack of fiscal
discipline all around — Race to the Top is spurring state
legislatures to turn their backs on teachers unions. Within the
past four months, the unions and their traditional public school
allies in eight states — including Tennessee, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, Louisiana and Illinois — have lost battles to keep
charter school limits in place or restrict funding. Legislatures
in other states, including California and New York, are leaning
towards ending their caps.
Even in Massachusetts, where Democrats control all three branches
of government, teachers unions can’t get a break. The lure of
Race to the Top funds has convinced Gov. Deval Patrick — who
opposed lifting that state’s moratorium on new charters — to
reverse course and press the legislature to lift the state’
120-school cap on charters. Predictably, the state’s teachers
union and school districts have accused charters of “dictating
state policy.”
Charter school supporters can count on Obama and Duncan for
support. Both have barnstormed the nation on behalf of charter
school expansion, intoning that the status quo was no longer
acceptable. Duncan, in particular, has told states that the
Department of Education will come down on states “like a ton of
bricks” if they don’t fully fund charter school expansion. In
Indiana, where a moratorium on charter schools was lifted just a
few years ago, Duncan’s statements helped state Superintendent
Tony Bennett and Gov. Mitch Daniels fight off a new round of
proposed limits. “Race to the Top was very important in the
discussions,” says Derek Redelman, a vice president with the
Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
This has teachers unions echoing the complaints of federal
overreach once exclusively made by conservatives. Wrote the NEA’s
education policy czar, Kay Brilliant, in a letter to Duncan: “The
Administration has chosen the path of a series of top-down
directives that may discourage rather than encourage productive
innovation in classrooms and schools.”
The effort to expand charter schools shouldn’t be surprising to
either teachers unions or to anyone else. Several times during
his successful presidential bid, Obama championed the addition of
new charters, even in front of NEA-supportive audiences. During
his years in Chicago, Duncan (along with predecessor Paul Vallas)
authorized more than 92 schools as part of Mayor Richard Daley’s
Renaissance 2010 initiative.
But Obama and Duncan couldn’t pursue this so forcefully if not
for the school reform elements within the Democratic Party, whose
leadership positions, innovative policy proposals and support
from organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation have emerged as the main
counterweights to NEA and AFT influence.
The frustrations of Southern Democrat governors and big city
mayors with the low quality of traditional public schools helped
foster the charter school movement two decades ago. Bolstering
this support is a younger generation of Democrats not versed in
the language of union solidarity and appeals to urban renewal.
Their dismay over the tolerance of incompetence within public
school districts, along with the passage of No Child in 2001, has
galvanized their support for choice. In fact, they have been the
driving forces behind the Knowledge is Power Program and Green
Dot Schools, the nation’s most-prominent charter school
operations.
Obama and Duncan can also count on the support of urban and some
suburban parents, who willingly eschew traditional public schools
for any other alternative. The number of students attending
charter schools has increased by a five-fold, from 252,000 in
1998 to 1.2 million students in 2006, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau. Further exemplifying the demand: More than 300,000
students are waiting to attend charter schools.
For many conservative and libertarians in the school choice
movement, Obama’s effort to expand charter schools is no
substitute for vouchers. The presence of the federal government
in dictating state decision-making further assaults their senses.
Cato’s Neil McCluskey complains that Race to the Top is “this is
just another escalation of politicized, destructive, federal
education interference.” Mike Petrilli, a former Education
Department official and now vice president of the Thomas B.
Fordham Institute, calls the entire package “Washington Knows
Best at its worst.”
Yet Race to the Top is no different than previous efforts by
presidents to use federal funds to change state behavior,
including raising the drinking age from 18 to 21, and No Child
itself. More importantly, if federal money is to be spent on
state priorities, then Washington must set the rules for how the
money is to be spent. As Robert F. Kennedy prophesized in 1965
during the debate over the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
— and as borne over the five decades after its passage — states
will waste money if the federal government doesn’t hold them
accountable.
In light of the abysmal graduation rates in the nation’s high
schools, expanding choice by any means necessary may not be such
a bad thing.
