Even with such big names as Hillary Clinton in President Barack
Obama’s cabinet, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has become
the administration’s biggest attraction. From appearing with singer
John Legend to bring more black college students into teaching, to
reliving his Australia basketball league days shooting hoops with
Justin Bieber and other celebs at last month’s NBA All-Star Weekend
(and getting a shout-out
from LeBron James to boot), Duncan has helped make school reform as
major a topic of discussion in pop culture as it is in the hallways
of Beltway think tanks.
Duncan has been the most
successful of Obama’s appointees. Thanks to his efforts, Obama’s
bully pulpit and the $4.3 billion Race
to the Top initiative, Duncan has even found a way to get
states such as California and New York to expand charter schools
and bring some form of private-sector style performance management
to the teaching profession. At the same time, he has managed to
keep at bay (and occasionally, nudge into his corner) defenders of
traditional public education such as the National Education
Association and the American Federation of Teachers, with spending
sprees such as the $10 billion Edujobs bailout
package.
But like much of the Obama
administration these days, Duncan faces a struggle in advancing his
agenda. With the president looking to win re-election, and the need
to satisfy the school reformers and teachers unions within the
Democratic Party, Duncan isn’t getting any help in making his plans
a reality.
His effort last month in Denver
to showcase the idea that reform-minded school districts and
teachers unions can work together was hobbled when New York City
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the D.C. Public Schools — each of
which is fiercely battling AFT locals — pulled
out of the event; not even officials from Duncan’s former
employer, Chicago’s public school system, showed up. The event’s
message went to dust once NEA’s Wisconsin affiliate teamed up with
other public-sector unions to battle Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts
against collective bargaining and forced collection of union
dues.
Duncan and Obama are now in the
uncomfortable position of having to publicly oppose the weakening
of teachers’ union influence even as the administration’s own
reform agenda calls for exactly that. Declared Duncan this week in
an interview:
“You had a union that had been historically more intransigent, but
was moving. You don’t want to hit them with a
hammer.”
The administration’s signature
program, Race to the Top, sits on life support as the
administration and congressional Republicans spar with each other
over continuing resolutions and the 2011-2012 budget. A proposal to
spend an additional $900 million on Race to the Top was essentially
declared dead on arrival by House Education and the Workforce
Committee Chairman John Kline. The stopgap measure Obama signed
into law this week cuts out $18 million in subsidies to Teach For
America, the alternative teacher training program whose alumni
include former D.C. Public Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and the
founders of the KIPP chain of charter schools.
Meanwhile Duncan hopes to
finally end the four-year-long stalemate over reauthorizing the No
Child Left Behind Act, the federal education policy law whose
accountability provisions have been the bane of teachers unions and
suburban districts. But it will be a struggle for the
administration to win support for its version of the law from
congressional Republicans and Democrats alike. The NEA and AFT,
which want the entire law gutted, have no plans to make it easy for
Duncan to get the law reauthorized; his own allies in the school
reform movement — who want to hold more schools accountable for
student academic performance — are also displeased with what the
administration is proposing on paper.
Certainly Duncan could end up
getting most of what Obama wants. In this week’s
interview he argued that there is plenty of
bipartisan support for many of the elements in the administration’s
proposed reauthorization of No Child. He also declared that the NEA and AFT can’t preserve the
traditional system of defined-benefit pensions and seniority-based
privileges that has made teaching the most lucrative profession in
the public sector; the nation’s education crisis, along with
pressure from younger teachers less interested in tenure and
annuities, is forcing the unions to slowly change their ways.
Declares Duncan: “The countervailing pressure [against
returning to the past] is that we need to get better results
educationally.”
But Duncan and Obama are facing the reality that
short-term budget shortfalls — along with the $1.4 billion in
defined-benefit pension deficits and unfunded retiree teacher
healthcare benefits — are forcing the kind of confrontations that
no longer allow for accommodation and compromise. The dotcom and
housing booms of the past two decades allowed earlier generations
of reformers (including Duncan) to pursue reforms and still dole
out hefty pay raises to teachers. Edujobs and the federal stimulus
also allowed states to avoid making many hard decisions. No longer.
While
abolishing collective bargaining will only slightly weaken NEA
and AFT influence, it is to many the next logical step in
overhauling how schools spend money and educate
children.
The fact is that Duncan, Obama,
and their fellow Democrat school reformers are partly responsible
for fostering the conditions that have led to efforts by Walker and
others to abolish collective bargaining. After all, it was big-city
mayors, young professionals and urban families frustrated by
dropout factories and the tolerance of incompetent teachers, who
began openly challenging the NEA and AFT in the 1990s, first by
starting alternative teacher training programs such as Teach For
America, and then starting the first wave of charter schools and
voucher programs. By 2002, mayors such as New York’s Bloomberg and
outgoing Chicago Mayor Richard Daley stepped up the pressure on
unions by taking over traditional school districts and battling
them at the bargaining table and inside
statehouses.
Duncan’s own Race to the Top
effort has amped up the conflict by spurring states to pass laws
requiring the use of student
test score data in evaluating teacher performance. Colorado,
for example, went even further with a law which would end a veteran
teacher’s tenure (or lifetime employment status) if they performed
poorly for two consecutive years. Race to the Top’s impact
continues as governors such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie push
their own efforts
to subject teachers to private sector-style performance management.
It has also forced teachers union leaders such as AFT President
Randi Weingarten offer
half-measures in order to keep some part of the status quo in
place.
As for No Child? Forget about
it. While Senate Democrats are ready to draft a new version by
Easter, nothing will be happening in the House for a while. The
addition of 12 new Republicans to the House Education and the
Workforce Committee means a lot of members getting up to speed on
the law; the fact that many of them are more concerned about
overturning Obama’s healthcare reform plan and cutting budgets also
puts No Child on the backburner.
Even if those obstacles were out
of the way, little in the way of progress would happen. Kline’s own
plans to gut No Child face opposition from Republican governors
(who used the law to advance their own reform measures) and likely,
even from House Speaker John Boehner (who helped pass the law a
decade ago). Divisions among Democrats also complicate matters. The
likely impetus for any moves on No Child come from a rule that
requires that districts must have all kids up to speed on reading
and math by 2014 or face sanctions. But like the goal itself, the
rule may never actually become reality.
Chances are Duncan would be
better off quietly cheerleading what is happening in Wisconsin,
Ohio, and elsewhere, and then taking credit for it. In short, pick
a side in the latest round of the battle over reforming America’s
schools and stick with it. It may even win Obama some Republican
votes.
