Late last Friday, when it would attract little or no news coverage, the National Education Association offered its detailed feedback on Arne Duncan's "Race to the Top" plans. 26 pages worth.
Strictly speaking, these are comments on proposed federal regulations that will guide the Education Department in disbursing these billions, including funding priorities, rules for eligible applicants, etc. This is the mechanism by which the Obama team is striving--against considerable Congressional and school-establishment opposition--to turn the education portion of the "stimulus" dollars into a driver of reform rather than simply a back-filling budget subsidy for strapped states and districts.
Duncan has been clear from the outset about his priorities. Here is how he stated them in late July when the guidelines were published:
States seeking funds will be pressed to implement four core, interconnected reforms. We sometimes call them the four assurances, and those assurances are what we are going to be looking for from states, districts, and their local partners in reform. For starters, we expect that winners of the Race to the Top grants will work to reverse the pervasive dumbing down of academic standards and assessments that has taken place in many states....That's why we are looking for Race to the Top states to adopt common, internationally-benchmarked K-12 standards that truly prepare students for college and careers. To speed this process, the Race to the Top program is going to set aside $350 million to competitively fund the development of rigorous, common state assessments.
Second, we want to close the data gap that now handcuffs districts from tracking growth in student learning and improving classroom instruction. Award-winning states will be able to monitor growth in student learning-and identify effective instructional practices.
Third,...to boost the quality of teachers and principals, especially in high-poverty schools and hard-to-staff subjects, states and districts should be able to identify effective teachers and principals. At the local level we want to see better strategies in place to reward and retain more top-notch teachers-and improve or replace ones who aren't up to the job.
And finally, to turn around the lowest-performing schools, states and districts must be ready to institute far-reaching reforms, replace school staff, and change the school culture. We cannot continue to tinker in terrible schools where students fall further and further behind, year after year.
Now those are our four assurances, the four core reforms that we are looking for.
It's straightforward enough and--both because Duncan has been talking this way for half a year and because these reforms have been on many other minds and lips for even longer--none too surprising. Neither is the fine print, which includes linking student test-score data to teachers, compensating them according to pupil performance, offering more "alternative certification" paths into classrooms, encouraging the growth of charter schools, and more.
But the N.E.A. hates it. Almost all of it. The director of the union's "education policy and practice" department, the wonderfully named Kay Brilliant, faults just about every item on the Duncan list and insists that these billions be expended instead on-well, on more of the same: more math coaches, more training, more incentives, more professional development. Their list is even more predictable than Duncan's.
Do Ms. Brilliant and Mr. Duncan really belong to the same party? Did they really vote for the same president? Do the U.S. Department of Education and the National Education Association inhabit the same cosmos?
And what is going to happen when the rhetorical sparring is replaced by serious political infighting? When the N.E.A. musters its state and national troops to foil Duncan's distribution of the Race to the Top dollars? To stymie state and local legislative, policy and contractual changes needed to comply with his criteria? To punish the union's enemies and reward its friends? What happens when key swing states, pressured by their education establishments not to toe the Duncan line, are told they don't qualify for "their share" of these monies? Will the White House still back Duncan or will the funds quietly get distributed according to political wheels that squeak rather than education reforms with merit?
True, Duncan is pushing very, very hard. My colleague Mike Petrilli has termed "Race to the Top" the "carrot that looks like a stick." Ms. Brilliant is not wrong to grump that the Secretary is being very prescriptive about the means as well as the ends of education reform.
In the dark of night, the country's most powerful education organization has fired a big grumpy shell across the bow of the country's earnest and determined education secretary. This battle is joined.
