Arne Duncan was at the National Press Club (and on C-SPAN ) this morning, being his usual amiable, cheerful, and optimistic self. As someone who's been called those names too, I've got nothing against any of that. But to my ears he also sounded a bit naive when it??came to his expectations that the education stimulus will transform the nation's schools.
He's obviously perplexed that so few states have applied for the stimulus dollars, though he insists that all states will meet the coming deadline. Yet if he thinks that concerns about educational improvement are driving this process, well, I've got several million??Smartboards I'd be happy to sell you.
Here's the problem: There remains massive confusion at the state and local level about how these dollars can be spent. That's because the law itself is vague and in some respects contradictory. It's also because many politicians at the state level??want to??use the funds for politically expedient (but still understandable) purposes, like filling budget holes. With legislative sessions just wrapping up, there's still a lot of horse-trading and commotion going on.
But there's something more fundamental at play too. Simply put, the bureaucrats who are on the hook for implementing all of this don't trust Arne and Company when they insist that the law provides all manner of flexibility. Administration officials might insist, for example, that districts can use the "Impact Aid" provision to spend the dollars on virtually anything they want, but the state and local program officers who manage grants for a living are wary, burned from past experience.
Call this Reading First's Revenge. As you may recall, Bush Administration officials pushed hard to ensure that Reading First funds went only to reading programs that work. (I know, how strange.) Along the way they made a series of interpretations of the law, reading into it the Congressional intent to worry about quality, and not just bureaucratic process. But lo and behold, along came the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which, in its infinite wisdom, ignored Congressional intent and went on a witch hunt to punish people for violations of procedure.
The lesson got through. I hear that in the U.S. Department of Education, whenever an Obama official suggests pushing the envelope, some career civil servant says, "Remember Reading First." Likewise, at the state and local levels, when bureaucrats are encouraged to take risks and interpret grey areas aggressively, they too "remember Reading First."
Arne Duncan surely thinks that he's in charge of implementing the education stimulus and holding states and districts accountable for what happens. Sadly, he's wrong. The OIG has the power in this game, and folks at the federal, state, and local levels know it. There is an environment of fear, and in that environment few people will take risks and push envelopes. Which means we'll see most of the money spent slowly, and in very conventional ways.
There is one bit of irony in all of this. The fastest, most effective way for states and local districts to spend their stimulus dollars is probably to use them to continue their Reading First programs. (Remember, Congress eliminated funding for that highly successful and popular initiative--in its infinite wisdom.) They could continue to support its high-quality professional development programs, instructional materials, reading coaches, etc.
So the only way out of Reading First's Revenge might be...Reading First itself.
