Reformers Must Focus on Statehouses
By Rishawn Biddle
January 12, 2015
Dropout Nation
Today’s speech by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, along with the entire circus over the latest efforts to pass a new version of the federal education law, have certainly garnered plenty of attention from Beltway school reformers and other policy wonks. But as your editor has noted over the past few months, the chances of a No Child reauthorization becoming reality are as likely as they were two years ago. That is, none at all. After all, Duncan and the Obama Administration have issued calls for reauthorizing No Child at various points over the past six years, as have Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. Yet as Duncan’s speech shows, the president will not sign any reauthorization that doesn’t preserve his legacy on education policy, a demand by which congressional Republicans won’t abide. So the latest hub-bub will be as meaningless as all the sound and fury signifying nothing that has happened over the past eight years.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t some positive things coming out of all the otherwise-useless action. Education Trust and a cadre of civil rights groups (including the United Negro College Fund and NAACP) deserve praise for issuing a statement today calling for a reauthorization of No Child that effectively keeps in place the Adequate Yearly Progress provisions that have shined light on the consequences of the nation’s education crisis on children from poor and minority households. Given the collapse of the Campaign for High School Equity (which once served as the convening body for civil rights-based reformers) and the efforts by the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers to co-opt such groups by peddling a version of accountability that lets states, school operators, and adults off the hook for failure, Ed Trust deserves praise for rallying so many civil rights players to stand up for our most-vulnerable children.
But if reformers are looking to actually advance systemic reform, they need to spend less time in the Beltway and more in the nation’s statehouses, where much of the action on education will play out. Especially with a cadre of new governors and legislators taking office, along with issues that intersect with education such as criminal justice reform on the agenda, reformers should use the time now to pass meaningful legislation that will help all of our children.
There are plenty of reasons for focusing on the states beyond the stalemate inside the Beltway that has been the norm for the past four years and will remain so for the time-being. One lies with the Obama Administration’s No Child waiver gambit, which has allowed 40 states and the District of Columbia to ignore No Child’s accountability provision. As Dropout Nation has reported ad nauseam over the past four years, the administration has engaged in an exercise of shoddy policymaking that has damaged systemic reform by encouraging traditionalists in states such as Texas and California to weaken and ditch accountability altogether. Just as importantly, the waiver gambit reaffirms the role of states in structuring education without holding them accountable for how they spend federal dollars (or for providing them with high-quality teaching, curricula, and school options); this includes the administration’s move through the waiver process to bless implementation of Plessy v. Ferguson-like proficiency targets that allow districts and other school operators to effectively ignore poor and minority students.
For the few states that haven’t been granted a No Child waiver, there’s the matter that the federal law itself. Contrary to arguments offered up by traditionalists and conservative reformers looking to ditch No Child, the law did little to expand the federal role, and actually confirmed the role of states as the controlling entities of public education within their respective boundaries. States may be required to improve graduation rates and test scores — including the aspirational goal that all students are proficient in reading, math and science by 2014 — but they are given plenty of leeway in developing their own solutions in order to achieve them. Because of this flexibility, which states have figured out how to game since No Child signed 13 years ago, reformers in states still under its provisions must work as hard as in waiver states to advance systemic reform.
Certainly No Child and the waivers are two reasons why reformers must focus on states. But not the only ones. There’s the battle over implementing Common Core reading and math standards will continue apace, especially in states where Republican-controlled legislatures are under pressure to halt that work from movement conservatives opposed to them. Certainly reformers who back the standards are heartened by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s latest flip-flop from demanding the halt of implementation to giving districts a choice on continuing the work (which they will all likely do). But with Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a once-strong backer of Common Core, already calling for a review of them, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal continuing his presidential ambition-motivated effort to stop implementation, reformers must work hard to keep them on the books.
Another fight will be over expanding school choice. In Massachusetts, a years-long battle over eliminating a cap on expanding public charter schools will become even more heated thanks to incoming Gov. Charlie Baker, who has signaled that he will support reformers on this issue through his appointment of former New Schools Venture Fund boss-turned-federal education official Jim Peyser as the state’s new superintendent. In Maryland, the small cadre of reformers there (including the Old Line State branch of 50 CAN and the Center for Education Reform) are looking to rewrite the state’s charter school law, which favors districts at children’s expense. And in Connecticut, Parent Power activists are looking to revise the state’s Parent Trigger law, building upon the petition model that has worked well in California.
But the battles extend beyond education. The uproar over the murders of black men such as Michael Brown and Eric Garner by police officers are leading criminal justice reform advocates to push legislatures and governors to enact new policies, including the creation of independent prosecutors for cases involving cops as well as the rewrite of use-of-force laws that allow rogue cops to get off scot-free. Concerns over the virtual insolvencies of public defined-benefit pensions are spurring pension reform activists to action; this will include efforts to pass laws that will move teachers and other civil servants into hybrid plans that feature aspects of defined-contribution plans along with a defined-benefit component with a guaranteed savings rate. On these and other issues, reformers can easily team up with advocates on those issues to address the matters that affect our children inside and outside of schools.Then there are other battles. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, emboldened by winning a second term without backing from the AFT’s Empire State affiliate, will likely team up with Republicans in control of the state senate to push to improve an array of reform measures, including a further revamp of the teacher evaluation system. There’s also Indiana, where the two-year-long battle between reformers on the state’s board of education and Supt. Glenda Ritz will likely come to a head with efforts in the state legislature to make the latter’s job a gubernatorial appointment as well as Gov. Mike Pence’s plan to clarify state law by allowing the body to appoint its own chair instead of having Ritz at its helm. [Modifying and restructuring governance of state education systems will likely be on the agenda in other states as well.] And back in the Bay State, advocates for ending the overuse of harsh school discipline will likely leverage a report released last week by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice to push legislators to go their way.
These fights matter because states are the battlegrounds from which reform efforts, especially at the federal level, are ultimately won or lost. Starting with 1960s, when NEA and AFT affiliates successfully convinced states to pass state laws forcing districts to bargain with them, states began reaffirming their constitutionally-mandated role overseeing and structuring public education. This continued into the 1970s, when school funding lawsuits and property tax reforms such as California’s Prop. 13, forced states to become the single-biggest source of funding for public school systems. By the end of that decade, southern governors and chambers of commerce successfully launched a wave of curricula standards, standardized testing regimes, and teacher quality efforts that would be at the heart of the school reform movement of today.
The policy wins in one statehouse end up being reflected in other statehouses. Why. Contrary to the longstanding argument by some that states are laboratories of democracy in which innovation is the norm, legislators and governors often duplicate efforts undertaken by counterparts elsewhere. This is because states differ little when it comes to the challenges they face on education and other issues. It is one reason why the American Legislative Exchange Council (with its success in developing model legislation passed in statehouses) has emerged as a leading policymaking force on the national level — and why progressives are trying to duplicate those efforts through the State Innovation Exchange. It is also why NEA and AFT affiliates, which have long-understood the importance of working statehouses, are stepping up their efforts on that level to preserve their influence.
Particularly when it comes to education, policy initiatives end up becoming embedded in federal law. This is because the federal government ultimately amplifies education policy decisions made at the state level, especially by those reform-minded governors and legislators (along with reformers) who also seek help from the federal level to beat back opposition to their efforts by entrenched traditionalist interests. If not for the reform efforts of governors at the end of the 1970s, there would be no A Nation at Risk. If not for moves by Florida and Texas during the 1990s, No Child wouldn’t have even become reality.
This is even clear now in discussions over revamping No Child; proposals by congressional Republicans to voucherize Title 1 funding originate from the passage of school voucher initiatives in states such as Indiana and Louisiana, while the Obama Administration’s initiative on reducing the overuse of harsh school discipline result in part from efforts by activists in states such as Maryland. When reformers succeed on the state level, they can then advance policy changes on the federal level that can, in turn, bolster existing efforts as well as move states bereft of strong reform constituencies.
Simply put, reformers must focus less on the bluster surrounding No Child reauthorization and more on what will (or won’t) be passed during state legislative sessions this year.
This starts with building stronger ties to chambers of commerce and other institutional groups who are as concerned as reformers about the consequences of the education crisis. It also takes embracing a bipartisan approach that accepts the reality that battles over reform have far less to do with political ideologies than with the power relationships that often exist at the state level. This includes building stronger ties with advocates on other issues that affect education; this includes criminal justice activists, who can help address overuse of out-of-school suspensions that (along with low-quality teaching and curricula) make schools way-stations into prisons for so children from poor and minority households. It involves long-term cultivation of grassroots support critical to making passage and implementation of reforms a reality. This must also include continually making the case to governors and legislators on why advancing reform matters — and holding them accountable when they go the wrong way. Finally, it means developing model legislation that reform-minded legislators and governors can build upon in their own policymaking work.
Sure, some attention should be paid to a No Child reauthorization that won’t likely happen. But a greater focus on statehouses will actually do more on the policy front for our children.
