Crafting an Education Reform Agenda Through Economic Stimulus Policy

Abstract

The economic stimulus enacted during President Obama's initial weeks included a down payment on his ambitious education reform agenda. By combining short-term policy with reform, the strategy gained his administration three advantages: a discretionary funding source with little Congressional scrutiny; flexibility in pursuing education reform goals without crowding out other policies on his agenda; and the ability to shape the national reform discussion for more than a year, without being constrained by negotiations over a specific piece of legislation. This article details the strategy and discusses whether the Obama administration's political dexterity can be matched by skill in fashioning institutional arrangements to ensure the long-term sustainability of these reforms.

Notes

The National Bureau of Economic Research (2010) defined a recession as a “significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.”

The following capsule history is based on a close reading of the annual Economic Report of the President and media coverage in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (cf. Romer & Romer, 2002; Weatherford, 2009).

The vote in the House was 246 to 183, with seven Democrats joining all the Republicans in opposition; the Senate passed the bill 60 to 38, with all the Democrats, plus three Republicans and two Independents voting in favor.

Although Race to the Top was not a focus of public debate, Alter (2010) reported that there were disagreements and negotiations behind the scenes between the administration and Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, on one side and David Obey (D-WI), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and his senate colleague, Tom Harkin, on the other. Miller wanted to offer states what he called “applesauce”—additional funds “to resist entrenched interests and swallow some reform” (p. 91). Obey wanted to allocate as much of the stimulus funds as possible through existing state aid formulas. Consequently, he resisted the idea of competitive grants and was skeptical that major reforms could be accomplished through this strategy. Secretary of Education Duncan had originally proposed $15 billion of the $100 billion education stimulus be reserved for what would become Race to the Top. After Obey and Harkin tried to kill this portion of the stimulus completely, they compromised with Miller on $5 billion.

The 11 states are Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.

The extent of this disagreement was evidenced in the activities of the political action committee, Democrats for Education Reform, based in New York City. It raised approximately $2 million in the 2008 campaign and was vocal in its support of charter schools and differential pay for teachers. Although Democrats for Education Reform's fund-raising capacity does not match that of the NEA, which, along with its state and local affiliates, raised at least $40 million for Democratic candidates, it was active at the Democratic national convention and during the transition in advancing a reform agenda often opposed by traditional Democratic constituencies (Klein, 2008).

Included in this network is the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has funded Teach For America, The New Teacher Project, and New Leaders for New Schools—nonprofits designed to recruit and train educators through alternatives to the traditional university-based schools of education. Another prominent player in the network is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a variety of education reform initiatives, including efforts to redesign high schools and to change how teachers are evaluated. It was also one of the funders supporting the development of common state standards, and it provided $250,000 each to states applying for Race to the Top grants if they agreed to abide by eight conditions, including the adoption of standards common across multiple states and the linking of student data to teachers.

In the final rules for the Race to the Top program, the administration introduced greater flexibility—for example, although still emphasizing charter schools, it invited states to describe innovative public schools other than charter schools operating in their districts. Nevertheless, the point system for evaluating applications continued to encourage the use of student test scores as one element in teacher evaluations, and the implementation of turnaround models that required dismissing the staff in failing schools (USDOE, 2009).

Several commentators have argued that because both unions supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama owed them little (Alter, 2010; Colvin, 2009).

Recent examples include the defeat of Adrian Fenty in the Washington, DC, mayoral election at least partly because of his support of schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, and the defeat by union-backed candidates of three New York state senate candidates who strongly support charter schools.