Power Struggles and Federalism

From the Articles of Confederation to the drafting of the Constitution, the idea of federalism--and ultimately if it could work--resurfaced often. In reviewing the significance of the Whiskey Rebellion, the precedence of using federal power was established. Another example that I provided demonstrating this same idea was with the Little Rock 9 and the integration of the Central High School in 1957 (please see the YouTube video above as a review). Ripped from the headlines and posted below is a more current example of a State vs. Federal power struggle. For extra credit, please find an example of your own and list it in the comments section. No repeats, please!

Chances of Race to the Top money slim
By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer - October 25, 2009

President Barack Obama’s administration is gearing up to award $4.3 billion to states for its school-reform program called Race to the Top, and it looks like Montana schools and students may not get a cent.

Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, is using the billions at his discretion to push states to adopt reforms he deems essential to turning around failing schools and giving American children a better chance to graduate and succeed in the new global economy.

“It’s obvious the system’s broken,” Duncan told Time magazine. “Let’s admit it’s broken ... and let’s do something dramatically different, and let’s do it now.”

One key reform idea in Race to the Top is tying teachers’ and principals’ evaluations to student performance. Applauded by reform supporters as essential, the idea is fiercely opposed by teachers’ unions and critics who argue it will drive schools to be even more test-obsessed than the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind.

Another key reform in Race to the Top is promoting charter schools, which are publicly funded, but have more autonomy than tradition public schools. Montana has no charter schools and is one of only 10 states without a law promoting charter schools.

States will have to compete for Race to the Top grants. Under tough rules proposed by Duncan this summer, Montana and many other states wouldn’t be eligible unless they’re on board with specific reforms -- like collecting data to track student achievement, accepting uniform high academic standards, improving teacher effectiveness and turning around the worst schools.

While several states are scrambling to change their laws to comply, Montana isn’t one of them. Instead, Montana wants to change the rules of the race.

Race to the Top raises the question of whether Montana is hidebound in resisting school reforms embraced by Washington and many states, or if Montana is wise to stick to its guns and resist the latest education fads that don’t deliver what Montana students really need.

Montana Superintendent of Schools Denise Juneau protested the Race to the Top’s “one-size-fits-all” approach in a July 28 letter to Duncan.

Virtually every major education leader in Montana -- representing school boards, school administrators, rural schools, the teachers’ union and higher education -- signed Juneau’s letter, urging Duncan to alter the rules to recognize the realities of a state so rural that in places it’s like the frontier.

“Requiring the opening of charter schools in very small communities does not make sense,” Juneau wrote. “Requiring the opening of charter schools in areas where students are performing well does not make sense.”

As evidence, Montana educators point to the 2009 NAEP tests in math, where Montana ranked fifth in the nation in fourth grade and third in the nation in eighth grade.

Juneau said in an interview she agrees with Duncan’s priorities -- hiring quality teachers, turning around struggling schools, using data to drive decisions -- but the Race to the Top proposal wouldn’t fit Montana’s Constitution and its local control of schools.

“I’m not sure we’ll apply” for the money, Juneau said. “Having (reform) prescribed in a very strict manner is very frustrating for me.”

Teachers’ union chief Eric Feaver, president of the MEA-MFT, which supported Obama’s election, was more blunt.

Feaver charged Race to the Top rules would be a “devastating and irrational continuation” of the last eight years of “misguided experiment in top-down reform.”

Unless proposed Race to the Top rules are changed, Feaver wrote, the union “will do everything in our power to insist that Montana does not apply for these funds.”

In Bozeman, School Superintendent Kirk Miller was also critical of Race to the Top. One reason is its emphasis on creating data warehouses for test scores n which have cost some states $100 million -- instead of spending the money on teaching children, Miller said.

“Student achievement for Montana is near the top in nearly every measure,” Miller said. “For Montana to spend a huge amount of money ‘weighing’ (student test scores) instead of advancing education would be a waste of money.”

Montana’s Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester signed a letter to Duncan, signed also by senators from Vermont, West Virginia, Nebraska and North and South Dakota, urging him to reconsider Race to the Top rules that penalize states without charter laws.

“All students deserve to benefit from these programs n not just those in states with charter schools,” the senators wrote.

The U.S. Education Department, which received more than 1,100 such public comments, is expected to issue the final version of Race to the Top rules this fall.

Bigger battle ahead

Montana’s chances of getting any Race to the Top money look slim to none.

The state ranked near the bottom of the heap in one analysis of each state’s chances of winning Race to the Top money, prepared by the nonprofit, pro-reform New Teacher Project.

Montana had lots of company, from California to Maine.

The controversy sparked by Race to the Top probably won’t end when the $4.3 billion is gone. As part of the federal economic stimulus program, it’s one-time money. But the debate over Race to the Top is likely a dress rehearsal for a future battle over school reform that will be even bigger.

Congress has put off rewriting the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known as No Child Left Behind, for the past couple of years.

When lawmakers finally tackle that task, the Obama administration’s education reform ideas will be front and center. That law will shape federal education policy and affect schools in Montana and around the nation for years to come.

“If we see the same trend carried out” in ESEA, Juneau said, “that’s really where we’ll run into a lot of problems.”

Juneau also disagreed with the Race to the Top idea of tying teacher and principal evaluations to how well students perform on the statewide standardized test.

“I don’t think teacher effectiveness should be measured by that one score,” Juneau said.

The teachers’ union doesn’t oppose using test scores in evaluations, Feaver said, but he argued that Montana’s collective bargaining law doesn’t allow that to be imposed from Helena. Instead, Feaver contended, it would have to be bargained into each teachers’ union contract, one school district at a time.

“Nothing prohibits Bozeman teachers from bargaining performance-based pay,” Feaver said. “Would they do it? I don’t think so.”

He asked how anyone can assume that the best teachers get the best student test scores, when children’s scores can suffer because of poverty, neglect or abuse at home.

“Some think test scores drive the engine forward,” Feaver said. “I believe test scores drive teaching to the test.”

Strange bedfellows

It’s hard to imagine Roger Koopman, an outspoken Bozeman conservative, and Democratic President Obama being on the same side of anything, yet both are advocates of charter schools.

Charters -- founded by parents, teachers and community groups -- have broad leeway to innovate and promote excellence, Obama said in an education speech in March.

"The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens," Obama said. “I call on states to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools.”

Koopman, as a state legislator, wrote a bill in 2005 to promote charter schools in Montana. It died on the House floor.

“Charter schools work,” Koopman said, “because they’re flexible, allow innovation, they’re more responsive to the community and demands of parents. They’re basically consumer driven.

“Montana is the killing fields of education reform,” Koopman said. “No state is more hostile to education reform.”

Juneau argued in her July letter that charter schools have been allowed by the state Board of Public Education since 1989. Yet under its rules, only local school boards can create charter schools, they must be approved by the state board and they aren’t free, as in other states, from many education regulations.

No one in Montana has applied to create a charter school in 20 years.

Juneau argued that’s because local school boards have enough flexibility without resorting to charters, and Montana is too rural and economically strapped to support the duplication of services a charter school brings.

Why create charter schools to compete with local schools, Juneau asked, when “we can barely fund the schools we’ve got now.”

Koopman said it’s “bogus” to claim Montana allows charter schools, when they’d have to meet all the same regulations as public schools and be OK’d by the state bureaucracy.

Charter schools are a mainstream idea in most of the country, Koopman said. President Bill Clinton supported them, too.

While Koopman agrees with the Obama administration on charters, he strongly opposes its use of Race to the Top money to force states to bend.

“I do not feel the federal government should be bribing the states or threatening to withhold public monies,” Koopman said. “Obama is trying to federalize public education. It’s very dangerous.”

It’s not hard to imagine that some Bozeman parents might like publicly funded charter schools, patterned after the popular Montessori schools, for example, or the science-technology magnet school that once thrived in Willson School.

Bozeman Superintendent Miller said there are already private schools for parents who want those options.

“Montana’s schools are out-performing charter schools in all those other states,” Miller said. “We don’t need charter schools in Montana. We need enough resources to make sure public schools can do (their job).”

Miller, who served on the Montana Board of Public Education for many years, said he’d be disappointed if Montana can’t apply for Race to the Top money. That, he said, would mean “handicapping rural states that are doing a good job.”

“I’m concerned we didn’t learn as much as we should have from No Child Left Behind,” Miller said. “Trying to put everybody in the same box doesn’t work very well.”