Last July, your editor argued for school choice activists and other reformers to take a page out of the playbook of funding and equity activists and embrace legal action to advance overhauls at the state and district levels. Since then, Parent Power activists such as those in the Los Angeles Unified School District organized by Alice Callaghan (with backing from the school reform group EdVoice) , and the Connecticut Parents Union have launched their own tort actions to force districts and states to use objective student performance data in teacher evaluations and end Zip Code education policies that criminalize the actions of families such as that of Marie Menard who want to keep their kids out of failure mills.

But school reformers in other circles have largely shied away from this tactic. Until now. On Tuesday, a coalition of groups that include Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, Democrats for Education Reform, Parent Power group Parent Revolution, and families throughout the California, backed a suit filed in state superior court on behalf of eight teenagers against the Golden State and L.A. Unified, demanding an end to one of the most-pernicious policies defended by the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and other traditionalists: Reverse-seniority (also known as Last In-First Out or Last Hired-First Fired) layoff rules that force districts to sack young teachers — including those who are successful in improving student achievement among poor and minority kids — in order to keep  veteran instructors (especially laggards who don’t deserve to be in classrooms) on the job. Declaring that “outdated laws” are “preventing school administrators from… improving the quality of our public educational system by denying them the flexibility to make teacher employment decisions driven by the needs of their students”, the Students Matter coalition is demanding that Golden State officials ditch LIFO rules and allow districts to make layoff decisions based on how teachers perform in the classroom.

The lawsuit goes even further by demanding that the state end its traditional system of granting tenure under which newly-hired teachers can gain near-lifetime employment in just two years. Near-lifetime employment privileges is a terrible idea in any case, but even worse so in California because it takes four years to fully determine whether a newly-minted instructor has the chops to stay on the job; given that a teacher is unlikely to be better at improving student achievement after 25 years than after four, at least 640 children over a period of four decades (based on federal data on student-teacher ratios) may be subject to educational malpractice from a low-quality teacher. And given that it can take a district as long as seven years (and $2 million) to unsuccessfully attempt to fire a teacher through California’s 10-step process, it often means that few incompetent teachers — and few criminally abusive instructors such as recently-indicted L.A. Unified teacher Mark Berndt (who was paid $40,000 in exchange for dropping his effort to keep his job despite widespread evidence of alleged sexual abuse of children) — are ever tossed to the curb.

Meanwhile the lawsuit hits upon the impact of traditional teacher compensation and performance management within the Golden State (and throughout the nation as a whole) on the quality of education children — especially those from poor and minority households — receive. Given that the quality of teaching likely accounts for half (and likely, more than 50 percent) of the impact of schools on student achievement over time, near-lifetime employment rules, reverse-seniority laws, and desultory teacher dismissal policies conspire to put kids on the path to poverty and prison. This is especially so for poor and minority children, who then must deal with the consequences of Zip Code Education policies such as zoned schooling and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools and other forms of choice. And in turn, the Students Matter lawyers declare that these policies violate the California state constitution’s equal protection and public education clauses. Declares the brief: “Those statutes thus make the quality of education provided to school-age children in California a function of race and/or the wealth of a child’s parents and neighbors”.

The Students Matter suit comes on the heels of the Callaghan suit as well as the scandal enveloping L.A. Unified emerging from the arrest and indictment of Berndt, a laggard rated among the lowest-performing teachers at the school district’s Miramonte Elementary School, who now faces 23 charges of abuse of children; Berndt had fought an attempt by L.A. Unified to dismiss him after the district learned last year that he was being investigated for lewd conduct against children. The scandal led to an effort in March and April by reformers and L.A. Unified to pass a new law that would allow for those facing criminal charges that was successfully fought back by the NEA’s and AFT’s California affiliates. The lawsuit also exposes the deliberate efforts by the state’s governor, Jerry Brown, and State Supt. Tom Torlakson, to do the bidding of traditionalists that backed their election campaigns two years ago and role back the array of reforms successfully pushed by their predecessors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack O’Connell, with the help of former legislative powerhouse (and now DFER California honcho) Gloria Romero. Since taking office, Brown has all but abandoned reform efforts, including putting the kibosh on the development of CALTIDES, the longitudinal teacher data system, and effectively ended the effort to tie student performance data to teacher evaluations. Torlakson has basically become a hero of education traditionalists everywhere for defending the practices they back so wholeheartedly.

If the suit succeeds, one can expect California’s state legislature to end up taking up the very reforms already being enacted in states such as New York and Indiana. It would also force L.A. Unified and other districts to actually do their job and actually perform comprehensive evaluations using student performance data that, as the Callaghan suit argues, can be done and should have been done for the past four or so decades; L.A. Unified, in particular, has been called out by the National Council on Teacher Quality and Dropout Nation for evaluating just 40 percent of veteran teachers and 70 percent of new hires were evaluated by the district during the 2009-2010 school year — and this is one for which neither the district nor reformers can blame on teachers unions. More importantly, the suit may spur other reformers to finally give up their reluctance for using the courts in advancing reform. As Heartland Institute scholar Bruno Behrend pointed out last year on The Conversation, using constitutional clauses to help students succeed is something that all reformers should do.

Education traditionalists are already howling that the lawsuit is just an attempt to eviscerate workplace protections that supposedly help teachers from losing their jobs without cause. But they have little chance of making a strong case for this. For one, an earlier suit filed two years ago by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Southern California branch successfully forced L.A. Unified to abandon last hired-first fired in layoffs at failure mills serving poor and minority students; although the notoriously-bellicose AFT local there is appealing the decision, the underlying argument behind that case has plenty of legal merit. More importantly, there is more evidence that the very practices traditionalists defend do little more than foster cultures of low expectations in which laggards become cancers, making it difficult for high-quality counterparts to gain the recognition and rewards they deserve.  The fact that the laggards can teach for decades without being forced out also means that they bring down the performance of students by as much as a full year — and force counterparts to work harder in the next year just to get those students back up to speed.  The policies also demoralize younger teachers doing good and great work in helping students succeed because they must work alongside veterans who don’t make the grade — and can keep their jobs to boot in the event of reductions in force. In short, the defense of these policies NEA and AFT affiliates (along with their allies) do damage to the very teachers they say they are defending.

No matter what happens, the Students Matter suit is another important step in developing new strategies for advancing systemic reform. And our kids may be the better for it.

For most of the past two months, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy’s school reform agenda had been torn apart by his fellow Democrats in control of the state legislature. Thanks to the menacing lobbying of the Nutmeg State’s National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers affiliates (and memories of what happened two years ago to then-Rep. Jason Bartlett after he teamed up with what is now the Connecticut Parents Union to successfully advocate for the passage of the nation’s second Parent Trigger law), the state legislature’s education committee had all but ditched Malloy’s proposed teacher quality reforms and expansion of charter schools. As I mentioned in last week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, legislative leaders in that state have proven to be so pusillanimous that they all but kowtowed to the NEA during one of its rallies.

But as it turns out, at least half of Malloy’s reform effort may actually survive. Why? Largely because of the legislature’s black and Latino caucus, which offered up its own support of Malloy’s original plan last week through their own set of proposals. By unveiling their own proposals, the group (which includes state representatives Gary Holder-Winfield and Billie Miller), have stood up to the NEA and AFT affiliates, and called out the legislature’s education committee (along with state House Speaker Christopher Donovan and Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, who engaged in last month’s embarrassing display of poor leadership). More importantly, their endorsement — coming just as the legislative session is coming to an end — gave Malloy and grassroots reformers on the ground enough well-timed support to force legislators to come up with more reform-minded legislation. (Whether or not the new version will be a strong step toward systemic reform is a different question entirely.)

The leadership showed by Holder-Winfield, Miller, and their colleagues on behalf of Connecticut’s poor and minority children is absolutely commendable. And it is an example black politicians elsewhere should follow.

Far too often, black politicians spend far too much time aiding and abetting policies and practices that condemn the futures of young black men and women than embracing solutions that can help our kids get the high-quality education they need and deserve. The most-recent example can be seen in Alabama where state Sen. Quinton Ross — a senate education committee vice chair — declared that allowing charter schools to exist would lead to the  ”hijacking, for the lack of a better word, of our public education system.” Then there is the continued obstinacy of Ross’ colleague in Virginia, state Sen. Henry Marsh, who voted against a voucher-like tax credit program because it was in his eyes “a war on public education.” And while big-city mayors such as Cleveland’s Frank Jackson and Newark’s Cory Booker, are actively agitating for reform, there are far too many black mayors  who are more than willing to just turn a blind eye to the dropout factories, failure mills, and warehouses of mediocrity whose dropouts and poorly-educated graduates weigh down the very economic revival efforts these chief executives undertake.

This isn’t exactly shocking. Even as a younger generation of civil rights activists realize that overhauling American public education is the most-critical next step for helping young black men and women achieve economic and social equality of opportunity — and address the ills that plague black communities, especially in urban areas, in this day and age — old-school black politicians and civil rights leaders continue to fight battles of the 1960s and 1970s that they largely won decades ago. From where they sit, integration, busing and equity lawsuits are the cures for low-quality education, even as decades of evidence has shown that none of those formulas do anything to address the systemic problems within American public education. Driven by both their financial and political ties to NEA and AFT affiliates, and their mistaken belief that school choice will lead back to the kind of segregation that earlier generations of civil rights leaders so successfully opposed, these politicians discredit their otherwise-laudable legacies opposing state-sanctioned racial bigotry.

But the good news is that there are black political leaders who understand that the only way that we can revive and sustain our communities — and help all young black men and women succeed in life — it to address the fundamental issues of abysmal teacher quality, shoddy curricula, cultures of low expectations, and Zip Code Education policies that deny high-quality choices. This means standing up up to teachers’ union officials and other education traditionalists who think that black leaders should just go along with what they propose, and battling with legislative leaders who insist that they should just toe the line. It also means taking on old-school players who still wield tremendous influence. This includes state legislators such as Oklahoma State Rep. Jabari Shumate, whose efforts to back school choice put him in the crosshairs of the state’s NEA affiliate, and Mississippi State Rep. Chuck Espy, scion of the famed political family who has been pushing for legislation allowing for the creation of charter schools in a state in which high-quality education in traditional district settings is almost hard to find even for white middle-class families. And now there are black politicians in Florida and Louisiana taking strong stands for reform — and reform-minded candidates running for office throughout the country.

This is certainly good news. But we need to rally more black politicians around reform. This starts by developing young leaders within churches and in the grassroots willing to take on longstanding politicians whose continued presence in state legislatures does little for our children, their families, and the communities in which they live. This is why the growing Parent Power movement (along with the development of student groups such as Students For Education Reform) is so important; when mothers and fathers move from being bystanders in education to demanding their rightful place as lead decision-makers in schools, they also learn how to play the political game and, in the process, become the battle-ready politicians who can navigate the political arena.  At the same time, we must continually (yet respectfully) challenge old-school black politicians to do the right thing by our kids; they must be reminded that their past successes in breaking barriers mean nothing if our children don’t have the literacy, numeracy, and knowledge of science needed to take advantage of opportunities.

It’s good to see Holder-Winfield, Miller, and their colleagues stand up and be counted for systemic reform. For the sake of our children and the future of Black America, we need more like them.

One would think that the National Education Association’s Connecticut affiliate would be celebrating. After all, it, along with the American Federation of Teachers unit there, has managed to strong-arm state legislators into eviscerating Gov. Dan Malloy’s school reform plan contained in Senate Bill 24 — and perhaps, even engage in a little retribution against a few school reformers in the Nutmeg State that have scored a few past victories against it.  Instead of a plan that would essentially end near-lifetime employment for even the worst-performing teacher, reward high-quality colleagues who deserve their jobs, and expanding school choice, the union and its education traditionalist allies have so far kept the status quo quite ante.

But Malloy is standing tall against the legislative cowardice, while school reformers such as the Connecticut Parents Union, StudentsFirst, ConnCAN, and the local branch of Students for Education Reform mobilizing another round of efforts to back the governor’s plan. This, along with some of the waffling of state legislative leaders feeling the heat from reformers, may mean that at least half of Malloy’s plan may pass after all. Faced with this reality, the NEA apparently thinks it needs to remind state senators and representatives that they won’t get any of its campaign cash unless they do exactly what it wants. So the union is launching a new round of ads (on top of ones launched earlier this year) this time backing the white-washed version of SB 24 and proclaiming that the legislature is “getting it right”.

The NEA’s soundbite is catchy. But not even close to reality — especially when one looks at the numbers. The average fourth-grade boy in Connecticut scored just 224 points on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, eight points (or grade level) below their female counterpart. Scores for both young men and young women stagnated between 2003 and 2011, even as their peers across the nation saw gains in achievement. Meanwhile the state’s achievement gaps — among the largest in the nation — remain yawning. The average young black male fourth-grader scored just 201 points on the 2011 NAEP, 34 points (or three grade levels) behind his white male peer, while the average Latino male fourth-grader scored nearly four grade levels behind his white peer; all three trail their female counterparts. And average reading scores for all students in the state have actually declined in the past eight years, even as the average scale score for all students nationwide has increased by nearly a third of a grade level.

While the nation saw the percentage of functionally illiterate fourth-graders decline by six percentage points (from 39 percent to 33 percent) between 2003 and 2011, the percentage of Connecticut fourth-graders reading Below Basic proficiency increased from 26 percent to 27 percent. While the Nutmeg still managed to likely have 238 fewer fourth-graders who were functionally illiterate in 2011 that in 2003, this is only because the state’s fourth-grade enrollment declined by 6 percent during that period. If not for population loss, Connecticut would likely have more students on the path to dropping out within eight years.

This shouldn’t be surprising. A system perfectly designed for failure will fail. This is the story with education in the Nutmeg State. From a system of teacher recruiting and training so abysmal that two-thirds of teachers at some ed schools can’t pass the Praxis I reading exam used to measure their competency in literacy instruction, to Zip Code Education laws that make criminals out of poor and minority parents and grandparents such as Tanya McDowell and Marie Menard who are trying to exercise the right to help their kids escape the worst American public education offers, public education in Connecticut needs an overhaul. What the NEA (along with state legislators) are effectively defending is the condemnation of the futures of young men and women who deserve education worthy of their potential. And they make no apologies for it.

So school reformers in the state must fight harder. This includes launching a series of TV ads featuring families who would benefit from overhauling teacher quality and expanding choice, along with taking apart the NEA (along with the AFT) for failed thinking. It also includes hitting harder on the underlying issues behind the state’s education woes and how defending this woeful model will merely lead to more of Connecticut’s children landing into poverty and prison. And it means shedding light on some of the conflicts of interest that may lie with legislators sitting on the education committee.

But it can’t just be a Connecticut effort. Beltway reformers and philanthropists should be ready to help their counterparts in the Nutmeg State take action. After all, other education traditionalists will look to Connecticut as a model for their efforts at opposing systemic reform. Certainly a few traditionalists will call it “carpetbagging” (since they don’t know what the term really means or its origins from the Reconstruction era). But the children in Connecticut are our children too. And they deserve our strong, strident, yet principled advocacy for transforming a failed system.

For most of the past couple of years, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy has talked a good game about undertaking systemic reform — and for the most part, he’s walked it too. From appointing reform advocate Stefan Pryor as his education superintendent, to succinctly summing up the problems with tenure and other aspects of traditional teacher compensation, to facing down American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association officials during town hall meetings, Malloy has made Connecticut one of Dropout Nation‘s Five States to Watch on the school reform front. And this year, Malloy has done plenty to sell state Senate Bill 24, which would end near-lifetime employment, require the use of student test performance data in evaluating teachers, allowing the results of evaluations to be used in awarding tenure and dismissing laggard teachers, and provide charter school operators with funding equivalent to traditional district counterparts.

But now, the co-chairs of Connecticut’s joint education committee –after meeting behind closed doors with NEA and AFT bosses (who likely reminded them that they face re-election this year and may need union coffers) have essentially eviscerated Malloy’s plan. Allowing new evaluations to be used in tenure decisions will be “studied” (another term for “no snowball’s chance in hell will happen”), while charters ate unlikely to see any additional funds this year. Another Malloy proposal — a state takeover of the worst failure mills through the creation of a special district modeled off of the successful Recovery School District in New Orleans — wouldn’t happen until the 2013-3014 school year. Meanwhile the use of student test data in evaluations would only be required for those teachers who are seeking a master instructor status.

Put bluntly, legislative leaders have all but decided to do keep the status quo quite ante and do nothing to address one of the nation’s most-persistent racial-, ethnic-, socioeconomic-, and gender-based achievement gaps. If anything, the proposed re-write would actually be worse than doing nothing. In some sense, this isn’t shocking. Forget the reality that NEA and AFT affiliates still wield tremendous clout — and made it clear in a series of commercials launched just before the session began. Malloy hasn’t had the best relationship with legislators. Last I checked, committee chairmen and house speakers, as concerned about their egos and ambitions as they are about their political futures, aren’t willing to do much more than necessary for a governor with whom they don’t get along. More importantly, Malloy hasn’t worked as closely with some reformers on the ground, largely out of fear of inciting NEA and AFT ire. But what Malloy failed to realize was that the two unions were going to oppose his efforts anyway.

What should Malloy do now? Based on the comments of his P.R. staff, the governor may think it is best to just go along with the deal, or perhaps, even try to reverse some of the language. Certainly such thoughts are understandable. After all, politics is as much about the art of the possible as it is about taking leadership, and no governor wants to end a legislative session without some sort of victory, no matter how Pyrrhic. Yet the deal that will likely land on the table in the next six weeks will likely be as bad or worse than what education committee leaders have come up. Considering the AFT’s own penchant for backroom dealing, pushing to exclude school reformers and Parent Power groups from negotiations, and trying to use “kill mode” tactics to stop reforms, there’s no way that Malloy can believe that the legislature will do the right thing.

This is the kind of moment that separates true leaders in the school reform movement from those who are just talking the proverbial smack. And it is time for Malloy to take this moment to heart and prove that he won’t just accept mere bones on behalf of Connecticut’s children.

The first step he should take starts this morning by formally declaring in a press conference or at an event that the legislature’s deal is absolutely unacceptable. More importantly, he will say that he will not sign that deal under any circumstances unless most of S.B. 24′s original language is put back in. Certainly this will anger legislative leaders. But at the same time, it makes clear that compromise just for the sake of compromise is no longer acceptable when it comes to Connecticut public education.

The second step lies with going to the airwaves in a televised address once again making the case for why reform is needed. This means using stark language making clear that this is a question of morality and of the future. If Connecticut citizens truly care for all children (especially their own) — and if they want the state to continue to thrive into the future — they must pressure their legislators to do what’s right. He should then blast the phone numbers of every legislator on television so that they can be called up. After all, legislators are more scared of phone calls and e-mails from impassioned constituents than they are fearful of challenging teachers’ union influence.

Malloy should then team up with reformers on the ground — from the Connecticut Parents Union to ConnCAN — as well as rally community leaders (especially black clergy) around reform. This includes actually declaring that Zip Code Education should come to an end by demanding that legislators also include language that no longer makes it a crime for parents such as Tanya McDowell and Marie Menard to help their kids escape from failure mills that endangers the future of their children. Last week, the state legislature’s judiciary committee considered House Bill 5508, which would reduce the laughable charge of stealing education from a felony to a misdemeanor; Malloy should weigh in on this bill. (Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel testified on the bill.) Arguing against Zip Code Education puts a human face on why reform is needed. In addition, Malloy should get his network of political funders to finance a series of commercials that also put a human face on the need for reform. Malloy should also work with the Republican minority leadership in both houses in order to force matters; such a bipartisan approach would also remind the Democrat majority that they can no longer accept the status quo in education.

What if none of this works? Malloy should just veto S.B. 24. Period. It’s not worth signing. Malloy should then work with reformers on running candidates to primary the legislature’s education committee co-chairs. Some would call it hardball. It is. But political leaders don’t deserve allegiance if they don’t do the right thing by their constituents.

Right now, Malloy has an opportunity to win the long-term war for reforming public education in the Nutmeg State. It is time to take advantage of it.

There are two tiresome arguments that always emerge whenever there is a discussion about school choice. The first, coming from centrist and liberal Democrat reformers such as Education Sector Higher Ed czar Kevin Carey that vouchers are terrible school reform strategies and are politically divisive because it means using tax dollars to send kids to private and parochial schools. The fact that Carey — a colleague of mine whose work on teacher quality reform, higher education policy, and the faulty thinking of Diane Ravitch is admirable — hardly offered much in the way of strong evidence to support his views (especially in light of the evidence that vouchers are effective), along with Carey’s (and other centrist and liberal Democrats’) support of charter schools (which also involve using tax dollars to fund private-sector entities) makes the entire opposition to this element of choice and Parent Power rather senseless.

Then there is the new twist on an old argument against choice — that it leads to inequality in educational opportunities — that is being advanced in Mississippi by the NAACP’s chapter there and other groups that proposed efforts to expand charter schools will somehow exacerbate inequities for African-American children. The NAACP opposed a similar effort last year. From where the NAACP and its allies sit, any effort to revamp the state’s charter school law — which is ranked as one of the most-restrictive in the nation — would only lead to poor and minority kids in the state being denied high-quality education. Why? Because charter schools would divert the state’s already allegedly low levels of funding from traditional districts that serve mostly-black students, while perpetuating segregation of black students from what are perceived to be better-performing suburban schools.

Last time around, the NAACP chapter president, Derrick Johnson, had declared that school choice will “create and maintain a permanent situation of second-class citizens.” This time around, perhaps because of all the licks the nation’s oldest civil rights group has taken over the language it used in opposing charters at the national and New York City levels, Johnson couched the argument in terms of equal funding. Says Johnson: “Our concern at the NAACP is Mississippi has never fully committed itself to providing the highest available quality education necessary for this state to move forward.”

Certainly the arguments offered up by the NAACP and charter school opponents in Mississippi is a twist on a longstanding (and wrongheaded) conceit. As Dropout Nation has noted over the past three years, ivory tower civil rights activists such as the NAACP and Gary Orfield of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA — have argued that charter schools perpetuate segregation — and thus make provide unequal educational opportunities to poor and minority kids — because few white students attend them. That argument, partly based on the misguided idea that economic and racial desegregation amounts to some form of school reform strategy and driven in part on a romantic belief that earlier civil rights activists fought hard to end desegregation in order to promote a more-harmonious world, is as much a driver of their opposition to choice as their longstanding ties to the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and school districts (especially in urban locales), that aren’t interested in dealing with new competitors for students. In Mississippi, the NAACP is also using tying this theory to the school funding advocate belief that more money always leads to better academic outcomes.

The fact that earlier generations of civil rights activists fought for integration because they knew that they could never get equal resources from districts in an age of Jim Crow segregation, along with the lack of data on — and knowledge about — the role of failed traditional education practices in fostering low quality education for poor and minority kids, never comes to their minds. They also fail to admit that traditional district schools are still largely segregated even now thanks to the Zip Code Education practices they essentially defend as part of opposing the expansion of charters and choice.

But there are other reasons why the arguments offered by the NAACP and other charter school foes fail the smell test.

For one, all children in Mississippi and elsewhere, regardless of race, ethnicity, or economic status, are being poorly served by traditional districts. Forty percent of fourth-graders attending suburban district schools, along with one out of every two fourth-grade students attending schools in big cities such as Jackson and in small towns, read Below Basic on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Young men, regardless of race or economic background, are essentially tossed onto the path of academic failure. Seventy-six percent of young black male fourth-graders eligible for free- and reduced-lunch are functionally illiterate — and so are 48 percent of their white male counterparts; meanwhile one out of every five white male fourth-graders, and 45 percent of black male counterparts are also struggling with literacy. And while more young men struggle with reading than young women of all socioeconomic backgrounds, even the girls are struggling: Thirty percent of young white black female fourth-graders and one in five of their female peers are also functionally illiterate.

If equal opportunity for academic failure is what charter school opponents want for kids, then that is absolutely shameful.

Then there is the fact that, contrary to the assertions of charter school opponents, Mississippi has spent plenty on its schools, and has equalized spending between mostly-white and majority black districts. State spending on schools increased by 19 percent between 2005 and 2009 — the latest data available — according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The state provided 53 cents of every dollar spent on traditional districts throughout the state in 2009, barely budging from levels four years earlier. In Jackson (City), where nearly all of its 30,093 students are black, the percentage of school dollars provided by the state increased from 46 percent to 50 percent over that period; meanwhile in Rankin County, where white students make up 76 percent of enrollment, the state’s share of funding increased from 48 percent to 50 percent in that same period. The fact that Mississippi’s five-year graduation rate (based on 8th-grade enrollment) declined from 64 percent to 62 percent within that period proves lie to the education traditionalist belief that more money alone equals better academic results. So doe the fact that the five-year graduation rate of 54 percent for Jackson is 17 points lower than for Rankin.

Contrary to what the NAACP and its allies think, expanding charter schools and choice doesn’t limit equal opportunity. If anything, it is choice that will help expand and equalize opportunities high-quality school opportunities for poor and minority kids by ending Zip Code Education policies — such as zoned schooling (along with restrictions on expansion of school choice that are supported by the NEA, the AFT, and district bureaucracies) — that relegate families to schools that aren’t worthy of their children’s futures. Right now in Mississippi, poor families, regardless of where they live, are restricted to failure mills in their neighborhoods, while middle class families (especially those who are minority or the first in their generation to achieve such status) are often restricted to warehouses of mediocrity whose shiny new buildings hide laggard instruction and low expectations for poor white, black and Latino kids. At the same time, choice also helps to give families their rightful roles as lead decision-makers in education, breaking the power of district bureaucracies (who are the biggest employers and political players in many parts of the Cotton State) and the NEA affiliates that influence them.

If anything, school choice can help jumpstart the push for other systemic reforms. Bringing leading charter school operators such as KIPP and Green Dot to the state (along with nurturing high-quality local operators) would certainly help poor and minority kids get the high-quality teaching, curricula, and cultures of genius that they need for lifelong success.At the same time, expanding choice will jumpstart reforms — especially in improving how teachers are recruited, trained, evaluated, and compensated — needed to improve American public education in Mississippi and throughout the nation.

The NAACP and its allies should stop engaging in faulty thinking that stands against all kids, including those from poor and minority households. Particularly given its proud legacy in advancing civil rights, the NAACP should stand for choice and equal opportunity, not for just one or the other.

When an affiliate of the nation’s largest teachers’ union buys commercial time during the National Football League’s NFC Champion game, it certainly gets notice. That is exactly what the National Education Association’s Connecticut local did yesterday when it began its two-week campaign to push for its legislative agenda. And for school reformers, it is both a preview of the political battle that will come in the next few months within the nation’s statehouses — and a reminder that they will have to step up their political game to advance reform.

With the pleasant voice-over declaring that the union is pushing to “replace teacher tenure” and for greater “parental involvement”, the NEA’s commercial campaign is at least superficially appealing. The fact that its actual agenda actually calls for none of that at all — and merely offers a series of mild proposals, including a plan to reduce the time required for firing laggard teachers by 35 days, and cultural sensitivity training for the school governance councils through which the state’s Parent Trigger law is exercised — makes the ad campaign rather disingenuous. But the NEA’s attempt in Connecticut to play the same triangulation effort being tried at the national level by the American Federation of Teachers is at least slightly better than the bellicose messaging of its sister affiliates elsewhere.

But in many ways, the NEA has no other choice in this state. Why? Because it and its fellow education traditionalists are on the defensive. Over the past two years, school reformers have had some success, passing the nation’s second Parent Trigger law, and passing other measures allowing the state to take over failing districts. The Nutmeg State’s education department made waves last year when it took over Bridgeport’s collection of failure mills (and ruffled the feathers of Parent Power activists concerned about the secrecy of its process) and hiring  former Chicago and Recovery School District boss Paul Vallas to lead the overhaul. With Gov. Dan Malloy offering a series of reforms this legislative session — and the state’s school superintendents’ association breaking ranks with its fellow education traditionalist groups — the NEA and AFT, along with other status quo defenders, are on their own.

This defensive crouch became a proverbial fetal position last year when Dropout Nation revealed that a presentation by the AFT AFT and its Connecticut affiliate on how the union watered down legislation that created the Parent Trigger law, excluded Parent Power and other school reform groups such as ConnCAN from back-room negotiations with state legislators, and ultimately, helped oust Jason Bartlett, the state representative whose work helped lead to its passage. The revelations, which led national AFT President Randi Weingarten to issue a series of non-apology apologies (and even a formal in-person apology to  legislators and Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel),still echo in the mind of Nutmeg State legislators — and not in a good way. As a result, educational traditionalists — especially the NEA (which itself isn’t all that happy with either the AFT’s presentation or the sister union’s brag that it had to drag it “kicking and screaming” into efforts to water down the law) — will now have to work harder to keep the status quo ante.

Meanwhile the AFT fiasco has taught Nutmeg State school reformers that they need to step up their own game. They are putting those lessons to use.

Last week, the Connecticut Parents Union captured headlines with its own press conference laying out its legislative agenda to advance Parent Power; this includes requiring schools directly controlled by the NEA and AFT through the state’s Compact Schools initiative to have school governance councils and, thus, be subjected to the Parent Trigger law. Through its work helping families in Ohio launch a Parents Union, and its support of Illinois mother Annette Callahan in her battle against Zip Code Education, the Connecticut Parents Union has also won considerable goodwill with (and support from) organizations such as Democrats for Education Reform, Students For Education Reform, and the Black Alliance for Educational Options, which it can mass for its agenda. (Disclosure: Dropout Nation Editor RiShawn Biddle is a member of the Connecticut Parents Union’s advisory board.)

At the same time, longtime reform player ConnCAN and its new boss, Patrick Riccards, have taken apart the NEA’s proposals. The organization is also pushing its own school reform agenda in Connecticut’s statehouse, and could end up tag-teaming with the Connecticut Parents Union and others on efforts to revamp teacher evaluations and tenure.

Then there is a possible looming threat in the form of StudentsFirst, the school reform group launched by former D.C. Public Schools czar Michelle Rhee which has embraced the kind of political tactics (and ad campaigning) once reserved for political campaigns. Last year, StudentsFirst spent $900,000 in Michigan to advance an array of teacher quality and school choice reforms; it could easily pour similar dollars into Connecticut if reformers on the ground ask for the help. The very idea of Rhee and her team of ex-Democratic National Committee operatives launching ad campaigns isn’t exactly music to NEA or AFT ears.

So the NEA’s Connecticut affiliate has to take its considerable coffers to the airwaves in order to shape this session’s debates in their favor — and, by advertising during one of the nation’s biggest sporting events, quietly reminding legislators that the union may mobilize against them in upcoming primary and general election campaigns. The national union may also play its part. As Dropout Nation reported last month, the NEA poured $157,000 into Idahoans for Responsible Education Reform, which, along with the union’s Potato State affiliate, is looking to challenge school reforms successfully championed by the state’s school superintendent, Tom Luna, and Gov. Butch Otter, according to the union’s 2010-2011 filing with the U.S. Department of Labor; currently, the group is now looking to subject Luna to a recall. Don’t be surprised if the national union also provides funding to statewide progressive activist groups (as it has done in Ohio and Michigan), who can then attack centrist and liberal Democrat legislators supporting proposed reforms.

School reformers across the nation shouldn’t be surprised at what the NEA is doing in Connecticut. In fact, they should they expect NEA and AFT affiliates in other states to do the same. The success of reformers in passing school choice measures in 13 states, along with the string of victories on the teacher quality front (including the abolition of collective bargaining in states such as Wisconsin and Tennessee) have once again reminded the two unions that they will have to battle hard in every statehouse, either to stop reformers in their tracks or offer triangulating half-measures. The fact that families and taxpayers alike no longer feel much solidarity with NEA and AFT locals, and that school reformers have succeeded in ending the two union’s unquestioned support from Democrat politicians,has also put the NEA and AFT on the defensive. As governors and legislators tackle fiscal woes — including $1.1 trillion in teachers’ pension deficits and unfunded retired teacher healthcare costs, along with increasing Medicaid burdens — the unions are fighting to preserve the array of traditional teacher compensation arrangements (including near-lifetime employment and degree- and seniority-based pay) that have long sustained their influence and have won them support from rank-and-file members. And as state legislators in Indiana, Wisconsin, and elsewhere consider right-to-work legislation that would further reduce public-sector union influence, the NEA and AFT must fight harder just to stay in place.

Up to now, the NEA and AFT have taken different approaches to their political efforts; the former, by funding outfits such as Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition in order to build coalitions against reform, while the AFT has engaged in triangulation by offering a sort of school reform lite. But with the former’s strategy failing miserably (and the AFT’s efforts not going so well), the NEA is now attempting other approaches. While the strategy of the NEA’s Connecticut affiliate has more in common with the triangulation approach of the AFT national, its sister affiliates (along with the national union) are becoming more militant, teaming up with outfits such as ProgressNow and raising more dollars to engage in big-dollar campaigning. And school reformers, especially centrist and liberal Democrat reformers, should expect more of their allies in legislators and gubernatorial spots to find themselves being primaried by progressive Democrat activists acting as stalking horses for the NEA and its sister public sector unions.

So reformers need to be more aggressive in the political game. As I noted in November, this means embracing an even more bipartisan approach of the kind advanced by Rhee and StudentsFirst, as well as teaming up with grassroots activists (including Parent Power groups) in order to reach families ready to support reform, but often ignored by the movement’s Beltway and operator wings. And finally, reformers need to spend more money on campaigning — and ensure that those dollars equal the amounts spent on policymaking and working statehouse corridors. Just imagine if school reformers spent $59 million during one election year on just congressional races and statehouse campaigns – the same amount spent by the NEA and AFT during the 2009-2010 election cycle? Right now, the only significant ad campaign from school reformers — other than those from StudentsFirst and the efforts two years ago  by the Eli and Edythe Broad and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations — has been run by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools — and that focused largely on informing Americans about what charter schools are.

The NEA’s ad campaign in Connecticut is a preview of what is going to happen in the rest of the nation this year on the education front. And school reformers will have to get their game right in order to stay on the offensive.