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.

Cuomo Takes Aim at Teacher Quality: Last year, Dropout Nation highlighted New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s persistent work to force the state’s Board of Regents to allow for districts to expand the use of student test score data from the state’s battery of exams in teacher evaluations from 20 percent of the overall evaluation to 40 percent. While a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers’ influential Empire State affiliate — and a ruling from a state lower court judge — has put the effort into limbo, Cuomo deserved praise for using his considerable political capital to push for important reforms in teacher performance management.

But Cuomo isn’t stopping his effort. This week, as part of his proposed budget, the governor is tying a four percent increase in the $20 billion in subsidies given by the state to traditional school districts and charter schools to implementation of the new teacher evaluation system by next year. Under Cuomo’s plan, districts that fail to implement an evaluation system that bases nearly half of performance reviews on student performance based on state standardized tests will not receive either the Race to the Top dollars or $805 million in additional state dollars flowing from the budget.

The move comes on the heels of the embarrassing news that districts such as New York City could not reach agreements with their AFT locals on implementing new teacher evaluations in order for those districts — and the state itself — to use the $700 million in federal funds from the Race to the Top initiative. In New York City, in particular, the AFT is demanding a new appeals process for laggard teachers given poor ratings under the new system. Given the reality that the current appeals process all but protects failing teachers from losing their jobs (fewer than one percent of teachers sent to the infamous “rubber rooms” under the city’s current agreement with the AFT ever lost their jobs no matter how deserving), one can easily understand why Mayor Michael Bloomberg is rightfully opposing the union’s demand. While Cuomo hasn’t weighed into New York City’s fracas, the governor has already made clear that the AFT won’t get exactly what it wants — to keep the status quo quite ante in its favor.

At the same time, Cuomo stepped into the stalemate between the state education department and the AFT over settling the lawsuit filed by the union last year; Cuomo is threatening to impose his own solution through the state budget within the next 30 days unless the two sides reach a settlement. The AFT and the state education department have only agreed that classroom observations — which, even under the best of circumstances, are far less reliable in measuring student performance than either value-added analysis of student test score performance or even surveys of students — should be the “majority” element in the new evaluation system. But given that the state never pushed hard to reduce the role of observations in the first place, it is more than likely that Cuomo will weigh in.

Certainly Cuomo will face challenges in pushing his plans. The AFT has already made clear that they will fight Cuomo’s plan; they will likely enlist state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who collected $14,400 in donations from the state affiliate between 2004 and 2010. The fact that the union has also given $2.3 million to Republicans in the state senate — including $36,900 to Silver’s counterpart, Majority Leader Dean Skelos — all but assures that the union will get a, umm, equal time with the union. So Cuomo will have to rally school reformers, including Bloomberg and centrist and liberal Democrat reformers to mount a strong challenge against AFT opposition. The governor and school reformers may also have to go further and actually endorse primary challenges by reform-minded candidates against Silver’s colleagues just to keep the speaker honest.

Meanwhile Cuomo should also push for the long-term overhaul of state education governance. Although the governor does appoint the state Board of Regents, the fact that his appointees must be approved by both houses of the state legislature all but guarantee that Cuomo will have to present ostensibly compromise-orient players. While some regents, notably current Board of Regents Chairman Meryl Tisch (an appointee of Cuomo predecessor George Pataki), have turned out to be far more aggressive reformers than one would have expected, the reality is that education is one priority that should be directly under the governor’s purview. Given the economic development importance of overhauling the state’s education system, Cuomo should have the state education commissioner directly in his cabinet.

No matter what happens, Cuomo is showing, as outgoing colleague Mitch Daniels has done in Indiana, that governors without direct oversight of education can actually foster and sustain reform.

Bobby Jindal’s Push for Choice: While Dropout Nation has devoted plenty of space to reform efforts in other states, it hasn’t taken as much notice as it should about what is happening in Louisiana outside of the Recovery School District effort in New Orleans, which has been the epicenter of the expansion of charter schools and school choice. Yet one has to argue that the Bayou State is one of the few that has continuously done the right things in expanding school choice and improving teacher quality. The effort to analyze the performance of its university schools of education in recruiting and training teachers — using value-added analysis of student test score data — is one of the most-pathbreaking in the nation. It has exposed the results of the low quality of training among most of state’s ed schools. It  has also proven the effectiveness of programs such as those at the University of New Orleans as well as shown how low-performing nearly all of them are compared to the alternative teacher training operation run by TNTP, the national outfit which, along with Teach For America, is at the vanguard of the teacher quality reform movement.

The state’s governor, Bobby Jindal, is looking to further burnish the state’s efforts on the teacher quality front this week with his proposal to eliminate near-lifetime employment for laggard teachers with unsatisfactory ratings on the state’s new teacher evaluation system, while pushing further on expanding charters by allowing successful charter operators to expand without having to go through the current approval process, and allowing the state education department to authorize charters throughout the state (and thus, ending efforts by traditional districts to restrict school choice within their boundaries).

But Jindal may end up making the greatest impact with his proposals to expand school choice. Besides the charter school expansion plans, Jindal proposes to expand the state’s school voucher program, which currently serves only 1,800 students in New Orleans, by allowing low-income families to escape any of the failing traditional schools throughout the state. Essentially families whose students attend 70 percent of the Bayou State’s traditional public schools — or as many as 398,453 children, depending on how the program ends up being structured — would be eligible for vouchers. If Jindal can get the proposal — along with a voucher-like tax rebate plan — passed by the legislature, he will have helped poor and minority families escape the worst American public education offers instead of remaining in dropout factories that endanger their futures.

Meanwhile another proposal would, if crafted properly, would also strike a blow for the wider Parent Power movement. Under the other Jindal proposal, parents of students attending failure mills throughout the state would be allowed to vote on whether it can become part of the Recovery School District after three years of persistent academic underachievement; the schools would essentially be converted into charters under state oversight. Currently, the Recovery district can take control of a failing school after four years without consulting families at all. This would essentially create a Parent Trigger law of a sort for the Bayou State, allowing families to take control of the schools within their communities and lead their overhaul instead of waiting on dysfunctional districts (which often perpetuate systemic failure) to improve themselves.

It also brings a new feature to the Recovery district model, allowing families to be real decision-makers in education and not simply imposing school overhauls (even if they are warranted). This, along with Jindal’s plan to allow universities, nonprofits, and community groups to authorize charters, could also make charter school operators work more-closely with communities, an issue that Dropout Nation discussed last year during the fracas in New York City over expanding charter schools.

Jindal will certainly find himself battling with both the National Education Association affiliate there and suburban districts, each of which have reasons to oppose both measures. The good news is that he will have some allies with which to work. The Black Alliance for Educational Options, for example, has long been a strong defender of the New Orleans voucher plan and has helped Jindal craft the proposed expansion. (The RiShawn Biddle Consultancy, a firm owned by Dropout Nation Editor and Publisher RiShawn Biddle, provides communications services to BAEO.) There is also the American Federation for Children’s Bayou State branch, which will also be helpful in massing support for his plans. But Jindal will definitely need additional reform support to keep pressure on legislators to support his plans. And he will have to work the grassroots, especially in New Orleans, to keep the push going.

Meanwhile Jindal should also work with the state education department to make the state’s school data systems easier for parents to use. While what is currently available works decently — and is more-simplified thanks to the state’s letter grading system — some work still needs to be done to move away from those clunky Excel spreadsheets that even researchers sometimes struggle to use.

As your editor made clear at the end of last year, Louisiana would be a state that reformers would follow intensely. And now, Jindal has given them even more reason to pay attention. And get involved.

The Problem of the School Inspector Concept: Give the Education Sector credit for offering a new approach to systemic reform with last week’s report on how states and the federal government could embrace the school inspection concept based on the model used in Great Britain. At the very least, the concept is an interesting approach to measuring the quality of schools — and could provide the kind of information families need to know what schools look like as well as how well they do in improving student achievement.

Is it workable? Well, one can argue that state education agencies don’t have the capacity for such an effort. But the capacity issue is one that states will have to deal with anyway, especially as we move to the Hollywood Model of Education in which the traditional district model is ditched altogether; this is because states will have to expand its capacity in order to better oversee the variety of schools that will fall under its oversight.

The real question is whether it should substitute for the accountability systems put in place thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act? That’s a different story. There are far too many flaws in the school inspector concept for it to work in that role.

The first problem starts with the flaws inherent in any system of observation that doesn’t involve the use of student performance data in evaluating school or teacher quality. As Dropout Nation noted last week in its report on teacher evaluations, even the most-rigorous classroom observation approaches are far less accurate in identifying teacher quality than either value-added analysis of test score data or even student surveys such as the Tripod system used by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of its Measures of Effective Teaching project. If classroom observations are generally inaccurate, why would we expect site inspections — even those structured by a rigorous rubric as the model developed in Britain by that nation’s Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), Children’s Services and Skills — to work any better. The subjectivity bias could particularly hurt charter schools, many of which operate in buildings that don’t necessarily resemble traditional public school sites.

This is a particularly important issue when it comes to the factor within schools that is the most important of all: The quality of teaching. Considering that observations of any kind can only measure the observable aspects of teaching and not the impact of teachers on student achievement (which is the most important matter and the one that cannot be observed at all), it is unlikely that a school inspector system can do any better than either traditional classroom observations or even the advanced systems being supported by the Gates Foundation in giving families a good sense of what is going on in classrooms or schools as a whole.

The fact that many of 27 areas measured through the British model relate little to student achievement or the student experience — a point made by ConnCAN’s Patrick Riccards — also makes the school inspector model not ready for prime time. Considering that we have evidence that students are far more familiar with school quality than most of the adults in schools (or any adult walking into them for only a few hours in a school year), embracing the inspector approach seems a rather wrongheaded idea.

Then there are the relevations — courtesy of the Times Educational Supplement in a series of reports on school inspections since last May — that Britain’s schools have figured out rather novel ways to improve their profiles for scheduled inspections. As it turned out, schools were paying off truant students to avoid school on days of inspection, as well as schools passing around laminated artwork in order to improve the aesthetics. While Ofsted is now planning unannounced inspections in order to get around this gamesmanship, one wonders if Her Majesty’s government would be better off simply relying on value-added analysis of student data. After all, even in the British system, student achievement trumps site inspections as the most-important measure of school success.

The school inspection concept is a nice idea. But it is no substitute for comprehensive accountability based on objective evidence of how schools and the adults working within them help children succeed in school and life. What we should do instead is expand upon the accountability measures set in place a decade ago under No Child — and provide families with the data they need (including, contrary to the assertions of our friend, Andy Rotherham, value-added data on teacher performance) so they can make smart choices and spur systemic reform.

Etcetera: For the past two years, Dropout Nation has argued that President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should structure future Race to the Top grant competitions to include reform-minded traditional districts, along with charter school operators, and even community groups. Such an approach would further systemic reform by essentially allowing them to become enterprise zones of sorts freed from state laws and collective bargaining agreements. So it’s good to see that Duncan may work on such an effort in the next go-round — if he can get Senate Democrats and (far more skeptical) Congressional Republicans to go along.

Connecticut, where Gov. Dan Malloy is putting together a school reform agenda, is one of five states where there will be great opportunities for reform -- and equally great obstacles to overcome.

Certainly discussions about the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act will be one of the big issues in the coming year — as will the Obama administration’s efforts to essentially gut the law’s accountability provisions through its less-than-thoughtful waiver gambit (which, as the Center for American Progress has shown in its recent report, hasn’t brought out much good from any of the states applying to escape the law). School reform will also be an issue in this year’s presidential election race.

But there will be plenty of action at the state level, especially when it comes to expanding school choice, overhauling teacher performance management, and forcing school districts to shut down or revamp dropout factories. School reformers and teachers’ unions will go after each other in state and congressional races; expect Democratic primaries for statewide and legislative offices to be venues in which centrist and liberal Democrat reformers clash with National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers affiliates, along with allies among progressive groups that have become beneficiaries of union largesse.

Certainly Michigan and Pennsylvania — the sites of action on the school choice front — will once again be in the headlines. So will New York State, where the education commissioner, John King, has proposed to cut off federal School Improvement Grant dollars to districts that have not enacted the Empire State’s teacher evaluation program. Expect Indiana to also be back in the news, especially with the proposed effort to put the state’s largest school district, Indianapolis Public Schools, into the hands of the city’s mayor. But there will be more. Here is Dropout Nation‘s small list of states where there will be plenty of action.

1) Connecticut: The Nutmeg State’s governor, Dan Malloy, has declared that the 2012 legislative session will focus largely on education reform — and has offered his own roadmap for the legislature to follow. Likely on the list is an effort to abolish the state’s reverse seniority law that essentially guarantees that veteran teachers keep their jobs during layoffs regardless of their performance at the expense of talented but-less senior colleagues; more money for early childhood education may also be on the table. Given the presence of the state’s new education commissioner, Stefan Pryor, a push for expanding the number of charter schools serving students in the state may also be on the table. All of this follows on a series of interesting, but vague proposals offered up in November by the state’s superintendent’s association, and the work of a school finance panel that Malloy put together earlier this year.

Whether or not any of his proposals come to fruition is a different story. For one, Malloy is squabbling with fellow Democrats who control the state’s legislature; some aren’t exactly too pleased with some of Malloy’s plans, including the consolidation of the state’s community colleges into one system akin to those in Indiana, and are even less pleased with Malloy’s success in gaining more authority to cut the state’s budget. Malloy is having particular trouble with Gary Holder-Winfield — a major player on education in the statehouse — and Roberta Willis (who sits on the state legislature’s higher education panel); this will make it difficult for Malloy to pass any school reform legislation.

Second, there will be other battles over which Malloy will have to weigh in. Parent Power activists such as the Connecticut Parents Union are already gearing up for a fight with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association over expanding the reach of the state’s Parent Trigger law; the fight is particularly tinged by revelations earlier this year of the AFT’s presentation on how it unsuccessfully attempted to kibosh the passage of the Parent Power law and how it exacted revenge by ousting Jason Bartlett, the legislator who led the passage of the law and the neutralizing of his former colleague, Gary Holder-Winfield. (The revelations, by the way,so embarrassed the AFT that it forced national President Randi Weingarten to issue a series of non-apology apologies and meet with Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel and other activists.) Parent Power activists are particularly miffed that the AFT and NEA managed to exempt seven schools the unions control, called CommPACT schools, from the state’s Parent Trigger law by allowing them to not assemble school governance councils through which parents can exercise the Parent Trigger and push for the overhaul of failing schools.

Parent Power groups are also going to push the legislature to eliminate the state’s Zip Code Education policies, which essentially limit the ability of poor and minority families to provide their kids the high-quality education they deserve. Particularly motivated by efforts in Norwalk to convict homeless mother Tanya McDowell of what can only be laughingly called “stealing education” and a lawsuit filed by a Connecticut grandmother, Marie Menard, against the Stratford school district after it indicted her and her daughter for sending her grandchildren to that district’s schools. Parent Power activists will also likely have a few choice words for Malloy, who left those groups and other reformers off his school finance reform panel.

Then there are the efforts of ConnCAN, the state’s leading reform outfit, to revive a proposed overhaul of the state’s teacher evaluation system; the law had failed to gain passage last year. Also, ConnCAN will likely battle against the NEA’s effort to move teacher certification and accountability out of the purview of the state’s education department to a panel over which the NEA and AFT would likely have significant influence.

2) New Jersey: There is plenty of unfinished business for the state’s tough-talking governor, Chris Christie, and the reform-minded Democrats which control leadership in the statehouse. The first lies with Christie’s efforts to pass a law allowing for companies to get tax credits for offering school vouchers to poor and minority students. One of several bills that have been held up in the legislature since June, the NEA’s Garden State affiliate, along with suburban school districts, have strongly opposed its passage — and has been so controversial that it was a driving force behind an unsuccessful attempt by 13 lower house legislators to oust Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver. The speaker, who is backed by state senate powerhouse and school reformer George Norcross, has all but said that the legislation will be considered whether or not she gets the full backing of the Democratic caucus; this, in turn, would require Oliver (and Christie) to win backing from the assembly Republican minority.

There is also a proposed teacher merit pay bill that has been the subject of negotiations between Christie and State Senate President Steve Sweeney. Sweeney announced earlier this month that he and Christie were close to reaching a compromise on that plan. There is also an effort to overhaul the state’s special education ghetto and a push to move school board elections from April to November; the state’s school board association backs both measures, especially the latter (since it allows districts taxing below the state’s property tax levy to put budgets before voters for approval).

Meanwhile the NEA, along with suburban districts, are pushing for the passage of Assembly Bill 3582, which would require the charter schools to be approved by voters in the neighborhoods that the schools would serve. If the bill is passed (and supporters of the bill can override the likely veto from Gov. Chris Christie), it won’t actually do much to stop the opening of charters in big cities such as Newark (where families have been voting for charters with their feet for some time). But it will likely keep charters from opening in New Jersey’s tony suburbs, whose districts have long opposed any kind of school reform.

With only one month — next month to pass all these bills, expect a flurry of activity from state legislators. Of course, Christie can also call a special session and force the legislature to work throughout the summer on passing the reforms he wants. Either way, what happens in New Jersey may set the agenda for what happens in other states where there is divided control of state government.

3) Virginia: Over the past two years, Gov. Bob McDonnell has been an absolute disappointment on the school reform front. Last year,  he didn’t put enough pressure on the Democratic majority that controlled the state senate to pass a proposed school choice bill; this led to the bill’s defeat. His teacher pay differential plan, which will provide additional dollars to districts in order to lu  while all he succeeded in doing is passing a watered down charter school expansion bill. Meanwhile McDonnell gave his now-former Secretary of Education, Gerard Robinson, little in the way of political backing or cover to push for any significant reforms; instead of seeking out a strong reformer with national credentials (which he could have actually found living in the state’s northern region near Washington, D.C.), McDonnell chose as Robinson’s successor, Laura Fornash, who has more experience with higher education than with K-12.

But now, with Republicans in control of both houses of the state legislature, McDonnell can actually pass some meaningful reforms. One critical move would be to pass the voucher-like tax credit bill that was defeated in the state senate last year after passage by the lower house; pushing for the creation of a state commission to authorize and oversee charter schools (or requiring the state’s education department to take on that task) would also be sensible. Another move that McDonnell should undertake is to revamp the state’s teacher evaluation system. This means

The Dominion State also has other issues to tackle. Start with the state’s pension system, of which teachers make up 43 percent of both active members and retirees. It is underfunded to the tune of $14 billion (as of the 2009-2010 fiscal year). Given that employees make just one percent of the $1.9 billion in annual contributions into the pension (the rest, including contributions that are supposed to be made by teachers and civil servants, are handed by state and local governments), this state of affairs really cannot continue. But it appears that the state legislature may simply ignore the problem. And if the legislature follows the rather irresponsible advice of House Appropriations Committee Director Robert Vaughn, the state may shove its head further in the sand by ignoring stricter financial reporting standards being crafted by the Government Accounting Standards Board that will force states to fully acknowledge the high cost of their deals with teachers’ unions and other public-sector unions.

4) Alabama: Two years ago, the NEA succeeded in convincing the Yellowhammer state’s legislature to kibosh a plan to allow for the existence of charter schools, and managed to back one of the few anti-charter school Republicans in current Gov. Robert Bentley. But school reformers have been working actively on this issue. And now, they have an ally in Bentley’s education policy director, Emily Schultz, a protege of Michelle Rhee who recently served as a staffer at school reform outfit Mass Insight. This, along with the lack of a permanent chief executive at the helm of the state’s department of education, the retirement of the Alabama NEA’s longtime boss (and political powerhouse) Paul Hubbert, and the fact that Republicans control both houses of the legislature, could lead to charter schools becoming a reality in the state. But given the longtime resistance toward charters and Bentley’s own political considerations, expect this to be a fight to the finish.

5) Washington State: Its status as one of the few states that don’t allow for the existence of charter schools must certainly be an embarrassment to its most-prominent residents, Bill and Melinda Gates, and the school reform-minded foundation that also makes its headquarters here. The fact that nearby Oregon and Idaho has become the leading school reform states in this part of the American West is also particularly embittering. So this may be the year that the state actually embarks on systemic reform.

The state’s governor, Christine Gregoire, made some noise last year with her bungled effort to consolidate the state’s education agencies into one operation. This time around, she is proposing to expand a year-old pilot teacher evaluation program throughout the entire state; under the plan, teachers rated “basic” for two consecutive years would join those rated “unsatisfactory” on probation. At the very least, it would finally move away from a two-level rating system that Gregoire argues doesn’t work.

The rest of her package — including a proposal to put six dropout factories under the control of state universities — is rather uninteresting. But Gregiore’s plans, tepid as they may be, could be the start of more action. The National PTA’s Evergreen State affiliate has already announced its push for allowing for the existence of charter schools, rubbing the state’s NEA affiliate the wrong way. The presence of Stand For Children in the state also makes it likely that charters will end up on the state legislative agenda whether the NEA likes it or not.

The bigger school reform play may come with the state’s gubernatorial elections. With Gregoire leaving office, it will likely be a race between Republican Rob McKenna, the state’s attorney general — who is a strong supporter of allowing for the existence of charters — and Congressman Jay Inslee, who has garnered the NEA’s endorsement. Given that McKenna currently leads Inslee in the gubernatorial race — and the overall fatigue with the Gregoire regime among the state’s voters, the election offers an opportunity for reformers to actually put the lessons they’ve learned from past political successes and losses into practice.

When it comes to school reform-minded governors, once and future Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber would not come to mind. During the eight years he served in Salem from 1995 to 2003, he was far-less aggressive on education than contemporaries such as Roy Barnes in Georgia, future President George W. Bush (then in Texas), and Dubya’s brother, Jeb. Nor did he offer much more when he successfully ran for a return to office last year. Even the move last year by the NEA’s Beaver State affiliate to endorse his rival in the Democratic primary had more to do with his proposal to fund schools based on performance — a novel concept that has been used unsuccessfully at the higher-ed level because it never involves disturbing existing funds — than with any pioneering efforts. Declared Oregonian columnist Steve Duin last year after reading one of Kitzhaber’s policy statements: “education reform isn’t part of his learning curve or his agenda.”

But this year, Kitzhaber may have actually set in motion what could be one of the most-important reform efforts that states should undertake: Reforming how states govern their K-12 schools and universities. Whether or not the effort is successful in the long run is a different story. But it does show reform-minded governors, including Chris Christie in New Jersey and even Mitch Daniels (now serving out his last years in Indiana), what they can and should do in order to sustain their reforms.

As Dropout Nation noted earlier this week, the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative has definitely set in motion a series of reforms that have helped weaken the influence of teachers unions, push states (including those that never won federal money) to require the use of student performance data (including test score growth) in teacher evaluations, put more teachers under private sector-style performance management, and fostered the expansion of school choice. The effort, along with the school accountability measures enacted as part of the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, have also signaled the long-running shift of control of education from school districts (who were always mere tools of state governments) to the state level.

Yet states have not taken the opportunities given to them by Race to the Top and No Child to overhaul the byzantine structures of governance crafted a century ago by progressive reformers fearful of centralized power. Only 12 states allow for the governor to appoint chief state school officers, and only 33 governors have the power to appoint the majority or all of the members of state boards of education. In states such as California and Indiana, K-12 schools and universities are governed by an unwieldy array of boards, superintendents, university presidents, and bureaucracies, each competing to justify their existence. In many states, the teacher licensing agencies are separated from state departments of education, even though the functions should be under one roof; policymaking over matters such as setting cut scores on standardized tests end up being handled by different boards. And the shamble of results, especially when it comes to school reform, can be seen in muddied policies, turf-battles over policymaking, and stalled efforts on any sort of reform (including anything involving developing school data systems).

Reform-minded governors could use school reform as opportunities to reshape how schools are governed. But most have not. During his first campaign for Indiana governor, Daniels proposed to make the state education superintendent an appointed office, but never followed through on that plan; given the legacy of legendary predecessor Paul McNutt, who ramrodded a series to consolidations during the Great Depression (and Daniels’ own efforts on that front), it may not have even been possible. Earlier this year, Washington State Gov. Christine Gregoire offered up a ham-fisted plan to combine all state education agencies into one mega-operation; that plan didn’t go anywhere. Meanwhile governors such as Jerry Brown in California and Oklahoma’s Mary Fallin have simply abdicated their responsibilities on the education front.

Until July, the most-successful move in that direction was by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who convinced the legislature to expand the powers of the state’s emergency financial managers taking over school districts such as Detroit; but that move is still just whittling around the edges of massive, often-incompetent bureaucracies. Still, too few governors have proven willing to use their political capital to battle for the needed overhauls of how schools are governed. And these are the kind of battles that must come — especially in states that won Race to the Top dollars — in order to sustain reform.

Turning symbolism into reality: Kitzhaber education adviser Ben Cannon. Photo courtesy of the Oregonian.

But now comes Kitzhaber, who managed to work with a Democrat-controlled senate and a house equally split between the two major parties to successfully pass a law creating a new board of education that will control all of the elementary, secondary and postsecondary system. Kitzhaber and his successors would be able to appoint every member of that agency. The new law also ends the election of state school superintendents, merging that role into the governor’s job. As a result, by 2014, Kitzhaber (or whoever succeeds him in the governor’s office) will also directly run the state’s public school and education finance systems.

Making the governor the chief state schools officer is certainly symbolic; the real work will be done by whoever Kitzhaber or his successor appoints as his second-in-command in charge of education. This is where the proverbial devil is in the details of policymaking and executing.

Kitzhaber will have to do more than just appoint teacher-turned-state legislator Ben Cannon (who has been a player in pushing through the governor’s reform agenda) as his education adviser. He will need to follow the step taken by Bill Haslam in Tennessee and appoint a strong, thoughtful, nationally-known school reformer to be the chief agitator for reform. This reformer, along with Cannon, will have to play good cop-bad cop in order to get things done. Kitzhaber will have to also keep his Spitzer-like reputation in check; he can’t afford to be an Oregon version of Adrian Fenty, behaving arrogantly when he should play nice; he should also continue to stare down the NEA in order to succeed. And Kitzhaber must address the state’s teacher quality issues. Two of the Beaver State’s ed schools have already been criticized by the National Council on Teacher Quality for their lackluster efforts in training aspiring teachers; the fact that NCTQ has had to filed open records requests just to get other ed schools in the state to cooperate with its national evaluation effort also doesn’t look good. Kitzhaber should put public pressure on the ed schools to cooperate fully, and shape up their offerings.

But the move in Oregon is symbolism with substance. It signals what should always be the case in every state: That governors should be responsible for the direction of education in their states. Given that the increasingly knowledge-based economy makes high-quality critical even for blue-collar jobs and long-term economic growth, governors should be actively working to overhaul schools. Every governor should look at Kitzhaber’s effort and launch their own campaigns to overhaul how their states govern schools. Given the waning influence of NEA and AFT affiliates in many states — and the budget-cutting tools states have at their disposal to reduce opposition from suburban districts — the time is now.

All's quiet on the Massachusetts front -- tonight at least. Photo by PhilPie

One of the continuing themes of Dropout Nation is the intersection between reforms started by federal education policy and school reform initiatives on the state and local levels. Another is the declining influence of the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, suburban districts and other education traditionalists who push against these efforts. Few of us could have predicted that the changes that are now present today — including the abolition of collective bargaining rules in Wisconsin — would have come to pass in exactly the way it has, and even fewer would have been able to explain how the federal Race to the Top initiative (along with earlier reforms including the No Child Left Behind Act) would have led to all this. What will be interesting is what happens in the coming years, especially as the bungling of No Child by the Obama administration has now created chaos at the federal level.

In this Best of Dropout Nation from November 2009, Dropout Nation Editor RiShawn Biddle observed the first moves by states looking to get their hands on the federal cash that came as part of Race to the Top — and the battles with teachers unions that marked those steps. This week, we will look at the next possible directions that the battle over school reform may go in the coming two years.

Last month, I noted how states such as California and Tennessee have pushed to qualify for federal Race to the Top funding by passing measures lifting caps on the number of charter schools and allowing the use of student test data in measuring teacher performance. Now, New York and Massachusetts are trying to get into the act. And unfortunately for school reformers in those states, not even federal money is enough to gain traction.

Tonight, senators in the Bay State passed a reform measure by a vote of 28-11 after hours of debate and some 100 proposed amendments. The bill does lift the cap on the number of charters the state can authorize, but it also restricts the presence of charters to areas of the state where traditional public schools are in pervasive academic failure. Charter school advocates weren’t satisfied for several reasons, including the fact that the requirement that the first three schools authorized had to be located in the worst-performing districts; since only three charter schools are approved annually, the advocates fear that charter school expansion is just smoke.

Opponents of charter school expansion may figure out a way to kill the bill in Massachusetts’ lower house. One legislator, Liz Malia, has already told the StateHouse News Service that: “Charter advocates did a lot of things very quietly… and they got too much of the pie.” The bill may not even be passed this year.

Meanwhile in the Empire State, the New York State United Teachers — an affiliate of both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association — is already bearing its teeth in opposition to a set of proposals from state Assemblyman Sam Hoyt to end the state’s ban on using test scores in evaluating the performance of probationary (pre-tenure) teachers and lift the cap on charter school expansion.  The state Education Department and Board of Regents also wants to bring back the use of test scores in evaluations. Given that United Teachers successfully brought the ban back to life last year after it was ended in 2007, the likelihood of tying student and teacher performance may be a dead horse not worth the time for legislators — thinking about their re-election efforts — to kick.

New York State officials also remain stubborn about addressing other changes needed to qualify for Race to the Top. Lame duck Gov. David Paterson (yes, he’s running for election, but he’s unlikely to win) hasn’t been willing to exercise any of the pluck he has shown in battling the legislature over the state’s fiscal morass. The new state education commissioner, David Steiner, also seems less interested in reform than even his predecessor, the much-lauded (and also, much-bemoaned and often spendthrifty) Richard Mills.

These battles do show the limits of federal government-led reform initiatives even when the dollars are attached to the effort. That the final Race to the Top rules hardly touch teacher quality reform — among the most-important issues in achieving true education reform — also makes the opposition among traditional education supporters at the state level seem rather, well, ridiculous. After all, allowing parents additional school options — and thus, making them true partners in education decision-making — should be embraced by every educator. And test score data is certainly far more objective than the standards used in private-sector performance reviews (which, by the way, use plenty of subjective multiple measures).

School reformers have clearly won the battle for the hearts and minds of leaders at the federal level; they have certainly won the day in states such as Indiana and Colorado, where legislators and governors have reached agreement some agreement on the need for overhauling public education. Even California, who may find itself replacing one reform advocate (Arnold Schwarzenegger) with another (former Gov. Jerry Brown) after 2010, may actually move towards meaningful reform.

But in states where systemic political dysfunction is the norm, teachers unions and other defenders of traditional public education can rally supporters on their behalf.  They can count on  some of their longtime critics on issues such as the expansion of charter schools. There is also the skepticism of school reform among suburban parents, who may realize public schools are in atrocious shape, but also have a relationship with schools and teachers that few school reformers (save for the Steve Barrs and Geoffrey Canadas) have dared to match.

The relationships between parents, traditional public school officials and teachers are, for the most part, superficial; the latter two are disinterested in any active parental involvement outside of the traditional jobs of supervising homework and attending field trips. They don’t want parents to be full partners in decision-making. But like any, dare one say, abusive relationship, the parents are more than willing to play along . And together, this trinity is formidable against school reform. In those states, school reformers must move themselves out of the Beltway and into the grassroots in order to win the day.

Given the influence of state legislation on local reforms and on national efforts, these battlegrounds will loom larger in school reform discussions.

Last week, Dropout Nation revealed the American Federation of Teachers’ true feelings about Parent Trigger laws and Parent Power efforts. Since then, media out such as the Wall Street Journal and the Daily News have editorialized on the cynical efforts while Parent Power activists such as former California State Sen. Gloria Romero — who authored the nation’s first Parent Trigger law and was mentioned in the presentation — demanding that AFT President Randi Weingarten “offer an immediate apology and a commitment to never let something like this happen again.”

But there are other ways education traditionalists can weaken Parent Power — and this is true in Connecticut (the subject of, and test case for, the AFT’s presentation) and in the rest of the country. See, last month, the state legislature passed something called Public Act 11-135, which took the terrible step of delaying the move to improve the state’s mediocre high school graduation standards. As part of the law, state legislators wrote in language that exempts seven schools, called CommPACT schools, from the state’s Parent Trigger law. Essentially, those schools aren’t required to assemble school governance councils, the vehicles by which parents can exercise the Parent Trigger and push for the overhaul of failing schools.

By the way: Six of the seven CommPACT schools — M.D. Fox in Hartford, Barnum School and Bassick High School in Bridgeport, Hill Central Music Academy in New Haven, and Washington Elementary and West Side Middle School in Waterbury — were among the first schools that had to put school governance councils in place by November of this year; Barnum, Bassick and Hill Central should have had them in place already.

Members on the state committee charged with overseeing the implementation of the state’s Parent Trigger law were kindly informed about this after the law was passed.

Now, why would the CommPACT schools be exempted from the state’s Parent Trigger law? In theory, the schools are run by parents, teachers and other community members. But given that the Nutmeg State’s AFT and NEA affiliates are intensely involved in the management of the CommPACT schools — with the executive director of the NEA affiliate and four other union leaders holding seats on the 13-member advisory board — the exemption isn’t surprising. While each of the CommPACT schools has a board that consists of principals, teachers union officials, community members and parents, there is no capacity for families to push through an overhaul if they think any of the schools need a fix.

This is a shame because while some of the CommPACT schools such as Longfellow School in Bridgeport are having some success in improving student achievement so far (with just 22 percent of 7th graders reading Below Basic on the state’s achievement test in 2009-2010 versus 46 percent of them as sixth-graders a year earlier), other schools aren’t making the grade. At M.D. Fox School in Hartford, for example, 66 percent of fifth graders read Below Basic in 2009-2010, versus 57 percent of them as fourth-graders the year before. At Hill Central Music Academy in New Haven, 73 percent of fifth-graders read Below Basic in 2009-2010, versus 46 percent of them as fourth-graders the previous year.

By exempting the CommPACT schools from the state’s Parent Trigger law, the state has essentially taken power away from parents that they deserve. Once again, poor and minority families get less than their due. But let’s be clear: This wasn’t the only failure with this bill. State legislators voted for Public Law 11-135 even though organizations such as ConnCAN  had steadfastly opposed its other provisions, which included delaying the implementation of the new high school graduation standards approved last year. That the state legislature passed everything contained in the legislation — including the weakening of Parent Power — and that Gov. Dan Malloy signed it speaks plenty about the Nutmeg State’s seriousness about reforming education so that all kids, including those from poor and minority households — can succeed in school and life.

Of course, Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel (who kindly provided the information to Dropout Nation) isn’t exactly pleased with this legislation; expect it to be challenged next year during the state’s special legislative session on education. Once again, as I note in this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, the lessons for Parent Power activists and school reformers everywhere are simple: Play the political game smartly; rally the grassroots; ask smart questions; and hold politicians accountable.

The only kids at Manual High who may graduate. Photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Star.

Even among the nation’s 2,000 dropout factories, Emmerich Manual High School in Indianapolis stands out for its pervasive academic failure. Within the past three decades, the district that operates the school, Indianapolis Public Schools, has instituted numerous reform efforts, including the replacement of principals, to something called the Alpha Program (which monitored the classwork of Manual’s constantly bulging population of 16-year-old freshmen), and even a move funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to break up Manual into smaller high schools within the same building. And still, Manual remains a failure mill.

At some point, one has to realize that the problem is not just laggard teachers and administrators, but a district that perpetuates systemic failure. The same culture of incompetence at the school is usually mirrored by central office staffs — many of whom were once abysmal teachers and principals themselves. And IPS, one of the worst school districts in the Midwest outside of Detroit, has certainly proven to be incapable of serving children. The regime of Eugene White, who came to the district in 2005 to lead its overhaul, has proven to actually further the incompetence, with abysmal school leaders such as Jackie Greenwood — who ran Manual’s equally abysmal sister school, Arlington Community — failing upward, principals taking up successful overhauls (notably former John Marshall Middle School Principal Jeffery White) being forced out, and rampant nepotism (including the appointment of White’s own son to an IPS position) becoming the norm.

This persistent failure explains Friday’s move by Indiana Superintendent Tony Bennett to begin the takeover Manual, Arlington and four other IPS schools that have been abject disgraces for the past six years (and, in all honesty, much longer than that). The new question is whether the Hoosier State can succeed in turning around those schools when so many others have failed.

While the state has not yet chosen any of the five turnaround models available under the state’s own school accountability law, it has already selected three private-sector school operators to handle the effort. The problem with the choices? The quality of the operators may not stack up to the challenge. One of them, the EdPower division of local charter school Charles A. Tindley, may actually be capable of doing the work, especially since Tindley is one of the state’s best charters. But EdisonLearning, the famed school turnaround outfit started two decades ago by Chris Whittle, has not had a strong record of success. Its failures to improve student achievement in Baltimore and Philadelphia are enough to put it out of the running in any turnaround situation. (I’m still reporting on the third, Charter Schools USA.)  Bennett and his staff could have — and should have — selected a stronger group of outfits or even encouraged existing charter school operators in the state — including the Knowledge Is Power Program chain — to get into the turnaround game.

The second problem is that turnarounds in general don’t work. As former Thomas B. Fordham Institute scholar Andy Smarick (now a  New Jersey state official working on Chris Cerf’s efforts) pointed out in his own study of school turnarounds, just 11 percent of California schools placed into overhaul had made “exemplary progress” three years later; just nine percent of laggard schools in Ohio managed successful turnarounds. And as seen in New Jersey — where the state took over a series of districts, including Jersey City — and New York with its effort to turn around the Roosevelt school district, states just do an abysmal job of operating schools and districts. State education departments such as Indiana’s just lack the infrastructure to keep tabs on turnaround or even operate schools. That the state still has to take on the systemic problems throughout American public education — including the low quality of teacher training — that have helped foster these failure mills means that no turnaround will be simple work.

There are two moves Bennett should consider doing. The first comes courtesy of Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, who offered earlier this year to take over oversight of the schools,converting the schools into charters, either allowing charter operators or even community groups (including parents) to run those schools. It would be similar to the move five years ago by Louisiana’s state government to launch the Recovery School District and would follow upon what Detroit is attempting to do; given that Ballard is already in charge of authorizing and overseeing charter schools, the mayor (and, if he loses office this year, opponent Melina Kennedy) has the capacity to make this a success.

The second: Take the steps made by reform-minded districts such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, to shut down the dropout factories and replace them with new charter schools. Given that Manual, Arlington and the other schools have been failing for decades, it makes no sense to continue educational malpractice. Either way, the kids deserve better than what these failure mills have offered for far too long.

The shutdown last month of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the New York City school law nonprofit that successfully fought for New York State to provide more funding to New York City schools in the last decade, has marked the end of the traditional school funding suits. It makes sense. Despite the arguments (and the pretty charts) of such defenders as Rutgers’ Bruce Baker, there is no evidence that spending more on American public education will lead to better results for children. With so much money tied up by ineffective practices such as degree- and seniority-based compensation (including $8 billion a year dedicated to additional pay for teachers earning master’s degrees), it will take the systemic reform of K-12 in order to make school spending more effective in improving student achievement.

But what if equity lawsuits came back to form, this time with school choice activists and Parent Power advocates leading the way? This could possibly happen in states such as Connecticut, the site of three cases in which parents have been arrested for what can only laughingly be called tuition fraud. The idea of using equity and adequacy lawsuits to push for vouchers and other forms of school choice may not exactly be music to the ears of either conservatives generally opposed to judicial activism or to education traditionalists who are foes of all school choice. But if choice activists and civil libertarian groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union successfully take up such moves, it would lead to another round of school choice efforts that would provide more poor and minority children with opportunities to get the high-quality education they deserve.

Such a move wouldn’t be surprising. The ACLU proved its willingness to weigh into this arena two years ago when its Southern California branch successfully sued the Los Angeles Unified School District over the effects of reverse-seniority layoffs on three of the district’s middle school failure factories. The suit led to a settlement that abolishes the use of seniority in determining teacher layoffs at L.A. Unified’s worst failure mills. Other legal activists outside of education are also entering the arena, mostly against school choice. This includes the Legal Center for People with Disabilities and Older People in Colorado, which is attempting to halt the effort by the Douglas County school district to launch a voucher program on the grounds that the initiative would discriminate against students with disabilities. The ACLU’s Wisconsin branch is also involved in a similar suit over the recently-expanded Milwaukee voucher program.

What would motivate efforts to use legal means to expand school choice? Cases such as that of Tanya McDowell, the homeless Bridgeport, Conn., woman currently charged with stealing education after sending her child to a school in nearby Norwalk; 26 other students in that district have been kicked out of school since McDowell’s case came to light. Her case, and that of two other Nutmeg State parents and caregivers, have all come on the heels of Ohio mother Kelley Bollar-Williams’ conviction earlier this year for supposed tuition fraud.

These cases have made clear that it’s time to end zip code education, and have been the driving forces behind successful efforts in 13 states to enact school choice measures. But as seen in Pennsylvania, where efforts to pass a voucher plan and a tuition tax credit initiative fell to seed, a lot must be gotten right in order to successfully battle suburban districts, National Education Association and American Federation locals, and other foes of choice. So choice activists, including those centrist and liberal school reformers finally convinced of the need for vouchers, tax credits and inter-district public school transfers, may end up trying to persuade judges to see their side.

At the heart of such suits would be the education provisions within state constitutions. In 15 states, the constitutions require them to encourage and promote educational opportunities and the development of knowledge “adequate” educational opportunities for children. This could, in theory, be interpreted to allow for the existence of school vouchers  and voucher-like tax credit plans that allow private-sector firms to start their own voucher programs in exchange for tax breaks. In Illinois, for example, the state is required to finance “the  system of public education”, essentially allowing for the possibility of vouchers; same in Georgia, where the state is called to provide an “adequate” education system, which can include financing public schools and offering vouchers.

But in most states, the constitutions require their governments to only provide for “free public schools”. Blaine Amendments, originally crafted by Know-Nothings and other religious bigots during the 19th century to prevent Catholic schools from receiving state dollars, further restrict the ability to finance vouchers. But this isn’t necessarily a barrier to choice. Since the clauses do require the states to provide for public schools, it also can be interpreted to allow for children to attend any public school they want, be it traditional or charter, in any part of the state. Practices that have led to zip code education, including the concept of zoned schools, are essentially unconstitutional; and thus, inter-district choice of the kind encouraged by otherwise foes of choice such as Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation would be allowable. It would also put an end to caps on the expansion of public charter schools, the nation’s most-prominent form of school choice.

A lawyer could argue that these clauses mean that a state has an “affirmative obligation” to provide a substantially equal educational opportunity to all schoolchildren in the public schools. This would include ensuring that every school is teaching according to a clear set of state standards and have adequate resources, all traditional equity and adequacy arguments. But it could extend further. A lawyer could challenge practices that lead to the lack of equity and access to high-quality education — and that would include rules that restrict families from getting those adequate resources by exercising school choice.

Districts would then be forced to accept students outside of their district boundaries. But this would also trigger another effect: The end of funding education through the use of property tax dollars collected by districts. Since states are required under their constitutions to provide for public schools, it can also be interpreted to say that state governments must also finance them too. Such judicial pressure, along with demands from districts who must now take on what they consider to be free riders on local taxpayer dollars, could finally force states to actually take steps that should have been done decades ago and move to a weighted student funding formula that would essentially act as vouchers with dollars following children to their respective school choices.

Certainly taking such court action wouldn’t be appreciated by conservative school reformers, who, like their movement allies in the political arena, are not fond of judicial activism. But it isn’t as if conservative reformers and school choice activists haven’t used courts in the past. A decade ago, conservatives such as Clint Bolick, along with groups such as the Center for Education Reform, backed the Zelman case, which led to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing for states to launch their own school voucher programs. One can easily imagine conservatives supporting similar efforts.

But more likely, it will be organizations such as Parent Revolution (which successfully pushed for the nation’s first Parent Trigger law) and other Parent Power groups now emerging on the school reform scene that will make the efforts. Why? Because they are better-positioned politically to reach out to traditionally left-of-center civil liberties groups such as the ACLU, which may be more-skittish of supporting school choice if it appears to be a conservative-led effort. Since Parent Power groups, along with other school reformers, are pushing to end traditional seniority-based pay scales and abolish Last In-First Out layoff rules, expect those efforts to be tied together with court-mandated torts for expanding choice.

All this said, there is plenty of what-ifs that come with this analysis, including judicial interpretation of what power state governments actually have to allow for inter-district choice. The Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling last May that the state didn’t have the constitutional standing to authorize charter schools — and that only districts could do so — is one example of this problem; judges can easily rule against such efforts based on that matter in legal interpretation called original intent. One must also remember that the earlier generation of equity and adequacy torts didn’t exactly achieve their long-term goals: The Abbott decision in New Jersey, for example, remains an shining example of why lawsuits aren’t exactly the cure for what ails American public education.

No matter what happens, these are interesting times for school choice. School reformers and Parent Power activists may end up embracing a tactic of education traditionalists in order to advance their goals.

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press

Judging by the protests waged yesterday and all this month by the National Education Association’s New Jersey affiliate, one would have thought that the state legislature abolishing all of the defined-benefit pension and healthcare packages they hold so dear.

What the Garden State’s Democrat-controlled senate and assembly did last night was pass some modest adjustments. Teachers will now have to contribute 7.5 percent of their pre-tax pay to fund their pensions, admittedly a 50 percent increase over current contribution levels; but that is nothing compared to what private sector workers must pour into their defined-contribution plans in order to ensure a decent retirement. The fact that teachers are only allowed to retire at 65 – or the same age as private-sector counterparts – instead of 60 is no hardship at all. And the NEA, along with other public-sector unions, will hold seats on a new state agency charged with developing new, less-expensive healthcare plans for state workers, all but ensuring the union that it will influence those packages.

But for the NEA, the array of piecemeal reforms (which will save taxpayers a mere $122 billion over three decades, or less than the $201 billion in pension deficits and retiree healthcare liabilities outstanding) is symbolic of what has been happening throughout the nation for the past two decades: The days in which they could count on unquestioned support and cover from the Democratic Party is coming to an end.

This has been the case for the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers when it comes to the White House. Sure, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have been more than willing to lavish stimulus dollars on behalf of the two unions and the traditional districts they hold servile (including the $10 billion Edujobs anti-layoff bailout). Money is all the NEA and AFT are getting. The unions are in a cold war with the administration thanks to its Race to the Top effort, which has helped push states into efforts to overhaul teacher quality and expand the number of charter schools serving the nation. And even before Obama took office, Democrats helped pass the No Child Left Behind Act, whose accountability provisions have helped shed light on the consequences of systemic educational failure perpetuated in part by the two unions.

The NEA and AFT thought they could at least count on Democrats holding court in America’s statehouses. For the most part, they have correctly assumed as much. From the effort two years ago by Indiana Democratic legislators in control of the Hoosier State’s lower house; to the move earlier this year by California Gov. Jerry Brown to remove two school reformers off the state’s board of education and replace them with NEA and AFT allies, statehouse Democrats have been more than mindful of their dependence on the coffers and rank-and-file members teachers unions bring to fore on their behalf.

But the lingering impact of the last recession, along with a sputtering economic recovery, means that many states will continue to collect less in revenues than they expect to spend. As a result, as many as 33 states will face at least $137 billion in budget shortfalls during their 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 fiscal years. Add in increases in Medicaid costs (states are expected to spend 19 percent more on those costs from their own coffers in 2011-2012), and at least $1.3 trillion in pension deficits and retiree healthcare costs, and suddenly, state governments must cut back on the generous deals they have struck over the past six decades with all public sector unions.

States controlled by Democrats — either with full control of statehouses or holding gubernatorial spots — face the greatest pressure of all; save for New York (which has technically covered its $147 billion pension deficit), Democrat-controlled states owe their public sector workers $1.1 trillion in pension benefits alone without enough funds to cover them. They can no longer simply tax their way out of these future expenses. Nor can they ignore one of the driving forces behind these expenses: Traditional teacher compensation, including degree- and seniority-based compensation and sick days (which can be used by teachers to buy service credit that can boost the final year income on which pension benefits are based). The high cost of the compensation, along with evidence that shows that they are ineffective in improving student achievement, and keeps laggard teachers in classrooms and fails to recognize and reward high-quality colleagues, has led politicians in those states to begin nibbling at the edges. Eventually, the increases in contributions will be followed-up by the more-radical efforts being undertaken in Wisconsin, Ohio and other Republican-controlled states.

For the NEA and AFT, the need for states to address these deficits comes just at an inopportune time. Despite the millions ponied up by the unions last year on behalf of Democrats, the party still lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives, majorities in state legislatures and gubernatorial spots. Democrats may still depend on teachers’ union largesse, but they no longer think that those dollars are worth all the kowtowing required to get them. The emergence of centrist and progressive Democrat school reformers as forces in statehouses also means that the prime foe at the federal level will become more fervent at the state level. With organizations such as Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children actively providing an alternative voice to the tired rhetoric of NEA and AFT affiliates — and with big-city mayors and young urban Democrats already galvanized for reform — the two teachers unions will continue to lose influence.

What happened last night in New Jersey — actually the latest in a series of moves by statehouse Democrats since Republican Gov. Chris Christie took office last year — is just one more example of the NEA and AFT ending up on the defensive. This can also be seen across the Hudson in New York State, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo successfully pushed the state Board of Regents to allow for student performance data on state tests to be used for as much as 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation; and in Illinois, where the AFT and NEA found themselves signing on to a series of modest (actually, hardly revolutionary) reform measures in order to stave off the possibility of even more-radical efforts. And despite last year’s lost by Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, more Democratic mayors will be looking to take over traditional school districts and authorize charter schools, further weakening the fraying ties between teachers unions and Democratic leaders.

This isn’t to say that Democrats and teachers unions will part ways. Democrats may be less-dependent on teachers’ union largesse, but they still dovetail ideologically on other issues. More importantly, the NEA and AFT really have nowhere else to turn. While they have been strong donors to Republicans in some states, the teachers unions can’t count on them to defend their interests either at the state or federal level. There will be more Scott Walkers, more John Kasichs and more Mitch Daniels ready to do battle. They need Democrats — including school reformers within the party’s ranks — and will have to adjust their rhetoric accordingly.