When George Miller Looks Askance at Your Waiver Plan: You should just stop. That’s the advice Dropout Nation offers to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who is threatening to allow states to waive out of provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act if Congress doesn’t reauthorize the law this year. So far, the gambit hasn’t gotten the response Duncan and the rest of the Obama administration expected: The National Education Association,  the American Federation of Teachers and congressional Republicans (all of whom want to ditch the law’s accountability provisions altogether and would benefit from Duncan’s effort) have already made it clear their dissatisfaction with the administration’s plan, while No Child supporters, including Sandy Kress (who crafted the law a decade ago), have called out Duncan for essentially betraying the administration’s commitment to systemic reform.

But now, Miller’s proclamation against the waivers makes clear that the administration’s gambit for reauthorization is dead in the water. Duncan realizes this as well. His statement to EdWeek‘s Alyson Klein that “it isn’t a done deal” is one sign that he is backtracking on the move. While some Department of Education sources may say on background that they have gotten Congress’ attention, the fact that House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline is moving no faster on the array of bills that are supposed to serve as replacements for No Child, along with the lack of movement by Kline’s counterpart, Tom Harkin, is one more sign of Duncan’s failure.

What Duncan has now wrought is a tactical disaster. The Obama administration has lost high ground on the education policy front, losing momentum in driving its school reform agenda. The plan to waive aspects of federal policy has allowed Congressional Republicans to accuse the administration of constitutional overreach and rally the movement conservatives on which they depend; they (along with the NEA and AFT) can also take advantage of Duncan’s essential declaration that accountability is no longer a federal priority and call for the abolition of No Child’s Adequate Yearly Progress provisions. All and all, it’s a mess.

Duncan could turn this around if he takes some key steps. This includes calling for reauthorization and pushing for a bipartisan effort to actually expand accountability to address teacher quality and the crisis of low educational achievement among young men. Dropout Nation offered some suggestions to Duncan and Company on what they can do to recover from this misstep in this week’s Podcast. Richard Whitmire and I offer more suggestions this week in USA Today‘s opinion section. We would suggest to Duncan that this is all advice he should take.

 

The NAACP shows its true colors.

Another one of the NAACP’s Missed Opportunities: Late last year, your editor thought that Benjamin Jealous, the president of the National Asso ciation for the Advancement of Colored People, had a great opportunity to actually embrace the school reform movement —  and move away from its alliances with the American Federation of Teachers and other status quo defenders — when he had a chance to speak at the American Enterprise Institute on the old-school civil rights group’s education agenda. And he whiffed it. While he did say some things that annoyed ivy tower integrationist Richard Kahlenberg and made some of the old-school crowd groan, Jealous’ speech still focused more on such inanities as moving more criminal justice funds to education (as if the amount of money devoted to education, in which $578 billion a year is spent, was the problem) instead of offering support for systemic reform.

Seven months later, the NAACP had another opportunity to actually take a stand for black children where it really counts: Supporting efforts by school reformers in New York and other states to end reverse-seniority (or last hired-first fired) layoff rules  that require less-senior teachers — no matter how good their performance may be — to lose their jobs during reduction in force while keeping more-senior instructors in place (no matter the level of their educational malpractice against children). Working on this issue in the Empire State would have been a particularly strong stand for reform: In New York City, where 30,000 of the city’s 80,000 teachers have been hired in the past decade, the loss of even 4,000 of those less-senior teachers would have hit the city’s poor black and Latino children the hardest. And given that budget-cutting will be the reality for most school districts — especially fort those serving the very black children the NAACP is supposed to defend — allowing for the performance-based layoffs would make sense.

The NAACP could have also took time in New York State and joined reformers in pushing for the use of student test score data in teacher evaluations. Gov. Andrew Cuomo had begun the push by pressuring the state board of regents to allow districts to use data from state tests as substitute for shoddier school-based assessments; the NAACP could have actually bolstered its proud legacy in educational advocacy. It could have also advocated for school vouchers that would allow students in woeful districts such as Roosevelt to escape failure mills or even simply pushed for inter-district choice options. In fact, there was so much the NAACP could have done in New York and on the national level; this included pushing aside Hazel Dukes, the notorious president of the New York State branch who has a penchant for comparing charter school operators to slave masters.

What the group did instead was team up with the AFT’s New York City local to essentially push for the shutdown of charter schools. It has engaged in a campaign of nastiness against school reformers, especially those from the black community such as Kevin Chavous. And this week, it remained silent as the AFT’s state branch filed a lawsuit against New York State officials over Gov. Cuomo’s successful push to subject teachers to more-rigorous, performance-based evaluations that would ultimately improve the quality of teaching given to black children.

Once again, the NAACP has proven where its true allegiances lie. And it’s not for the educational, economic and social futures of black children.

Errata, Part MMM: A couple of observations on what is happening all around:

  • DeWayne Wickham is one of the few writers who defends the NAACP’s anti-charter school lawsuit. And, as with so many of his columns, he gets it all wrong again. Advocating for charter schools is one of the many school reform solutions being used in New York City to give black and Latino children opportunities for high-quality education. It isn’t just an escape hatch. But then, what does DeWayne know about anything.
  • The fact that Pennsylvania couldn’t pass either a school voucher bill or a tax credit proposal that would have allowed for companies to offer private school scholarships to poor children proves two things: Having Republicans in control of a statehouse doesn’t necessarily mean school choice proposals can easily be passed. And that school reformers still haven’t fully mastered the ground game needed for pushing school reform forward.
  • House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline’s declaration this morning that he is all for bipartisanship rings hollow. He’s only bipartisan when it comes to fighting the Obama administration’s effort to regulate for-profit colleges. But that’s to be expected. And besides, bipartisanship for the wrong reasons is worse than partisanship for the right causes. What’s really ridiculous is that he continues to talk out of both sides of his mouth, arguing for the abolition of federal accountability while defending federal special ed funding that has done more than plenty to lead young men of all races and economic backgrounds to poverty and prison.