Executive director’s note: Race to the Top or just a dash for the cash? 

I am writing this column from cold and snowy Washington, D.C., where CSBA President Frank Pugh is leading California’s delegation of school district and county office governing board members to the National School Boards Association’s annual Federal Relations Network Conference. The principal purpose this year, of course, is to learn about the Obama administration’s plans for 1) federal support for schools during this difficult economic period and 2) reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, nominally—perhaps I should say ignominiously—known in recent years as No Child Left Behind. We’ve been assured that changing that name will be among the first orders of business!

We’d already seen some signs of the plans the federal administration has for ESEA; these were revealed in the principles embedded in the funding criteria for Race to the Top, a U.S. Department of Education grant program that invited states to compete for a share of $4.35 billion in one-time funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Each state applying for RTTT must comprehensively address four education “assurances,” which include:

• adopting high-quality standards and assessments to prepare students for college or careers 
• recruiting, developing, retaining and rewarding effective teachers and principals 
• creating data systems to measure student success and support instruction—and breaking down any perceived “walls” preventing the use of student achievement data in teacher evaluations 
• committing to a menu of prescribed options for turning around the lowest-performing schools

Comparing notes with our counterparts from around the country here at the NSBA conference, we quickly realized how different each state’s approach to RTTT was. Ten states chose not to apply at all; they may have balked at the substantial legal and policy changes needed to compete, or they may have part-time legislatures that couldn’t meet last January’s tight deadline for the first round of applications, or maybe they chose to wait for this June’s second-round deadline.

Cash-strapped California was among the states that moved quickly, with an eye on as much as $700 million in one-time funds for our use over a-four year period. To that end, Gov. Schwarzenegger called a special session of the state Legislature (which met concurrently with the regular session) and sponsored a bill authored by Sen. Gloria Romero to take care of our so-called “eligibility obstacles.”

Difficult debates ensued. There were sharp differences of opinion about what changes were actually necessary, and whether some controversial proposals were put on the table that could not have passed on their own, were it not for the mad dash to the January application deadline. Much of the conversation had to do with parental control and opportunity and creating further advantages for charter schools beyond those that already exist in current law. Efforts sponsored by CSBA and authored by Assembly Member Julia Brownley to provide for greater accountability for charter schools were rebuffed by the governor and his charter school allies.

Even though the fight attracted major news coverage, most of the media never seemed to catch on that the disputes over exactly what legislation was really needed to compete for RTTT had larger policy implications; instead, there were rather careless reports that the whole business was a battle between the unions and the governor. We also saw a few op-ed pieces in major newspapers that blasted the “education establishment” for being difficult about this legislation—accounts that were absolutely breathtaking in their fictional reconstructions of the history of public school accountability and education “reform” in the last years of the 20th century.

Perhaps this is a consequence of many veteran education writers being forced into retirement in the economic squeeze that’s gripped the news business. Maybe it’s just a reflection of the less-than-impressive legislating that took place. Speaking from my prior experience as chief consultant and staff director for the Senate Committee on Education, and as a part of the “education establishment” lobbying lawmakers on behalf of kids and schools with CSBA both before then and since, all I can say for sure is this: Lawmakers’ unseemly jockeying for position in the Race to the Top has surely made what little hair I have left turn gray even more rapidly!

I’m also sorry to report from my conversations with colleagues from around the country here in D.C. that California was singularly deficient in promoting a collaborative and collegial process for developing its Race to the Top application. In many other states, representatives of the “education establishment”—stakeholders in both labor and management organizations—were welcomed into collaborative and collegial processes that elicited strong support for local educational agencies to sign the prerequisite “Memoranda of Understanding” on Race to the Top. That was not the case in California; indeed—and giving those responsible in the state Department of Education and the Governor’s Office full benefit of the doubt—the consultative process was, at best, uneven. CSBA felt compelled to issue an advisory to governing boards even before the feds’ RTTT regulations—or the state’s plans—were finalized. Our counsel on the pros and cons of signing the MOUs was as balanced as we could make it under the circumstances. In the end, some 800 LEAs signed on—about half of which were charter schools.

In the middle of all this, by the way, the governor requested a waiver of the “maintenance of effort” requirement embedded in the overall federal economic stimulus package. The waiver would allow the state to once again cut education funding below a certain level. This would help the governor justify a further manipulation of education funding so as to cut an additional $2.5 billion from our schools in 2010-11.

So, was the madcap race to make California eligible for RTTT funding really about enacting ill-considered new “reforms” in order to secure one-time funding, or was it really about chasing the money? You decide. Like most things in life, the truth probably lies somewhere in between.