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Round two of the Race to the Top (RTT) just got a very big boost. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Education Secretary Arne Duncan emphasized that the quality and pluck of a state’s application, not the level of stakeholder buy-in, will determine whether that state wins. “Watered-down proposals with lots of consensus won’t win, and proposals that drive real reform will win,” he said.

There has been a battle raging over this issue since the announcement of first round winners. Delaware and Tennessee, the only states to emerge victorious, had strong plans, but they also had 100 percent of their districts sign on and virtually all unions too. This fact was emphasized by the administration, and so many concluded that broad union support was a necessary condition for victory.

This immediately empowered unions in their negotiations with state leaders. The sense was that they held a veto over state plans; that is, “unless you get our support, you won’t win.” And since unions generally don’t like the bold reforms favored by RTT, reformers had reason to worry that the ability of the program to bring about meaningful change had been lost.

But after going through applications and reviewers’ scorecards, I concluded that states could win without broad stakeholder support as long as their plans were sufficiently bold. I’ve been arguing this to anyone willing to listen. I’ve also been giving states specific advice (as has this trio of organizations), not only because the point system bears it out but also because the more states believe it, the more likely they are to embrace reform.

Duncan’s decision yesterday to publicly side with reform is extremely important. States still have 35 days to craft round-two applications and pass legislation. Those hesitant about being bold because of union opposition can now push ahead. Reform, not consensus, will carry the day.

Lest some think Duncan’s line was just off-hand or a misstatement, he reiterated this position, according to Education Week, in a conference call with business leaders: “At the end of the day we’re going to [fund] the strongest proposals whether they have tremendous buy-in or not.” So this is the administration’s firm position. I anticipate their repeating it for some time so there is no doubt.

I’m absolutely certain that Duncan is now getting major blowback from the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers for this pronouncement. I suspect we’ll see angry press releases from both organizations and many local affiliates in the days to come. The secretary deserves credit for this move. It was courageous, and I expect it to bear fruit over the next seven weeks.

A while back I predicted that the gloomy condition of state and district budgets would likely lead to calls for another federal stimulus, this time aimed primarily at schools. As if on cue, Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the education committee, is seeking $23 billion so districts can avoid teacher layoffs and furloughs. The legislation, a version of which passed the House late last year, would be based on the $50 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund that was part of 2009’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). And in a hearing this week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan came out in full support of the idea.

The first batch of stimulus money aimed at solving schools’ budget problems saved lots of jobs but it also did next to nothing for reform. Generally, it enabled America’s K-12 system to continue going about its business during dark financial times. We should expect about the same from this proposal: money that will quickly hit states, districts, and schools with little chance of changing how things are done.

For those inclined to say, “But saving teachers’ jobs is a worthy cause, and, anyway, the feds are spending all that Race to the Top money on reform,” please keep one thing in mind: The ARRA spent about $75 billion on these school deficit issues. This plan would bring the total up to about $100 billion.

Race to the Top is $4.35 billion.

So, yes, we’re spending a good bit of money on reform. But over that same couple-year period we may eventually spend about 25 times that amount sustaining the status quo.

The selection of Delaware and Tennessee as Race to the Top winners is not only newsworthy, it’s also very important.

First, both states had good plans—not great plans but certainly good. The Education Department deserves credit for selecting only two states. Instead of giving grants to clearly undeserving states, it kept the bar high.

But the bigger and not entirely positive story is just how important “stakeholder support”—meaning whether unions, school boards, and other establishment organizations agreed with the plan—turned out to be. In the final estimation, the support of these groups was as valuable to the administration as the substance of the reforms.

Florida, Louisiana, and Rhode Island had very good plans—the strongest in my view. But their unions opposed their proposals, especially in Rhode Island and Florida. So those states lost. Two other finalists, North Carolina and Kentucky, had weak plans but high levels of stakeholder support. They lost too. Tennessee and Delaware distinguished themselves with worthy plans and nearly unanimous union and school district support. And they won.

So both a strong, reform-oriented proposal and statewide consensus on the new direction are necessary conditions. But neither on its own is sufficient.

This formula, however sensible on its face, puts other states in a very difficult position. First, Florida, Louisiana, and Rhode Island now have to wonder, “What reforms do we give up in order to get our stakeholders to support the plan?”

Second, in other states, unions and districts may conclude that they have a veto over their states’ proposals. If a state adds an element with which they disagree, these organizations can simply say, “Unless you change that provision, we won’t sign on and you won’t win.”

The implications of this for round two are terribly fascinating and not altogether encouraging. Assuming that few, if any, states are able to convince their stakeholders to sign on to a very bold plan, the question becomes: which is better, a bold plan with no buy-in or a watered-down plan with buy-in?

In states with elected officials without strong reform inclinations, we’re likely to see state capitulation to stakeholder demands. The plans will be weak, but they will have broad support. But in states where officials are committed to reform, there will be fierce negotiations between stakeholders saying, “Unless you bend to our will, we won’t consent, and the state will lose,” and state leaders saying, “Unless you embrace reform, our proposal will be weak, and the state will lose.”

Game on.

Later today, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will announce the winners in the first round of the Race to the Top competition. The first thing to look for is how many states are selected: the fewer winners, the better. If Duncan gives very few awards—say, three or less—that means he has set the education reform bar at a high level. That will not only be good news for taxpayers (the feds not handing out money willy-nilly), it will expand the reach of the program: With a high bar, losing states will be likelier to pass reform legislation and create strong proposals for the second and final round this summer.

The second thing to look for is which states actually win. There are major differences among the 16 finalists. Some put together great proposals, while others crafted weaker plans that earned the support of teacher’s unions, school boards, and other establishment organizations (the curious scoring system favored both bold ideas and “stakeholder support”).

So if Florida, Louisiana, and/or Rhode Island win, that’s a victory. If Delaware, Tennessee, Colorado, and/or D.C. win, that’s good but not great news. If Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and/or Kentucky win, we should all be very disappointed.

Secretary Duncan promised a “very, very high bar” for this competition and has indicated his understanding of its unique, and therefore precious, nature. This is his big chance to deliver. Stay tuned.

Today, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released my third report on the education portions of the federal stimulus. This edition focused exclusively on the Race to the Top. (First two here and here.)

I’m as hopeful about this program as anyone. But as we progressed through 2009 and 2010, it became clear that most observers had turned into cheerleaders instead of critical analysts. Too many folks, it seemed to me, were behaving as though the Race to the Top (RTT) was already an unmitigated triumph. Indeed, the administration has asked Congress for more than a billion additional dollars for a new RTT and is looking to make the program permanent.

So I set out to figure out what’s really been going on and what the likely implications are. Although I scoured lots of federal documents and tracked the administration’s pronouncements, I also closely tracked events in the states—where the real action is.

What I found—what the report calls “The Full Story on the Race to the Top“—is much more complex and considerably less celebratory than the conventional wisdom. The report is not an indictment of the program but it is, I hope, a wake-up call. (See AEI’s Rick Hess’s review here; Daniel Lautzenheiser and Jenna Schuette discuss it here.)

Using plenty of on-the-ground examples, I make the case that lots of states were overly optimistic about their chances, that many states were chasing the money instead of the reform, that the number and scope of state legislative changes have been exaggerated, that unions have played a larger role than generally believed, and that state applications (including from the finalists) are significantly weaker than many expected.

I was aiming to make two contributions with the report. First, to dig deeper into the RTT details than has been done heretofore and to construct a coherent narrative of what’s occurred; and second, to tie the various strands together in a way that both clarifies for observers the program’s past and trajectory and provides policy makers with some possible options moving ahead.

Give it a read, and let me know if I accomplished either goal.

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education released the long-awaited final application for the “Investing in Innovation” fund, widely known as the “i3.” The program is the legislative partner of the Race to the Top, though much smaller at only $650 million (compared to RTT’s $4.35 billion).

Few substantial changes were made to the i3 during the several months the department took to review and address comments from the public on the draft document (you can read my take on the original documents here). But the program still deserves considerable attention.

First, it is a competitive grant program, meaning Education Secretary Arne Duncan decides which applicants get funded (as opposed to formula-based programs which distribute dollars to everyone based on population or enrollment). Second, unlike the RTT (which will fund states), i3 will send money to school districts and nonprofits that team up with networks of schools. Finally, the program is designed to spur new ideas in education reform and to scale up highly successful or promising initiatives.

In short, the idea is twofold: find and then grow programs that are truly succeeding at the local level, and which, with more funding, could serve many, many more students; and identify and then invest venture funding in great ideas that don’t yet have strong empirical results.

There are a number of important though somewhat subtle details in the final documents that make the program even more distinct. It’s wholly focused on high-need students; that is, a suburban district with lots of affluent families need not apply. The program’s four priority areas are identical to the RTT: teacher and principal quality; better use of data; improved standards and assessments; improving failing schools. But unlike the RTT, applicants that seek to work in one of four targeted areas will win bonus points: early childhood learning; college access and success; students with disabilities and limited English proficient students; and rural areas.

The grants will be made in three categories. “Scale Up” grants for programs with high degrees of evidence and the potential to grow nationally will range up to $50 million (approximately five such awards are expected.) “Validation” grants of up to $30 million will also be made to successful programs, though to those with less evidence of success (”moderate”) and marginally less potential to scale. Finally “Development” grants of up to $5 million will be made to high-potential, relatively untested initiatives.

When all is said and done, I expect the nation’s most well-known education reform nonprofits to win significant awards. These include Teach for America, KIPP, New Leaders for New Schools, Achievement First, New Teacher Project, NewSchools Venture Fund, and so on. Also a number of reform-minded urban districts such as New York City and New Orleans are likely to receive awards. The smaller grants will probably go to a wide array of projects, many of which are little-known.

In the days and weeks to come, I’ll have more to say about this program, but for now, my initial reaction after reading the final documents is that the i3 has significant promise and that the department did a professional job crafting the application. Though implementation still remains a huge question mark, because state and local politics will play a much smaller role in the i3 than in the RTT, the former has a clearer path to success.

In this article from the upcoming edition of Education Next, I wrote, “When state [Race to the Top] proposals hit Arne Duncan’s desk, the secretary [of education] must become the toughest schoolmarm in America.” Unfortunately, on Thursday we got the first sense of his grading curve, and it turns out he gives lots of As.

As I wrote on Flypaper, I’m very disappointed with the department’s decision to name 16 states RTT finalists (Wall Street Journal coverage here, New York Times here ). A number of these states have glaring deficiencies that would make them unable to get over a medium bar, much less the “very, very high bar” that Secretary Duncan said he would set.

In a number of tweets, the department’s press team explained the long list by saying that there was a natural break in the scoring (around 400 points of 500) and reassured that the bar is still high, that very few of these finalists will win. I want to believe them; I really do.

But they didn’t have to take 16 states just because there was a natural break there. They could have selected only the top two or even five. That would’ve sent the right signal: That the administration is serious about big reforms; no average proposals—go back to the drawing boards and come back with a better product in the second and final phase. Sixteen—considerably more than my imagined worst-case scenario—sends precisely the wrong message: That a moderate effort is good enough.

Take for example New York, which wrangled over reform legislation until the very last day before deciding just hours before the filing deadline that they were going to reject the department’s priorities. That is, the state publicly considered and rejected RTT reforms. Yet New York is a finalist. Kentucky doesn’t even have a charter law, one of the most important reforms of the day, but they too made the finals.

Many good teachers grade tough early in the semester. It sets high expectations and shows students that they must up their effort. I had hoped that Secretary Duncan would follow that line of thinking and reject most if not all applications, telling states that they could and must do better. “We’ll see you in the next round,” I envisioned him saying, “You simply didn’t meet the mark this time.” Instead, he advanced nearly one in three proposals. Not only will this instill an unjustified sense of complacency in those chosen, it shows the rest of the states that the bar wasn’t all that high.

Over the past couple weeks, there have been signals that we might see a second stimulus package, this time aimed primarily if not wholly at the nation’s schools. First, there was evidence that states had already spent the preponderance of their funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and then there were dismal forecasts for state budgets throughout 2010 and 2011.

In a speech yesterday to the nation’s governors, Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave us another reason to suspect more federal funds may be on their way. He said that superintendents could start handing out pink slips to teachers as early as this spring, with even more layoffs coming in the fall.

A major message from the governors to Washington during their annual meeting was that jobs are on their minds more than any other issue. After getting this message loud and clear and knowing that unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, it’s highly unlikely the secretary would raise the issue of layoffs without administration plans to do something about it. I’m not sure when, but expect a significant push for a schools stimulus soon—and its several-billion-dollar price tag.

About a week ago, I pointed to a New York Times article and predicted that another education stimulus was probably on the way. This article from the AP makes me even more confident of that forecast. It reports on the dismal condition of state budgets and the implications for education funding. But what readers should know is that this is soon going to seriously affect their pocketbooks.

The short story is that states and districts have nearly consumed the entirety of the $100 billion provided in the federal stimulus legislation. They faced huge budget shortfalls in 2009 and simply used this money to fill in the holes. Since the preponderance of district spending is on personnel costs, this money just saved existing jobs.

The problem is that state budgets are still in bad shape; revenues are still way down, and they aren’t expected to recover for some time. Moreover, rather than using the recession as an opportunity to rethink fundamental aspects of their business model (as my colleague Rick Hess has been recommending), districts largely kept things the same. That is, they didn’t move to ensure that their spending and operations looked significantly different post-recession. They pretty much were hoping to ride out the storm.

So now the budget holes are rematerializing and the federal funds are gone. So what should we expect?

First, as the article notes, districts will be forced to make some cuts, but this is always extremely unpopular. So, second, lots of states and districts will raise taxes (remember, education spending is typically the largest line item in state and local budgets). For those states with part-time legislatures meeting in the first part of the year, such tax increases are going to be in the news shortly. Third, there will be a major push for another federal stimulus for schools.

Before agreeing to numbers two and three, fiscally conservative state and federal legislators should take a stand: Any recession-compensating education funding must be paired with changes in district policies that lead to structural cost reductions. The list of issues deserving consideration includes more online learning, student-based funding formulas, and changes to union contracts. Otherwise, the billions spent to keep our schools solvent will also serve to perpetuate a range of practices and policies needing serious reconsideration.

This morning’s New York Times has an important article about schools and the expensive implications of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The stimulus provided about $80 billion to the nation’s schools designed to primarily help our K-12 education system weather the recession. Districts and schools used this money to preserve jobs and existing programs (something I’ve lamented since they were also supposed to use it for reform). At the local level, these funds were seen as a godsend—quick, easy money that enabled schools to largely continue going about their pre-downturn business.

However, state budgets typically continue to suffer long after a national recession ends and education budgets can take even longer to bounce back. So districts’ and schools’ need for quick, easy federal money will extend into the future. The problem is that this $80 billion has almost entirely been used up already.

A number of new studies referenced in the article found that some states used their entire allotments virtually immediately. Others spread it over last school year and this school year. According to one analysis, on average, states have only 14 percent of their funds left to apply to the school year that will begin this fall.

So we should fully expect a growing chorus advocating for a second schools stimulus. They’ll note that the first one saved hundreds of thousands of jobs—thereby contributing to the economic turnaround—and that unless we repeat it, those jobs and maybe more will be lost. At the end of last year, House Democrats introduced such a bill (with a $23 billion price tag), but it didn’t move very far. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a committee hearing and vote in short order.

Sometimes this policy business makes me smile. For a couple months now I’ve been nudging the Education Department to provide additional guidance on two major issues raised by the Race to the Top (RTT). Amazingly, according to a news report, the nation’s largest teachers union wants the same thing.

The first issue relates to what I’ve called the Universal State Application Theorem—that there is a strong negative correlation between a state’s application strength and the number of state education stakeholders that have signed on (“education stakeholders” are often establishment organizations not so interested in big changes).

Since the RTT application says both factors are important, I’ve wanted the Education Department to say that application content is more important so states would stop weakening their proposals in order to get unions to sign on. But as Education Daily reported this week, the National Education Association (NEA) is asking for clarification on the same issue, but obviously they want the department’s judgment to go the other way. If the department says collaboration is more important, then in order to get unions to sign on, states will stop crafting such strong applications.

I’ve also been writing that the department needs to get very specific about the intersection of RTT proposals, union contracts, and state and local laws. My argument has been that a state can promise anything on paper but if its policies and collective bargaining agreements won’t permit the reforms, then the promises will amount to nil.

According to Education Daily, the NEA is very interested in these same issues.

The NEA would also like ED [Education Department] to issue clarification about how legislative changes enacted to compete for the federal funding affect local policies. “There is a lot of confusion about how the plans would be implemented and how Race to the Top would impact state and local laws … There needs to be more clarity on how this impacts local agreements.”

Obviously the union’s desired objective is 180 degrees from my own. The NEA must be worried that RTT promises would be binding, meaning that laws and contracts the unions have worked tirelessly to mold in their favor would be jeopardized.

I’m confident Education Secretary Arne Duncan will stay silent on both issues. On the first, he’s holding out hope that some states will be able to craft proposals that move north and east off the line depicted above (with bold content and lots of support). On the second, he’d catch major flak no matter which side he took. Say that RTT promises are binding, and hordes will howl that the feds are trampling on local prerogatives. Say that they’re not binding, and reform-hostile state and local leaders will have no compunction about ignoring RTT reforms.

So in this rare instance that the Left and Right are in total agreement, there’s no chance of our joint wish being fulfilled. Alas, this policy stuff makes me smile sometimes.

A new CNN poll shows that three-quarters of the public believes that at least half of the stimulus’s funding was wasted.

It’s not clear what the public is basing this assessment on; perhaps it’s a sign of the growing cynicism about the administration’s ability to improve the economy.  But, at least in the world of education, there’s some support for this view.

As these reports and this article recount, $75 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) education funding that was meant to support school reform and economic recovery only went to protect jobs and programs.  For those of us concerned primarily about K–12’s contributions to student learning (not its contributions to job numbers), this money, if not “wasted,” was certainly applied suboptimally.  For those, however, who want the stimulus to keep people working, this money will seem to have been put to good use (in fact, don’t be surprised if a White House press release responding to this poll touts the jobs saved or created in education).

For those in the first camp, the Race to the Top comes quickly to mind. Well over a billion dollars will likely be distributed to states in April. These funds are supposed to be absolutely, positively about reform, not jobs. If previous patterns continue, and they are instead used to prop up the status quo, the public’s cynicism about the ARRA will be justified.

The Race to the Top deadline has passed, proposals are in, and 40 states and D.C. have applied. There are no major surprises on this score: this number was anticipated and no states unexpectedly bowed in or out.

As always, Education Week reporters have done themselves proud. Michele McNeil provides a nice summary of events, and Leslie Maxwell offers some worthwhile analysis, including references to my theory about the negative correlation between application strength and stakeholder support. This has turned out to be one of the most fascinating and important questions raised by the applications because both are important to the feds (Colorado and Kentucky, for example, grappled with this issue openly). We’re all in a holding pattern waiting to find out which component the department will prioritize.

The Wall Street Journal summarizes the situation here, including a welcome statement from Education Secretary Arne Duncan about what I have called Trojan Horse applications. He’s keeping an eye out for states that just want the money, not the reforms. (For more national coverage, here’s Bloomberg and the Christian Science Monitor.)

As far as commonalities and noteworthy items, lots of states are confident about their ability to win; some applications are downright cocky. Several states included in their applications promises to have hard student performance data account for at least 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Indiana, which had been below the radar, seems to have put together a very strong application. Montana’s superintendent of schools, whose state didn’t apply, said the competition is “pushing an urban agenda onto our rural states.”

For those with a particular parochial interest or just curious how states are looking at the competition, here’s today’s local coverage from MD, VA/DC, TX, NY, AZ, CT, MI, OH, PA, DE, IN, MT, NJ, and RI.

More analysis and commentary as these several-hundred-page documents get digested.

Lots and lots and lots of coverage of the president’s announcement today that his administration will seek funding for a future Race to the Top–like program, possibly to the tune of $1.3 billion.

Their reasons are pretty clear. First, since Race to the Top (RTT) has generated some positive movement at the state level on education policies, the administration has concluded that more money would generate more positive change. Second, as I’ve written about previously, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has shown an inclination to move the federal government into more competitive grant programs (that incentivize states to do reform-oriented things) and away from massive formula-based, compliance-driven programs.

The problem, however, is that we only know that RTT has led some states to change their policies. We don’t know whether they will faithfully implement these policies. Moreover, and even more to the point, not a single cent of RTT money has been distributed yet. We have no idea how states and districts will actually spend it, and we have no idea whether those activities will lead to improved student performance.

I’m all for pushing reform, and I’m on board with the move toward more federal education competitive grant programs. But we need to be prudent. It’s just too soon to invest more in this strategy.

The Department of Education has charged Institute of Education Sciences, its independent research arm, with conducting a study of RTT to determine its effectiveness. We need to wait for those results before writing another massive check.

Many state legislatures are opening their 2010 sessions this week or next, and the surge of activity on education reform legislation is really quite amazing. In recent days, in order to better position themselves for Race to the Top grants, Kentucky, Alabama, Iowa, New York, Tennessee, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois (by my count) have either passed or seriously considered meaningful reforms.  This is in addition to the states that accomplished important work late last year, such as Colorado, Louisiana, Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, and Rhode Island. The most recent activity has included charter cap lifts, changes to teacher pay and tenure, uses of data, and more.

As these legislative sessions kick into gear and the first Race to the Top application deadline gets closer (January 19), this is only going to heat up. You can continue to follow it here. Give credit to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. He’s catalyzed lots of state legislative activity.

In order to show how committed their states are to reform, a number of state superintendents and governors are crafting Race to the Top memorandums of understanding (MOUs) that (ideally) will be signed by union leaders and other state stakeholders. These documents would essentially be commitments by local leaders to faithfully implement reform promises made in state proposals.

Since there’s a huge difference between education policy (which state leaders can control) and policy execution (which locals mostly control), states need to show the feds that the reforms outlined in their applications will actually have traction once awards are doled out.

As I’ve been writing, unions generally don’t like the Race to the Top reforms their states are pursuing (the Wall Street Journal editorialized about this earlier in the week), so they don’t have any real incentive to sign on to anything—unless of course they just want their states to get a bunch of federal money. So we reformers need to watch for “Trojan Horse MOUs.” (I wrote about Trojan Horse applications here).

A Trojan Horse MOU would be an agreement that ostensibly shows that a state and unions are in complete agreement on reforms. This might convince the feds that the state in question is serious and has its stakeholders on board. But in fact a closer look at such a memo would reveal that the union or district leaders have really committed to nothing substantial. For example, they might merely agree to discuss, consider, or plan something. For instance, this article from Indiana explains how MOU signatories are just required to make a “good-faith” effort to develop a work plan. That’s much different than doing something.

Now, according to EdWeek, it looks like some districts might sign onto MOUs just to get their states more money even though they have no intention of actually implementing the reforms.

Egad.

Just as those scoring these applications must get into the weeds on proposals to figure out if the state is actually committing to real reforms, they will need to get into the weeds on these MOUs. Are these documents reform gifts, or are there spear-wielding status-quo defenders concealed inside?

Based on local news reports, it appears that a growing number of states are putting together bold plans in order to better position themselves for Race to the Top grants. But in a number of places, unions are erecting serious obstacles. For instance, in Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan, state union officials are discouraging their local affiliates from supporting the plans because of elements the union finds objectionable, such as merit pay programs and efforts to use student performance gains in teacher evaluations. In New Jersey, the union is slamming the state’s application.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his department place a premium on collaboration, so states gain points in the Race to the Top scoring when they show that stakeholders from across the state support the proposal. That’s certainly a reasonable inclination—wider buy-in suggests a greater chance at successful implementation.

But the department should have foreseen that some unions would be adamantly opposed to the reforms that their state leaders (at the behest of the Obama administration) would be pushing and that this would have important implications.

Indeed, assuming reform-averse unions are rational actors, they shouldn’t sign on to these proposals; by withholding their benediction, they win on two counts: they don’t have to compromise their principles and they just might torpedo their states’ attempts to get funding for activities the union finds distasteful.

Another predictable outcome is that the price of the union’s support is a watered-down state application. And, in fact, that is precisely what appears to be happening in Ohio.

At some point, it seems to me, substance needs to trump cooperation. That is, I’m waiting for Secretary Duncan to say something along the lines of:

While I believe the best case scenario is all of a state’s leaders working together to implement important reforms, a close second is most of the leaders working together. A very, very, very distant third is the state’s forgoing reform altogether because a few dissenting voices won’t adjust their positions. Therefore, if a state’s political leadership has made a good-faith effort to engage its unions in the reform effort and those unions remain opposed, the department will not penalize the state’s proposal.

Interestingly, on Tuesday, Michigan might have increased the odds of Duncan’s addressing this issue. Tired of the union’s delaying tactics, the state superintendent decided that it would send in its application without the union’s support. So how will the department deal with Michigan’s application and this broader issue? Stay tuned.

Last month, I wrote about my trip to California, during which local school board members lamented their unions’ general recalcitrance on reform issues and potential obdurate opposition to their state’s Race to the Top (RTT) application. I wrote the following:

Leaving the session, I put myself in the shoes of a school board member who wants his state to win RTT funds. What if my union-supporting legislators won’t change our laws, my district’s current union contracts don’t allow for the reforms in the RTT application, and my state’s union leaders won’t sign on to the state’s reform-oriented proposal? Do we lose access to several hundred million dollars because of the union’s opposition? I’d probably look to the Department of Education for guidance.

A recent article by Education Week’s Steve Sawchuk provides more grist for the worry mill. Two state unions are already telling their local affiliates to oppose their state’s applications, and in a couple other states (almost certainly because states are concerned about the consequences of union opposition) applications give unions an inordinate say over whether meaningful reforms can be implemented.

States with powerful unions are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The application requires states to get signatures of support from important education stakeholders (such as unions). So a state proposal without union support will be viewed critically by federal evaluators. But if a state does what’s necessary to get union support, the application may be seriously weakened, again jeopardizing the proposal’s appeal.

More and more, it’s looking like the states that win grants are going to be those with right-to-work laws or simply weaker unions. If that’s the case—strong union states losing out on hundreds of millions of federal dollars—that would send a powerful message about education reform and possibly cause political headaches for the administration.

Last week, Nick Schulz asked an interesting question about school districts’ responses to the recession—specifically whether any have decided to cut pay (due to deteriorating budgets) instead of furloughing or laying off staff.

From what I’ve seen, the answer is not so much. A big part of the explanation is collective bargaining agreements. In order to cut pay, most districts would need to go back to the bargaining table and get their local unions to agree to pay concessions. That hasn’t happened to the extent I expected. One quite stark example comes from Connecticut. The Republican-American newspaper (of Waterbury), quoted the head of the state’s teacher union saying that teachers aren’t responsible for budget troubles, so they shouldn’t be expected to fix them.

Looking through my notes, I’ve only run across a couple of instances of pay reductions. For instance, I believe in California a bus drivers’ union agreed to temporary cuts in compensation.

What I’m finding more often is that districts are making temporary cuts to other line items, such as summer school, early childhood programs, and bus routes. As Rick Hess has been arguing, other industries use downturns to look far into the future and make big changes so they can be better positioned for the long haul once the economy turns around. But it appears that school districts make short-term, short-sighted cuts to ride out the storm, enabling them to go back to business as usual when their budgets recover.

Late last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a speech to state legislators in San Diego. Like late West Coast NBA games, it got little coverage in the east. But it included an extremely important nugget that could prove very meaningful.

Readers of this blog know that I’ve been fuming that states and districts used $50 billion in stimulus funding to merely protect jobs and existing programs instead of to invest in important reforms and innovations. (I wrote about it in these reports and all but incessantly here.)

So I was surprised and disappointed when the White House claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was accomplishing both stabilization and reform in its October reports, despite weighty evidence to the contrary. I was even more disappointed that the Department of Education didn’t address this issue.

So I was gratified to read the following lines from the secretary’s San Diego speech:

To date, states are taking one of two paths in response to the Recovery Act programs. In the face of budget deficits, some states have treated the stimulus money as a one-shot deal to prop up the status quo, rather than to leverage and seed far-reaching improvements in student learning.

This was, to my knowledge, the very first time Secretary Duncan publicly addressed the misuse of these funds. More importantly, this acknowledgment could (and certainly should) have serious implications.

Early this year, Duncan said, “states that are simply investing in the status quo will put themselves at a tremendous competitive disadvantage for getting those additional funds.” By “those additional funds,” he was referring to the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competitive grant program.

In last week’s speech, the secretary also said that the majority of states have used ARRA funds well. I can’t find evidence of that, but the admission that at least some states have behaved badly takes precedence in my mind, because he has publicly laid the groundwork for denying a state a Race to the Top grant.

Thanks to this small passage in a completely overlooked speech, my anticipation of Race to the Top award announcements this spring is significantly heightened. If the secretary names states that were denied several hundred million dollars because they invested previous funds in the status quo, I’ll be the first to congratulate and praise him. But if these scofflaws go untouched, it will be a first-rate disappointment.

Ed Week’s Alyson Klein reports on a new stimulus-like education jobs bill just introduced in the House. Under the legislation, states would get another $23 billion packaged like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s State Fiscal Stabilization Fund—funding to back-fill education budget holes and protect education jobs. But as Klein notes, unlike the SFSF, this program would have no “assurances” section—promises made by governors that their state will advance key reforms in exchange for lots of federal funding.

This would be a huge mistake. As I’ve chronicled in these reports (and discuss further in an upcoming Education Next article), nearly all of the funding from formula-based programs in the ARRA has been used for maintenance of the status quo despite the law’s assurances and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s consistent reminders to states that they needed to spend the money on reform as well as stabilization. (Note Klein’s first update—someone ought to tell House Committee on Education and Labor Chairman George Miller that the SFSF isn’t bringing about big reforms.)

So needless to say, if you care about reform first and foremost, a program just like the SFSF but with fewer provisions driving reform isn’t such a hot idea. If, however, your primary interest is in protecting existing education jobs and programs, this legislation might be welcome news.

The Obama administration’s Department of Education recently launched what I believe will become its most expensive, most lamentable, and most avoidable folly. Declaring that, “as a country, we all need to get into the turnaround business,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the availability of $3.5 billion in School Improvement Grants.

Years of research have clearly demonstrated that efforts to fix our most persistently failing schools seldom work. Moreover, turnarounds in other fields and industries have the same distressing track record. (This Education Next article fully discusses this matter.)

If the secretary’s declaration were merely rhetorical, it would only demonstrate a lack of appreciation for the sad history of turnarounds. But it’s entirely more worrisome than that. During a speech at the 2009 National Charter Schools Conference, Duncan encouraged the nation’s best charter school operators to move away from their magnificent core competency—starting new schools for disadvantaged students—and get into the turnaround business. If they unwisely take him up on the offer, the opportunity costs could be staggering.

And of course, there is the matter of money. At $3.5 billion, this grant program is mammoth, meaning we are about to spend an enormous sum of money on a line of work with a remarkable track record of failure. Exacerbating the problem, the final guidelines allow for tepid interventions (the “transformation” model) to qualify as a turnaround attempt. While districts could choose to pursue more radical activities, history teaches us that few will.

What’s fascinating, however, is that the final departmental documents spell out just how unsuccessful previous school improvement efforts have been. The department even takes states and districts to task for their insufficient efforts in years gone by (see Education Week’s excellent summary here.) This makes the department’s permission of the weak transformation model so perplexing.

But it also brings into stark relief Duncan’s underlying philosophy about fixing failing schools. He seems to believe that we’ve failed to date because we haven’t tried hard enough, and that if states have all of this money and the federal government’s guidance, we’ll do much, much better.

I think the history of education reform and turnaround efforts in other fields refute that position. We’ve tried drastic fixes of the most chronically underperforming schools before and they generally haven’t worked. The for-profit sector has also found that its lowest performers seldom go from the very bottom to the top. Hence my advocacy for closures and new starts.

Nevertheless, the die is cast, I’ve lost, and we’re about to pursue school turnarounds with vigor. My hope now is that the department undertakes an evaluation of this effort (like it is doing with the Race to the Top) so we can learn from this massive investment and be better positioned in the future to address the nation’s lowest-performing schools.

I spoke about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the Race to the Top (RTT) to a group of school board members in California earlier this week. They had many interesting questions and comments (e.g., on implementing special education requirements, addressing the needs of migrant students, developing a great curriculum)—the kinds of real-world, nuts-and-bolts issues that sometimes get lost inside the beltway.

Two things in particular stood out. First, I asked if any of them knew that the Department of Education had released a document earlier this year explaining how ARRA’s funding for Title I, the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act could be spent in reform-oriented ways. Only one of about 80 individuals knew that such a document existed. Similarly, almost none of them had heard of the department’s What Works Clearinghouse. Goes to show just how far removed, literally and figuratively, Washington is from most of the country.

Second, after a long discussion about getting competitive for the RTT, I got question after question about the state’s teachers union. The board members didn’t know how it was possible to advance legislation related to charter schooling, merit pay, and other reforms when the union and the legislators who listen to them are adamantly opposed.

I, unfortunately, had little by way of advice.

It’s instructive to go to the official RTT information in the Federal Register and do a search for “collective bargaining agreement” or “union contact.” Neither appears in the thousands of words. Not even once. You would think they are completely unrelated to education reform.

The word “union” only shows up four times, and three of them are related to areas where the state application should include a union representative’s signature showing support for a portion of the plan.

Leaving the session, I put myself in the shoes of a school board member who wants his state to win RTT funds. What if my union-supporting legislators won’t change our laws, my district’s current union contracts don’t allow for the reforms in the RTT application, and my state’s union leaders won’t sign on to the state’s reform-oriented proposal? Do we lose access to several hundred million dollars because of the union’s opposition? I’d probably look to the Department of Education for guidance.