I'm a bit behind on my reading, but did you hear the good news last Friday? The unemployment rate dipped last month, with over 400,000 non-agricultural jobs added, the largest bump in 10 years! Except the employer doing almost all of the hiring was?the government. I'll eschew the Tea Party ?march toward big government narrative? to point out what should be obvious: The size of government is increasing, and at a faster clip since January 2009 than would it have had November 2008 turned out differently.
That's part of the point that David Brooks was making in his much-read column (also from last Friday) ?Race to Sanity.? Whereas the Obama Administration is regulating and creating new programs like crazy in basically every other industry, education seems to be the exception. I'm with him to this point. But then he says that Race to the Top is the perfect example of this self-restraint in the ed realm. Brooks:
This is not heavy-handed Washington command-and-control. This is Washington energizing diverse communities of reformers, locality by locality, and giving them more leverage in their struggles against the defenders of the status quo.
What struck me as so off about this comment is two-fold. First of all, a few months ago, when the Administration released the ESEA blueprint, the general reaction was nearly what Brooks is saying above. Instead of trying to control all 16,000 school districts and hundreds of thousands of schools?as NCLB had done?this new vision of ESEA would target the best and the worst, and leave the rest up to their own (or states') devices. Had Washington finally realized the limits of its own power? Seemed to good to be true, especially when nearly every other sector was expanding. (Hello, healthcare!) ESEA may get a heckuva lot more prescriptive in the Congressional reauthorization process, but Obama's vision for it really did have an underlying message: Washington cannot solve the problems over every single school in the U.S.
But then there was RTT. Yes, it's a competitive grant program, not formula-driven funding. Yes, many states have been inspired by RTT to pass some promising?though not nearly as promising as we'd all hoped?legislation. But it's a far cry from ?Washington energizing diverse communities of reformers, locality by locality, and giving them more leverage in their struggles against the defenders of the status quo.?
Yes, many states have been inspired by RTT to pass some promising?though not nearly as promising as we'd all hoped?legislation. But it's a far cry from ?Washington energizing diverse communities of reformers, locality by locality, and giving them more leverage in their struggles against the defenders of the status quo.?
Exhibit A: The very list of RTT ?priorities? that makes a ?strong? application. Read: Here's a specific list of what you have to do to get the dough. Exhibit B: Tying the adoption of the ?career and college ready? standards (not necessarily the CCSSI ones, but 'twas implied)?to Title I funds. Read: Adopt the standards or have your moolah yanked. Exhibit C: Having the RTT round two app due to the day before the final CCSSI standards came out. Read: You don't need to see them, just adopt the standards already! Exhibit D: Launching the ?Race to the Test? assessment initiative before many many details about the standards have been hashed out. Read: You're going to adopt these tests, too, so might as well get the ball rolling.
That Duncan, Obama, and team have disguised this?prescriptive-ness?with a ?competitive? grant program is really not that shocking. But it certainly is not an example of Washington throwing ?command-and-control? out the window.
Which brings me to?Brooks' column in today's NYT, in which he opines on what he calls The Big Shaggy, capital T, capital B, capital S. Frankly, this image strikes me as absurd?and a bit like the Weight Watchers big shaggy orange character ?Hungry??but startlingly relevant. The Big Shaggy, he explains, is what you could call ?the?yearnings and fears that reside in [your] inner beast.? And I think I've figured out Obama's Big Shaggy: Washington command-and-control. Education may seem like the Washington outlier these days. Compared to other areas in which the Administration and Democratically-controlled Congress have gone to town recently, it's not hard to see why. But let RTT serve has a lesson for all: Obama wants to do good from Washington. It's not a malicious power grab (at least I don't think so). He just can't help himself. So though it might?seem like he's backing off of ESEA, or that RTT's competitive nature is really spurring grassroots state-led action, don't be fooled. Obama's Big Shaggy is federal command-and-control.
?Stafford Palmieri
Update 7:22: As Mike correctly pointed out to me, under Exhibit B, the Administration wasn't necessarily tying the Common Core standards to Title I, just the adoption of ?career and college ready? ones. But, I'd still posit that when that announcement came, most folks (including Mike!) agreed that Obama was referring to CCSSI, if only by implication. The point, though, still stands: Obama loves strings.
