As Eric just reported, Loudoun County is playing games with its stimulus dollars. Specifically, it's asking schools to return county dollars and replacing them with federal dollars, presumably to help plug holes in other areas of the county's budget. The net result is that school spending is staying roughly the same. (Unlike the WaPo, which reported on the story,??I don't see the problem here, but I digress.) While Duncan has warned that these sorts of shenanigans will be dealt with swiftly and harshly, Loudoun's decision might not be such a bad thing.
Duncan made it clear that there were some serious reform strings attached to the stimulus dollars. The county is still using the feds' money and is still subject to those stipulations. But by supplanting instead of supplementing, it's not using the old trick of buying more reform with more money, which is typically how the unions and other status quo supporters have been forced into swallowing it. As Bruce Fuller explains, "[You] need bright, shiny new dollars to assuage skeptical teacher unions to experiment with merit pay." But in this case, the county has now handed Loudoun schools shiny new dollars with plenty reform strings attached and yanked the dull old dollars with no strings. Perhaps I'm overly??optimistic??about how much "reform" the feds can really extract from states and districts with the stimulus, but could this possibly be an example of more reform for the same price? And if yes, shouldn't we be celebrating?
