Don't let the title of this blog post confuse you: I still think the Obey amendment is an abomination. But Mickey just came in my office (on a tear!) to find out, having read my post from this morning, whether or not I think ?RTT is the most effective federal education program ever.? So let me clarify.
The edujobs bill is a bad idea, where ever the money comes from. Class sizes have decreased continuously for the last 30 years while achievement has stagnated. We've basically accepted that teacher quality is at least one of the most important, if not the most important, determinant of student success, so it makes no sense to substitute quantity over quality minus a mechanism for weeding out low performers. Combine this with the fact that teacher salaries make up the lion's share of state and district education budgets, a pensions system completely out of control, and job protection, and you've got a financially unsustainable situation. This reality is hard to argue with. So along comes the financial crisis, which finally gives districts and states the political cover to make some tough decisions about their teaching forces?and indeed, cities like NYC and Chicago have launched an attack on tenure and ?last hired, first fired? provisions?and we want to throw this opportunity out the window with a bailout? (I went into greater detail about this back in January.)
Before you think I'm heartless about all the teachers who will and have lost their jobs, let me just couch this argument in another: Layoffs stink, especially for those who lose their jobs, obviously, but they're also an economic reality. Yet education thinks that it doesn't have to abide by said economic reality, and that while everyone else is losing their jobs, we should protect teachers without any provision for quality just because. This is absurd.
Back to Obey's amendment. If the bailout is bad news, then cutting RTT, CSP, and TIF to fund it just makes it worse. No, those three programs are not the ?most effective federal programs ever? (sorry, Mickey), but they are a heckuva a lot better than the other ways in which we funnel federal dollars into our classrooms. TIF, for example, has some serious problems, namely that the programs its funded for the most part have been bonus programs layered onto salary scales, rather than substitutions for them. But some merit pay is better than no merit pay, and even (hopefully!) a step in the direction of truly changing the way teachers are paid and (even more hopefully!) the composition of the teaching workforce. And I'd be remiss to say that some of the legislative changes that RTT inspired were not momentous. (NYC's 11th hour charter cap raise anyone?) Certainly, we could do worse than these three of all the billions and billions we spend every year in education. As I said on Wednesday when we got wind of Obey's changes, maybe the saddest part is out our least worst option just got a whole lot rosier.
So now that I've explained, I've got a kicker for you. Are you ready? What if there is a silver lining for cutting RTT's funds? This isn't as crazy as it sounds, even in light of what I've written above. Right around the RTT round two deadline, the wonk community was a buzz with speculations about how Duncan could spend his remaining pot of money. He only gave away $600 million of his $4 billion in round one to Delaware and Tennessee. Despite Andy's optimism, most folks thought Duncan would spend the remaining $3.4 in round two, since he's legally obligated to either spend it or send the rest back to the Treasury. The latter seems highly unlikely. In preparation for this, Duncan announced that the Dept would likely choose fifteen states to win round two dollars. Based on what we saw in round one, it also highly unlikely that there would be fifteen?even ten?top notch applications that also had the requisite stakeholder support. But if Duncan only has $2.9 billion left (after Obey's cuts), will that mean Duncan can be more selective and that fewer states (with stronger applications) will win? That would be good news indeed.
Did you see that one coming? Betcha Obey didn't either.
?Stafford Palmieri
