Obama, GOP governors share many views on education

KIMBERLY HEFLING

AP Edu­ca­tion Writer

WASHINGTON — A funny thing is hap­pen­ing between Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and many Repub­li­can gov­er­nors when it comes to improv­ing America’s schools: They are mostly get­ting along.

After Obama spoke recently to the nation’s gov­er­nors, Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jin­dal pub­licly praised the administration’s efforts on edu­ca­tion, and Vir­ginia Repub­li­can Gov. Bob McDon­nell said there was a lot of room for “com­mon agree­ment” on fix­ing schools. Ten­nessee Gov. Bill Haslam, another Repub­li­can, intro­duced Obama in Sep­tem­ber at the White House before the pres­i­dent announced that states could be freed from strin­gent rules under the No Child Left Behind law if they met cer­tain conditions.

GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels freely cred­its Obama and Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Arne Dun­can for help­ing to pave the way for a “tec­tonic” shift in edu­ca­tion, includ­ing com­pre­hen­sive law changes passed in his home state of Indi­ana last year that include the rig­or­ous use of teacher eval­u­a­tions and one of the nation’s most expan­sive uses of vouch­ers to help par­ents send chil­dren to pri­vate schools.

Repub­li­can gov­er­nors are unabashedly behind some of the most aggres­sive changes in edu­ca­tion pol­icy today, from Indi­ana to Florida, where Repub­li­can Gov. Rick Scott suc­cess­fully pushed law changes to estab­lish merit pay and elim­i­nate tenure pro­tec­tions for new teach­ers, to Wis­con­sin, where Gov. Scott Walker seeks statewide screen­ing of incom­ing kinder­gart­ners and require­ments that ele­men­tary school teach­ers take a more rig­or­ous licens­ing exam.

While Obama doesn’t agree with all these actions, he and the gov­er­nors have found com­mon ground in a num­ber of areas, includ­ing teacher eval­u­a­tion sys­tems with con­se­quences, merit pay for teach­ers, hold­ing teach­ers and schools more account­able for how much stu­dents learn, and char­ter schools, which are pub­lic schools run by an inde­pen­dent third party.

Obama’s award­ing of waivers from No Child Left Behind in exchange for a promise by states to improve how they pre­pare and eval­u­ate stu­dents has been pop­u­lar with many gov­er­nors of both par­ties, as has been the oppor­tu­nity to com­pete for bil­lions of dol­lars in the administration’s “Race to the Top” com­pe­ti­tion, which rewards states for pur­su­ing poli­cies Obama supports.

“In today’s polit­i­cal world, where you can’t get Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats to agree on any­thing hardly in Wash­ing­ton, I think that’s one area where you have a lot of Repub­li­can gov­er­nors that would say we don’t agree with every­thing the pres­i­dent wants to do on edu­ca­tion, but there are a lot of things we do,” Haslam said in a phone interview.

For Repub­li­can gov­er­nors, there are no wor­ries about polit­i­cal alle­giances to pow­er­ful teach­ers’ unions whose mem­bers his­tor­i­cally con­tribute to and vol­un­teer heav­ily for Democ­rats’ cam­paigns. In fact, many of their efforts have led to strong clashes with unions. Both New Jer­sey GOP Gov. Chris Christie and Jin­dal, for exam­ple, at times have called on a teach­ers’ union pres­i­dent in their home state to resign because of com­ments the union pres­i­dent made.

While Obama still must tread care­fully when deal­ing with teach­ers’ unions, Joe Williams, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Democ­rats for Edu­ca­tion Reform, said Obama’s never had a cozy rela­tion­ship with them, so that has also freed him to advo­cate for changes on his own terms. And that’s earned him some respect among Repub­li­can governors.

Christie, who is seek­ing changes in his state’s tenure laws, said recently on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Obama’s embrace of ideas his­tor­i­cally opposed by teach­ers’ unions is a “Nixon-to-China kind of moment,” mean­ing Obama is act­ing in a way con­trary to what is expected.

“We need a Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent to make these reforms in edu­ca­tion to lead the way,” Christie said.

Daniels said in a phone inter­view that because Obama and Dun­can embraced many edu­ca­tion posi­tions that their labor allies oppose, “you see the evi­dence every­where of peo­ple peel­ing off from the defense of the sta­tus quo and say­ing we’ve got to make these changes for the ben­e­fit of children.”

Daniels added, “What that means, of course, is that the ‘Hell, no’ lobby has been increas­ingly isolated.”

Daniels said that lobby includes not just teach­ers’ unions, but orga­ni­za­tions that rep­re­sent school boards, super­in­ten­dents and oth­ers in the edu­ca­tion estab­lish­ment reluc­tant to embrace change.

Obama, after months of por­tray­ing Repub­li­cans as obsta­cles to his more ambi­tious eco­nomic pro­pos­als, is seek­ing com­mon ground with Repub­li­cans on edu­ca­tion and on sev­eral more mod­est ini­tia­tives. Obama won an exten­sion of a pay­roll tax cut with Repub­li­can sup­port and has endorsed a leg­isla­tive pack­age assem­bled by House Repub­li­cans to help small busi­nesses. Obama and House Repub­li­cans have also empha­sized areas in which their energy pol­icy agen­das over­lap, includ­ing eas­ing some bar­ri­ers to nat­ural gas pro­duc­tion, despite sharp dif­fer­ences over other ways to address energy self-sufficiency. Both sides also are work­ing on infra­struc­ture spend­ing, espe­cially a new high­way bill.

One of the major areas of dis­agree­ment between Obama and the GOP gov­er­nors is on the use of taxpayer-funded vouch­ers for pri­vate school. Many Democ­rats believe vouch­ers chip away at dol­lars crit­i­cal to pub­lic schools, and the Obama admin­is­tra­tion opposes them.

Jin­dal, who is push­ing for a new voucher pro­gram in his home state, said in a phone inter­view that while he sup­ports many of Obama’s edu­ca­tion efforts, he does “strongly” dis­agree with the administration’s posi­tion on vouch­ers. “As long as there are chil­dren trapped in fail­ing schools, we need to pro­vide par­ents with more choices and ensure them more oppor­tu­ni­ties,” he said.

Another area of dis­agree­ment is on the restrict­ing of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights that affect teach­ers — a high-profile issue sup­ported by Repub­li­can gov­er­nors in Ohio, Wis­con­sin and Indi­ana. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion opposes tak­ing away these rights.

While some Repub­li­can gov­er­nors sup­port end­ing tenure pro­tec­tions for teach­ers, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion has said tenure should be made more mean­ing­ful so that it’s based not just on years of time in the class­room but on proof that stu­dents are learning.

The drive by the gov­er­nors is accel­er­ated by sev­eral fac­tors, includ­ing a grow­ing body of evi­dence that many stu­dents sim­ply aren’t learn­ing and that effec­tive teach­ers can dra­mat­i­cally alter stu­dents’ life­time earn­ings, as well as the push in this tough fis­cal envi­ron­ment to ensure all dol­lars are spent wisely. The bot­tom line, said Scott, is that there’s a “direct tie between edu­ca­tion and jobs.”

It’s not just Repub­li­can gov­er­nors turn­ing to edu­ca­tion. Among the Democ­rats, Gov. John Hick­en­looper in Col­orado recently signed a bill to imple­ment new teacher tenure rules and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in recent weeks forged a deal on teacher evaluations.

Williams said in the ’90s, there was a push for changes in edu­ca­tion by gov­er­nors, but it dried up. He says Obama gave the “mojo” back to governors.

Not all Repub­li­can gov­er­nors are pleased with Obama’s edu­ca­tion poli­cies. Some, like many Repub­li­cans in Con­gress, view Obama’s efforts on edu­ca­tion as fed­eral over­reach. For­mer GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for exam­ple, refused to have his state com­pete in the Race to the Top com­pe­ti­tion, say­ing it “smacks of a fed­eral takeover of pub­lic schools.”

After the president’s speech to gov­er­nors, in which Obama urged them to invest more state resources in edu­ca­tion, South Car­olina Repub­li­can Gov. Nikki Haley told reporters the meet­ing was “inter­est­ing and some­what frustrating.”

“My take­away was here was a pres­i­dent who was say­ing we could be doing more on edu­ca­tion, and here is a pres­i­dent that said give more money to edu­ca­tion, but this is also a pres­i­dent that is not unty­ing any of the strings that come with the fed­eral man­dates,” Haley said.

Posted by AP News on Mar 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.