Education plan shuffles political deck in Washington

By Nia-Malika Henderson

President Barack Obama’s brewing fight with teachers unions over his plans to overhaul education legislation could end up being a political trifecta for liberal Democrats, Republicans and a president eager to demonstrate he can work across party lines.

Obama has signaled that he wants a rewrite of No Child Left Behind on his desk this year—and proposed a $1 billion bonus for education should that happen.

The push to pass the legislation could scramble the political desks, with benefits to all sides.

Progressives could take on Obama and side with the powerful teachers unions, traditionally staunchly aligned with Democrats, who have harshly criticized Obama for what they see as a test-heavy approach to education that puts an undue burden on teachers.

At the same time, those no votes would be unlikely to derail the legislation, since Republicans, eager to shed the “party of no” label, could support Obama and go back to their home districts with a popular domestic issue to run on.

As for Obama, a rewrite of No Child Left Behind on his desk would let him claim a bipartisan legislative win, something that has so far eluded his administration on other domestic issues like health care and climate change legislation.

“Generally speaking, this is something that the majority of everybody would look forward to voting on and immediately send out the press release,” said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist. “For the majority and for most parents, they want more help to get their kids educated, not some theoretical argument.”

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has emerged as one of the few stars in Obama’s cabinet, spent the weekend on a listening tour in Iowa with Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the Senate leader on education legislation.

Congress will begin hearings this week on Obama’s approach to education, which will officially be submitted Monday as a 41-page “blueprint” on NCLB, the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which was originally passed in 1965. In addition to the $1 billion bonus for passage this year, Obama’s budget proposal calls for a $3 billion boost to the education budget, with most of the new money going to competitive grants for states, districts and schools that align themselves with the administration’s new approach.

While Obama has made overtures to teachers unions over the last year, the plan’s emphasis on testing, teacher evaluations, competitive grants, charter schools and removing some benefits based on seniority, including giving administrators more power to reassign teachers, has rankled the two largest groups.

“What excited educators about President Obama’s hopes and vision for education on the campaign trail has not made its way into this blueprint,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, a 3.2 million member union, said in a statement. The new plan, he said, “still relies on standardized tests to identify winners and losers.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million member American Federation of Teachers said that she was “surprised and disappointed that the Obama administration proposed this as a starting point for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.”

Weingarten, who last year called Obama’s approach “Bush III,” said that in the blueprint, “teachers are being blamed unfairly for the schools’ problems.”

Obama infuriated teachers unions earlier this month when he praised a failing Rhode Island school in an underserved area for firing all of its teachers in order to break a union contract after a compensation deal over an extended school day couldn’t be reached.

The administration’s new plan calls for implementing data systems for tracking a teacher’s growth and effectiveness in the classroom and recruiting and placing effective teachers in underserved areas.

“Reforming our schools to deliver a world-class education is a shared responsibility – the task cannot be shouldered by our nation’s teachers and principals alone,” Obama says in the blueprint.

“This is just beginning to shake out and people’s positions haven’t yet solidified and I expect that things will evolve,” said Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, a nonprofit education advocacy group. “But I think everybody wants it to happen this year, there is a lot of enthusiasm and determination to move this forward.”

The No Child Left Behind Law, one of President George W. Bush’s signature domestic achievements garnered overwhelming bipartisan support, with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy serving as a sponsor—the bill passed the House 384 to 45 and the Senate by a vote of 91 to 8 in 2001. Many Democrats later became critics of the bill, which teachers said forced them to “teach to the test.”