Education Week - February 6, 2013 - 20

EDUCATION WEEK

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

GOVERNMENT

www.edweek.org

POLITICS

POLICY
BRIEF

Race to Top Winners See Progress, Hurdles
D.C., Georgia, and
Maryland Struggle
By Michele McNeil
At the midway point of the federal Race to the Top program, the
list of accomplishments for the 11
winning states and the District
of Columbia is getting longer,
but the challenges are more formidable as the time frame gets
shorter, according to a progress
report issued by the U.S. Department of Education last week.
The second annual report on

the recipients of $4 billion in competitive grants under the Obama
administration’s signature education redesign program reveals
that winners are struggling in
two areas: implementing teacherand principal-evaluation systems,
and building and upgrading data
systems that will do everything
from inform classroom lessons to
identify students at risk of academic failure.
And Education Department officials say they are most worried
about three recipients for which
second-year performance took a
nose dive: the District of Columbia, Georgia, and Maryland.

Georgia and Maryland have
both struggled with implementing
their teacher-evaluation systems,
while the District’s sluggish pace
on school turnarounds means it
has only worked with one persistently low-achieving school with
its grant funds so far.
“This is really hard work, and
there will always be bumps in the
road,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a Jan. 31 call
with reporters.

Halfway Point
Meanwhile, Hawaii—although
it retains its “high-risk status” for

State Chief in Wyo.
Has Powers Slashed

its entire $75 million grant—has
made tremendous progress in the
last year, department officials said,
even without an approved teachers’ contract that is holding up
the full implementation of its new
teacher-evaluations system.
“Hawaii, which clearly had a
rough start, is now making real
progress,” Mr. Duncan said.
The report, which spans fall 2011
to fall 2012, reveals the department’s perspective on how things
are going with the program funded
by the 2009 economic-stimulus
package.
Last year, the Education DePAGE 24 >

Top K-12 Leader in Congress Sets Departure Date
By Alyson Klein
The retirement in two years of
the most powerful lawmaker in
Congress when it comes to education policy and funding—U.S.
Sen. Tom Harkin—will create a
major leadership turnover that
affects everything from the future
of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act to special education
issues, which the Iowa Democrat
has championed for decades.
Sen. Harkin sits at the top of
both the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee—which oversees education
legislation—and the Senate appropriations subcommittee that deals
with K-12 funding. He announced
Jan. 26 that he would not run for a
sixth term in 2014, and it’s unclear
who will take over those influential
roles after his departure.

Susan Walsh/AP

Implications for ESEA?
Education advocates couldn’t yet
say what Sen. Harkin’s move will
mean for the long-stalled renewal
of the esea, the current version
of which is the No Child Left Behind Act, or the legislative logjam
that faces his committee. Congress
must also act to reauthorize a host
of other education laws, including
the Higher Education Act and the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Sen. Harkin has already made
a start on the esea, working on a
bipartisan update of the law with
Wyoming Sen. Michael B. Enzi,
who was the Senate education committee’s top Republican in 2011.
The legislation got the support of
three of the panel’s gop members,
but never made it to the floor of
the Senate. And it was slammed
by many in the civil rights community—including a number of
groups representing students in
special education—for not pushing states to set ambitious enough
goals for student achievement.

In a move that pits Wyoming
Superintendent of Public
Instruction Cindy Hill against
the rest of state government,
Gov. Matt Mead has signed
legislation that effectively
removes Ms. Hill from
overseeing the state’s public
schools, and transfers her
duties to a new director that
Mr. Mead appointed Jan. 29.
In response, Ms. Hill showed
up at the press conference
Mr. Mead had called that
same day to discuss the bill
he signed—and she and
her attorney served him
with a lawsuit challenging
the constitutionality of his
decision, which essentially
reduces Ms. Hill’s position
to a ceremonial one, the
Casper Star-Tribune reported.
(Ms. Hill and Mr. Mead are
Republicans elected in 2010.)
Ms. Hill said Jan. 31 she
would run for governor in
2014.
Recently, state lawmakers
have been sharply critical of
how Ms. Hill has managed
the development of the state’s
new accountability system
and other aspects of public
education in Wyoming. An
independent audit released
late last year purported to
show numerous problems
with how Ms. Hill was
implementing the Wyoming
Accountability in Education
Act, signed into law last year
by Mr. Mead. Eventually,
Ms. Hill denied the audit’s
allegations.

The Obama administration appears to be hoping that Congress
will hold off for a while when it
comes to acting on the esea so
that its waivers from provisions
of the law, which have been issued to more than 30 states, have
a chance to work. What’s more,
the administration wasn’t exactly
pushing Sen. Harkin’s esea reauthorization bill, in part because it
didn’t require districts to evaluate teachers based on student
achievement. It’s also unlikely
that Sen. Harkin’s bill could have
made it through a gop-controlled
House of Representatives bent on
slimming down the size of the federal role in education.
Whether Sen. Harkin gets to use
his final congressional session to

put his own stamp on a rewrite of
the esea may hinge in part on his
willingness to challenge the Obama
administration, and to work across
the aisle with Republicans, said Vic
Klatt, a former longtime aide to Republicans on the House education
committee.
“It depends [in part] on whether
he is going to feel obligated to be
lock step with the administration,”
said Mr. Klatt, who now works as
a principal at Penn Hill Group, a
government-relations organization
in Washington. “Traditionally, in a
second term, members of a president’s party are willing to break
[with the administration] a little
more.”
And Alice Johnson Cain, who
PAGE 25 >

The retirement of
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin,
D-Iowa, who says
he will not seek
re-election next year,
is expected to set
off a shakeup of
education policy
leadership on
Capitol Hill.

Ms. Hill later had a
confrontational meeting with
lawmakers on a select committee
about the audit’s findings. A
committee member, gop Sen.
Hank Coe, accused Ms. Hill of
campaigning for his write-in
opponent in the November
election. Mr. Coe is chairman of
the Senate education committee,
and authored the bill Mr. Mead
signed.
The new director of education
in the state, Jim Rose, who has
led the Wyoming Community
College Commission, will
have power over the entire
education department, with Ms.
Hill relegated to ceremonial
positions on state boards and
commissions.
Mr. Mead said the state
attorney general has told him
the legislation does not violate
the state constitution.
Ms. Hill fired back by saying
the legislative branch of
Wyoming government has
run amok, and that the public
only had limited input before
the legislature passed the bill
hastily.
—ANDREW UJIFUSA

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - February 6, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 6, 2013