Education Week - July 10, 2013 - 29

EDUCATION WEEK
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia,
Louisiana, Mississippi, South
Carolina, Texas, and Virginia—as
well as certain jurisdictions in several
other states.
Shelby County, Ala., challenged
the 2006 renewal, arguing that it
impinges on state sovereignty.
Chief Justice Roberts said the
massive record compiled by lawmakers
in support of the 2006
renewal of the law did not show
“anything approaching the pervasive,
flagrant, widespread, and
rampant discrimination that faced
Congress in 1965, and that clearly
distinguished the covered jurisdictions
from the rest of the nation at
that time.”
“Congress did not use the record
it compiled to shape a coverage
formula grounded in current conditions,”
the chief justice added. “It
instead re-enacted a formula based
on 40-year-old facts having no logical
relation to the present day.”
“Things have changed dramati-
cally” nearly 50 years after the
law’s adoption, the chief justice
said. “Blatantly discriminatory
evasions of federal decrees are rare.
And minority candidates hold office
at unprecedented levels.”
His opinion was joined by Justices
Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas,
and Alito.
Sharp Dissent
Justice Ginsburg wrote a sharp
dissent joined by Justices Breyer,
Sotomayor, and Kagan. She said
that even though registration and
voting by minority-group members
increased significantly under
the Voting Rights Act, “other barriers
sprang up to replace the
tests and devices that once impeded
access to the ballot.”
Those included racial gerrymandering,
switches from single-member
electoral districts to at-large
membership of city councils and
school boards, and discriminatory
annexations, Justice Ginsburg
said.
She cited, among other examples,
a 2003 case in which Afri-
can-Americans won a majority of
the seats for the first time on the
Charleston County, S.C., school
board. In response, the outgoing
board proposed to switch to an atlarge
voting system. The Justice
Department invoked Section 5 of
the law to block the change.
That example, “and scores more
like them, fill the pages of the legislative
record” that was before
Congress in 2006, Justice Ginsburg
said.
Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at
the Cato Institute, a Washington
think tank that has a limited-government,
free-market orientation,
filed a brief on Shelby County’s
side that cited statistics showing
that African-Americans have
been elected to state legislatures,
city councils, and school boards in
Section 5-covered states at higher
rates than elsewhere.
“The Supreme Court was correct
in 1966 when it upheld” the
Voting Rights Act’s coverage formula
and special procedures for
covered jurisdictions “because of
the extraordinary facts on the
ground,” Mr. Shapiro said. “And
it is correct now because there
are no longer those extraordinary
facts on the ground that justify
these special measures.”
President Barack Obama’s administration,
which discussed in
its briefs numerous actions under
the Voting Rights Act involving
school districts, joined civil rights
groups in expressing deep disappointment
over the ruling.
“This decision represents a seri-
ous setback for voting rights,” Attorney
General Eric Holder said
at a news conference. He stressed
that while covered jurisdictions
no longer require preclearance for
voting changes, the Justice Department
will vigorously monitor
such changes for potential violations
of Section 2 of the act, which
allows any party to sue over race
discrimination in voting.
“Our country has changed for the
better since 1965 but the destination
we seek has not yet been reached,”
the attorney general said.
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JULY 10, 2013 www.edweek.org
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29
Student-Loan Rates Rise; Fix Eyed
By Caralee Adams
Student financial-aid advocates
are clinging to hopes that Congress
will reverse the doubling of interest
rates for federally subsidized
student loans to 6.8 percent when
it returns from recess, even as they
voice disappointment about lawmakers’
failure to stave off the increase
prior to the July 1 deadline.
Last year, when lawmakers confronted
the same scenario, a compromise
was struck on June 29
to extend the 3.4 percent rate on
federally subsidized student loans
for one year. This time, several longterm
proposals were floated tying
rates to the market. But the parties
couldn’t agree on the details,
including setting a cap on rates.
“It feels like the same old story
now with Washington broken,” said
Rory O’Sullivan, the policy and research
director for Young Invincibles,
a Washington-based nonprofit
advocacy group. “This time around,
there were lots of policy ideas about
how to fix things, and even then,
we couldn’t get anything done. It’s
pretty disappointing.”
There was some hope among supporters
that Congress could pass
legislation to retroactively affect
rates when it reconvened after the
July 4 holiday. The U.S. Senate was
scheduled this week to consider
an extension of the 3.4 percent
rate for one year. “We think it’s the
best option at this point,” said Mr.
O’Sullivan, adding that with the
new school year around the corner,
action can’t be delayed much longer.
The latest plan, a bipartisan proposal
in the Senate, was rejected
by that chamber’s leadership. The
U.S. House of Representatives had
offered its own solution, as did the
Obama administration.
All approaches included some
form of linking future interest
rates on loans to the 10-year
Treasury note rates, but student
groups argued that interest rates
in the proposals started higher
than necessary and that the caps
were too high to offer meaningful
protection to students.
Increase Triggered
When Congress failed to intervene
before July 1, the College
Cost Reduction and Access Act
expired, triggering the automatic
increase for students now taking
out need-based Stafford loans. The
increased finance charges are estimated
to affect nearly 8 million
students as they take out new
loans. For students who take out
the average loan of about $3,600,
it would translate into about
$1,000 more in interest fees for
the entire life of the loan. Multiply
that by four years of college, and
it could increase costs by $4,000,
according to Gigi Jones, the director
of research for the National Association
of Student Financial Aid
Administrators.
“There’s not much evidence to
suggest that students are not going
to college because of this,” said
Clare McCann, a policy analyst
for the New America Foundation,
a bipartisan public-policy institute
in Washington. Still, she said, there
is concern that students might look
at the new interest rate and decide
to take out a private loan, which
doesn’t have the same protections
for students as federal loans.
In pushing for lower rates, many
advocates point to the latest figures
that show two-thirds of college
seniors graduated with debt
averaging $26,600 per borrower.
Planning Complications
The change in loan rates makes
planning for college expenses uncertain,
said Megan McClean, the
director of policy and federal relations
for the financial-aid administrators
group.
“We don’t think putting a one- or
two-year fix like we did last year is
a good policy in this circumstance,”
she said. The short-term fixes
can be expensive—$6 billion last
year—and were paid for, in part,
by restricting eligibility.
She also said financial-aid officers
on campuses across the
country have been preparing for
the interest-rate increase and are
proceeding as if the new 6.8 percent
rate is permanent, although
talk of Congress possibly intervening
can complicate the process.
“It’s tough not to know until the
actual day what your rate is going
to be and how to plan for it,” said
Ms. McClean.
Evaluation Dispute
Highlights Tension
Over Md. Policies
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27
activity was a but-for cause of the alleged adverse action by the
employer.”
Publishing
The court ruled 6-3 in Kirtsaeng v.John Wiley & Sons Inc. (No.
11-697) that the “first sale” doctrine, which allows the purchaser of a
copyrighted item to redistribute it, applies to copyrighted works that
are lawfully published outside the United States. The case involved a
Thai national and U.S. graduate student who obtained cheaper versions
of college textbooks published overseas and sold them in the United
States. The ruling was a defeat for educational publishers, but eased
fears of educators and librarians over the use of such overseas works.
Police Dogs
The court ruled in two cases about the police use of drug-sniffing
dogs, a practice that has grown in use in the schools. In Florida v.
Harris (No. 11-817), the court unanimously rejected the state supreme
court’s decision that called for broad certification requirements
of such dogs to support warrantless searches. In Florida v. Jardines
(No. 11-564), the court ruled 5-4 that the police use of a dog to sniff
for drugs outside a home was a search under the Fourth Amendment.
But that ruling left unclear whether the same police use of dogs in
the corridors of buildings where they are invited, such as schools,
would be subject to the same constraint.
—MARK WALSH
they also wanted the first high-stakes year for evaluations
to be pushed back for one year.
“We want local autonomy. There’s not a one-size fits
all [solution],” said MSEA President Betty Weller.
Ms. Lowery subsequently offered to phase in the 20
percent requirement over three years, beginning in
2013-14, but some districts and the MSEA continued
to resist. They threatened early last month to seek
a court injunction to stop the state from imposing a
model evaluation on districts it deemed had unsatisfactory
evaluation deals.
On June 13, Ms. Lowery announced that the state
had reached long-term evaluation deals with all 22
of the relevant districts, and that four districts had
agreed to the phase-in.
But the MSEA and the Public School Superintendents’
Association of Maryland immediately disputed Ms. Lowery’s
announcement that there were long-term deals in
place and that any districts agreed to the phase-in. They
said that although a court injunction is off the table for
now, the expiration of Race to the Top and NCLB waivers
next year means all bets are off after the 2013-14 school
year. (Waivers can be renewed, however.)
State education officials are scheduled to meet with
union leaders from across the state and local superintendents
on July 15 to discuss Secretary Duncan’s
latest offer of flexibility and other evaluation issues.
William Reinhard, the state education department’s
spokesman, said the state is interested in the new fed-
eral flexibility offer and that it hopes to “get everybody
on the same page” soon regarding evaluations.
Carl Roberts, the executive director of the state superintendents’
group, said he expects that districts
next year will report data from state assessments in
evaluations,but that the results won’t inform highstakes
decisions.
In an analysis of Race to the Top progress in Maryland
released last February, the federal Education Department
said problems in evaluation field tests had
endangered full implementation for 2013-14.
Union Concerns
Anna Laughlin, the president of the 840-member
Education Association of St. Mary’s County, who in
conjunction with her district’s superintendent, Michael
Martirano, had fought Ms. Lowery’s interpretation of
evaluation requirements, stated in early June, “I wish
we hadn’t signed onto [Race to the Top].” In contrast
to the present situation, she said, last year the state
department actually held up the evaluation deal the
St. Mary’s district made with teachers as a model.
Ms. Weller, the state teachers’ union president, also
indicated some regret about how Race to the Top has
played out, stating that most districts had received
very little of the $125 million given to local jurisdictions
under the grant program in exchange for onerous,
and uniform, rules and programs. She also indicated
her continued opposition to test scores being
used in teacher-employment decisions at all.
In fact, recent dramatic fights over teacher evaluations
under Race to the Top in Maryland, as well as
in Hawaii and New York, may indicate that reckoning
is coming for the program. Maryland Gov. Martin
O’Malley, a Democrat who led the state’s Race to the
Top push, is also leaving office at the end of 2014.
“Can it outlive the money, the promises, and the politicians
who advanced it at the state level?” Mr. Smarick
said of Race to the Top.
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Education Week - July 10, 2013

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