Education Week - September 30, 2015 - 16

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Impact of a Shutdown Would Vary

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From Democrats in White House Quest,
Sparse Detail So Far on K-12 Education
POLITICS K-12 |
Former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 White House contender
Hillary Clinton has proposals to eliminate college-debt and
expand universal prekindergarten. And two of her rivals for the
Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders of
Vermont and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, have also
put out far-reaching proposals for significantly boosting access to
higher education.
Missing from all this discussion about the bookends of
education? Any sort of comprehensive proposal, from any of the
leading Democratic candidates, on how they'd reshape K-12 policy.
Patrick McGuinn, a professor of political science at Drew
University, in Madison, N.J., who has studied K-12 education and
elections, offers three possible reasons. One, Democrats are staying
mum in part because Republicans are talking about the issue but
in an "ideologically extreme way to appeal to the Tea Party wing of
the GOP that dominate[s] the primaries." The GOP contenders are
creating "self-inflicted wounds" on issues such as whether to keep
the U.S. Department of Education around that will come back to
haunt the eventual nominee, McGuinn said in an email.
Two, he said, K-12 has been a "tricky" issue for Democratic
presidential candidates because of the divide between the "reform"
wing of the party and teachers' unions on issues like ending
teacher tenure and expanding charter schools. It's easier to focus
on the areas where most primary voters are in agreement, like
ending student loan debt, McGuinn wrote.
Finally, this past year has seen a big backlash around the federal
role in education and the Obama administration's K-12 agenda,
particularly when it comes to the common core and standardized
testing. "I don't think any of the Dem candidates want to be too
closely associated with all that," McGuinn wrote.
Paul Manna, a professor at the College of William and Mary in
Virginia, who has written extensively about education and politics,
is guessing there may not be enough disagreement between the
parties to draw a good contrast.
"In the K-12 arena, although Democrats and Republicans are
at odds over vouchers ... there are many more policy areas where
their preferences seem to overlap. Things such as test-based
accountability for schools and teachers, charter schools, and
others, are areas where there is less daylight between the typical
Democratic and Republican positions," he said.
Of course, there have been no point-by-point plans on K-12 from
anyone running for the GOP nod yet, either. And it's early. After
all, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the Republican nominee in 2008,
didn't come out with his edu-plan until July of that year, just three
and a half months before the election.
-ALYSON KLEIN
|

Wis. Gov. Walker Bows Out of Campaign
For Republican Presidential Nomination
POLITICS K-12 |
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced last week that he had
suspended his 2016 presidential campaign, after his poll numbers
recently dropped to less than 1 percent. The governor becomes the
second Republican to exit the contest after former Texas Gov. Rick
Perry.
In what was likely his last major push on the campaign trail,
Walker had gone back to the wellspring of his rise to national
prominence and played up his opposition to unions throughout
September. He's most famous for stripping away nearly all collective
bargaining rights for most public employees in Wisconsin through Act
10, which he signed into law in 2011.
In his speech announcing his campaign in July, Walker also played
up that political victory and touted improved educational outcomes
in his state during his tenure. Walker had also switched his position
on the Common Core State Standards, going from being a low-profile
supporter to an opponent, although the state has so far kept the
standards.
In a recent panel hosted by Heritage Action for America, a
conservative group, Walker also committed to abolishing the U.S.
Department of Education and turning over funds now controlled
by Washington to the states. He reiterated that theme in his
announcement that he was suspending his campaign, saying
that the American people should be trusted and "not the federal
government." And during the second GOP debate Sept. 16, Walker
touted improving the educational system as a preferable alternative
to increasing the minimum wage.
Walker was first elected in 2010 and then re-elected two more
times, including in a 2012 special recall election and in 2014 despite
heavy opposition from the Wisconsin Education Association Council.

-ANDREW UJIFUSA

16 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 30, 2015 | www.edweek.org

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

viding temporary financing, Bevacqua added.
Now, Bevacqua and his colleagues are "saying a few
extra prayers"-and staying in regular touch with their
congressional delegation. "We are at our wits' end to
determine how to deal with it because we face the same
problem again," he said.
Some districts that receive impact aid are in a similar
boat. About 100 districts of the 1,200 or so impact-aid
recipients earlier this year asked the Education Department for early funding, a sign that the money is a key
component of their annual budgets, said Jocelyn Bissonnette, the director of government relations at the
National Association of Federally Impacted Schools.
A shutdown that lasts only a couple days probably
wouldn't be a big hit, she said. But a protracted shutdown could force a handful of districts that rely heavily on impact aid to dip into reserves or even borrow
money. And the closure would come on top of a couple
years of flat funding for the Impact Aid program, even
as enrollments and need grows, she added.
"We have a couple districts that are nervous about
payroll in October, November" if they don't get their
payments, Bissonnette said.

Budget Battles
And, even if Congress is able to sort out the Planned
Parenthood controversy, lawmakers will have to navigate another sticky situation: the looming expiration of
a budget deal negotiated in 2013 by Sen. Patty Murray,
D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which offered a
temporary reprieve from the major programmatic cuts
known as sequestration.
That deal, which set broad spending levels for the
past two years, is set to expire this month. And Con-

gress and the Obama administration haven't come to
an agreement on whether to get rid of sequestration,
which is aimed at trimming the deficit, but has led to
some serious belt-tightening for both military and domestic programs.
If sequestration stays in place, it could mean major
cuts to education. The House Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would cut funding for the
Education Department and its programs by $2.8 billion compared to its current level, $67.2 billion. And the
panel that oversees education funding in the Senate
passed a bill that would cut funding by $1.7 billion.
Both bills would take aim at key Obama priorities,
eliminating or shrinking the School Improvement
Grant program, the Investing in Innovation initiative,
and the Preschool Development grants.

District-Level Worries
Lance Gibbon, the superintendent of the 5,600-student Oak Harbor, Wash., school district near Whidbey
Island Naval Air Station, is worried about both a shutdown and a restart to sequestration. Impact aid has
largely escaped the brunt of the cuts since the program
has been level-funded, which still doesn't leave room
for enrollment growth, advocates say. Gibbon said the
money-about $4 million a year on a $60 million budget-is critical.
If there are further cuts to federal aid or a long shutdown, the district may have to put off buying curricular
materials aligned to new standards and much-needed
facility repairs, including fixing a sagging parking lot.
And the district may have to delay hiring new staff, despite an expected influx of students.
"Our community has generously supported levies and
bonds, but our federal government has failed to do its
part," Gibbon wrote in an email.

New Supreme Court Term Set to Open
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

"Where the state imposes upon
the union a duty to deliver services,
it may permit the union to demand
reimbursement for them," he wrote
in a 1991 concurrence in Lehnert v.
Ferris Faculty Association, a case
about multiple issues involving
agency fees.
Still, noting the potentially pivotal role of Justice Scalia in the
Friedrichs case, Clement said, "I

their 2012-13 term.
The state's so-called Top Ten Percent plan, involving those at the
top of their high school graduating
classes, fills about three-quarters
of the spots in the entering class.
For the rest, the university uses a
"holistic review" in which an individual's race can sometimes be the
make-or-break factor in admissions.
In its 2013 decision in Fisher, the
Supreme Court had demanded that
a federal appeals court apply "strict

Court last spring that the appeals
court had gotten it right, faithfully
applying its precedents on the use
of race in admissions.
"The last time this case was before the [Supreme] Court, [Fisher]
did not seriously contest that UT's
plan considers race only in an individualized way," the university's
brief said. "Because it does."
The high court took up the case
anyway, leading most scholars to
believe that the court's conserva-

[Union fee collection] subsidizes those unions for the quintessentially
political act of extracting policy commitments from local elected officials."
FRIEDRICHS V. CALIFORNIA TEACHERS ASSOCIATION
Objecting Teachers' Brief

don't know that that would warm
my heart if I were the public-employee unions."
No argument date had been set
for the case as of last week.

Race-Conscious Admissions
Meanwhile, the new court term
will bring a return of the case of
Fisher v. University of Texas at
Austin (No. 14-981). At issue is the
same distinctive admissions program at the flagship UT campus
that the justices reviewed during

scrutiny," the most stringent level
of judicial review, to the UT plan.
Writing for a 7-1 majority in that
decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had said the appeals court
could not accept the university's
own assertions that its admissions
plan used race in a permissible way.
In 2014, on remand from the high
court, a panel of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New
Orleans, rejected arguments that
the holistic review plan acts as a
form of racial quota.
The university told the Supreme

tives are prepared to reject the
UT system. But whether they are
ready to use the case for a broader
pronouncement on affirmative
action is less clear. Fisher never
asked to overturn the high court's
key precedents in this area.
"It seems incredibly improbable
that the [Supreme] Court took the
case to pat the 5th Circuit on the
back and say, 'Job well done'," said
Justin Driver, a law professor at
the University of Chicago.
The Fisher case was not yet scheduled for argument as of last week.

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Education Week - September 30, 2015

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