Campaign K-12

Here at EdWeek and Campaign K-12, we've been trying to get a list of John McCain's education advisers, but with little success. Thankfully, (insert sarcasm here), someone has leaked the list to the good folks at Fordham.

A few of the advisers are crossovers from Mitt Romney's camp, including former education department officials William D. Hansen and Eugene W. Hickok. And we've known that former Arizona state superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan was on the list. Also filling McCain's education bench is Williamson Evers, who has amassed a list of enemies who may have helped briefly stall his Senate confirmation last year to the U.S. Department of Education.

Officially missing from the list is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is likely taking on a more informal, though probably no less influential, advising role.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From contributing blogger Alyson Klein:

One of my beats here at Education Week is the federal budget. And this year, Congress has been unusually sluggish (even for Congress) at getting going on education spending bills. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings hasn't even testified in the Senate yet on President Bush's education budget proposal - an event that usually happens in early spring.

Congress is dragging its feet on appropriations legislation, particularly the controversial bill that finances education, in part because they don't want to go through another veto-dance with President Bush. Democrats are betting if the next president is from their party, they'll get the increases they're looking for.

But if the next president is Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee ... Democrats might have a tough time. McCain wants to freeze discretionary spending for a year, according to this New York Times article. And it's unclear yet how his proposals to slash spending mentioned in the article would effect education since we don't know much about McCain's policies yet. But from what I've read so far, it's unlikely we would see major increases for Title I and other education programs. It would be nice to get more specificity on those proposed cuts as the general election approaches - but given the nature of elections, that's probably not gonna happen.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has said that President Bush's unwillingness to boost education spending has poisoned the well on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind Act. I wonder if that argument - no policy compromises without more money - would hold up through four years of a McCain administration.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Take a minute to read Greg Anrig's comment that further explains his reasoning that conservatives have abandoned the voucher movement. He responded to a blog item I did questioning his recent article in the Washington Monthly.

Anrig makes a good argument. But I still think that while conservatives may have abandoned economist Milton Friedman's idea for vouchers from a strict interpretation standpoint, they've merely shifted their political strategies and are trying to accomplish the same thing without calling it "vouchers."

Checker Finn weighs in with a similar argument here, saying that Anrig has been "overhasty" and that "choice is winning."

But what do you think? Is the fight for vouchers over? Are charter schools the new avenue for conservatives?

Posted by Michele McNeil at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Century Foundation's Greg Anrig penned a piece in Washington Monthly recently titled: "An Idea Whose Time Has Gone". And the subheadline reads: "Conservatives abandon their support for school vouchers."

If you can't figure it out from the headline, the gist is that the voucher movement is dead or dying, and conservatives have given up hope.

While vouchers aren't explicitly campaign related, the issue is volatile and polarizing enough that it often crops up in state and local races—and even Barack Obama has mentioned the "V" word before.

And while I don't want to argue the merits of vouchers or school choice, I feel compelled to argue that conservatives have not abandoned support for vouchers, and what's more, this idea's time has not gone.

Anrig writes: "In recent months, almost unnoticed by the mainstream media, the school voucher movement has abruptly stalled."

I'm not sure if Education Week counts as "mainstream media," but I just wrote a story stating almost the opposite: "Choice Surges Despite States' Fiscal Woes." Georgia has created a new tax credit for families and companies that donate to private school voucher funds. Louisiana approved a new tax deduction for families that pay private school tuition.

And in another story posted today online, I detail how Florida, in the midst of one of its worst budget crises ever—which has resulted in historic cuts to K-12 funding—managed to find $30 million to expand a corporate tax credit program that grants taxpayer-funded scholarships (aka vouchers) to students.

Furthermore, the controversial political action group All Children Matter, which targets anti-voucher candidates in state and local races, is still very active.

Last year, voters in Utah defeated a proposal that would have created a universal voucher program in their state. What the conservatives have given up on is the word "vouchers." The idea of vouchers is still very much alive.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago, I profiled the efforts of Brian Griffin, a campaign intern for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, and other high-schoolers who lent a hand to one of the two Democrats vying in yesterday’s closely watched Indiana presidential primary.

Griffin saw the victory by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in a broad context. “It was upsetting that we worked so hard here and we didn’t actually see the percentages being higher,” he said, referring to the roughly 2-point margin over Obama. But he added, “You can’t get too upset when you see that she hasn’t actually advanced her cause,” referring to the fact that Clinton appears to have lost ground in the battle for pledged delegates.

Griffin got an excused absence from school yesterday to work for the campaign. Beginning at 4 a.m., he and some of his friends from Plainfield Students for Barack Obama were out hanging signs on people’s front doors, showing the location of their polling place and urging them to vote for the Illinois senator. And he watched the election returns last night at a sports venue in downtown Indianapolis, with some of Obama’s Hoosier state staff.

Griffin’s thinking about going to neighboring Kentucky – which holds its contest May 20 – or making phone calls to voters in states holding upcoming primaries from home. And he’s hoping to get involved in the general election. He thinks that will be easier once he’s in college next fall.

“I’ll definitely work for Barack Obama again, if he ever needs me to,” Griffin said.

Posted by Alyson Klein at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that Obama seems poised to wrap up the Democratic nomination with a victory in North Carolina and a narrow miss in Indiana, the pundits are starting to examine where Obama goes now.

And if he wants to win, that means Obama needs to start pivoting to the center, some say. Fordham's Mike Petrilli writes on Flypaper about what that could mean for his education policy stances.

As a personal aside, I have to say that I was surprised that Obama did as well as he did in Indiana. I was expecting Hillary Clinton to more soundly beat him, and that's because, of all the candidates, it's obvious that he is the one who most represents change. And if there's one thing Hoosiers don't readily embrace, it's change. One of the most heated battles I ever witnessed as a Statehouse reporter in Indianapolis was when Gov. Mitch Daniels dared in 2005 to suggest Indiana should switch to Daylight Saving Time. (We Hoosiers thought it was silly to change our clocks to get an extra hour of daylight, even if the almost the entire rest of the country did.) After months of passionate, sometimes nasty debate, the bill passed the legislature by a single vote. So now Indiana switches its clocks like everyone else. But people still gripe about the change.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, gave a speech today at Wake Forest University designed to outline his judicial views in which he cited a famous legal challenge to the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools.

The campaign put out this press release, as well as the text of his remarks. He says that if given the opportunity, he will appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices in the mold of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

McCain cited cases in which he thinks courts have run amok by imposing the judges' personal philosophies, or have failed to properly apply the U.S. Constitution. The only school case in that litany involved the challenge a few years ago to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance pressed by California atheist Michael Newdow. (Although McCain didn't cite him by name:)

Then there was the case of the man in California who filed a suit against the entire United States Congress, which I guess made me a defendant too. This man insisted that the words "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violated his rights under the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The Ninth Circuit court agreed, as it usually does when litigious people seek to rid our country of any trace of religious devotion. With an air of finality, the court declared that any further references to the Almighty in our Pledge were -- and I quote -- "impermissible." And it was so ordered -- generations of pious, unoffending custom supposedly overturned by one decree out of a courtroom in San Francisco. And now it turns out the same litigant is back for more in the Ninth Circuit, this time demanding that the words "In God We Trust" be forever removed from our currency. I have a feeling this fellow will get wind of my remarks today -- and we're all in for trouble when he hears that we met in a chapel.

At least according to the prepared text, McCain didn't mention that the Supreme Court threw out the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit against the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge. The high court, in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, held that Newdow lacked standing to bring the challenge on behalf of his daughter. Education Week reported on that decision here.

Newdow is pressing a new suit against "under God" in the Pledge, which Edweek reported on here.

(This is being cross-posted at Education Week's School Law Blog.)

Posted by Mark Walsh at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, voters from my home state go to the polls to decide whether they want Democrats Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to head the 2008 presidential ticket. But as the two were canvassing the state, scouring for votes, something election-related happened over the weekend that could have an even bigger impact on education in the Hoosier State: Veteran Superintendent of Public Instruction Suellen Reed, who has been the state's education leader for 16 years, announced she won't run for re-election.

During my years covering education in Indiana, I got to know Reed—even visiting her farm in rural Indiana, where her mom served me homemade, fresh-from-the-oven muffins. Though a Republican, she got along with the Democratic governors she served with, and often clashed with Republicans (like current Gov. Mitch Daniels.) She ushered in the development of Indiana's statewide standardized test, pushed for and ultimately succeeded in getting more full-day kindergarten in the state, and has visited schools in all of Indiana's 92 counties. She was one of the first state schools chiefs to implement a high-stakes graduation exit exam, in effect for the Class of 2000, and stuck by the requirement even as the parents of special education students sued because they saw it as unfair.

Most times, Dr. Reed acted more like the elementary school teacher that she once was than a veteran politician. Still, she's been one of the Republican Party's top vote-getters in the state, and someone will need to step in to fill the giant hole that will remain when she leaves. In Indiana, the down-ballot statewide offices (like schools chief) are selected at party conventions. And since Indiana voters tend to vote Republican on these less glamorous statewide offices, the candidate who is picked at this year's GOP convention will probably win. Already, the line is forming.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reporting on the presidential race, I've focused a lot on the major issues - No Child Left Behind, merit pay, school choice - but the next president will have a significant say in some other issues, such as whether the federal government should help school districts invest in environmentally friendly, or "green," schools.

This past Wednesday, the House Education and Labor Committee passed a bill - on a more or less party-line vote - that would authorize about $6.4 billion a year to help districts construct "green schools." Republicans argued that financing school construction is a local responsibility and that Congress has too many unmet obligations in education already, such as funding for students in special education.

Even if the legislation makes it out of Congress this year, there's virtually no chance President Bush will approve any funding - he vetoed one of last year's education spending bills because in his view it contained too much money.

So, if a federal Green Schools program is going to happen, it'll need the support of the next administration. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is for it. She's got something about green schools on her Web site. I called the McCain and Obama campaigns yesterday to find out their positions. I'll update when I hear back. Maybe someone out there in the readership has heard one or the other mention the issue on the campaign trail?

Posted by Alyson Klein at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This dispatch comes from my colleague Lesli Maxwell, who has done a fabulous job covering recovery and reform efforts in New Orleans' public schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As part of this special project, she's spent nearly nine weeks in the city on several different trips, getting to know the students, teachers, and the man who is running the schools of New Orleans.

Now that the Chicago media have reported that Paul Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery School District in New Orleans, is “open to running again” for governor in his home state of Illinois, there will be no tamping down speculation in the Crescent City that the hard-charging schools chief is a short-timer. Today, picking up on reports of the speech that Vallas gave in Chicago on Monday, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has a story that raises good questions about who might succeed Mr. Vallas and whether his political aspirations might distract him from running the city’s post-Katrina system of low-performing schools.

Rumors about Vallas’ political ambitions began swirling soon after he got to New Orleans last summer, though some have been wilder than others. One charter school leader told me last fall that she heard that Vallas was sizing up whether to run for mayor of New Orleans! When I first asked Vallas about his gubernatorial plans early last fall, he was cagey, saying that he was committed to New Orleans and any talk of his next step would be premature.

I let a few months pass, and asked him again. He was still coy, but was willing to say that he’d be weighing the idea for the next six to eight months. Well, that deadline is approaching, and with his public statements in Chicago, it seems pretty clear that he wants folks (i.e. Democratic fundraisers!) to know that he is considering another run at the job. He narrowly lost the Democratic nomination to current Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2002. Plus, his wife and sons already live in Chicago. And, he’s been frank about his intentions to stay in New Orleans not much past two years, enough time, he believes, to stabilize the troubled post-Katrina school system and set in motion some lasting reforms. On that timeline, he would be out of New Orleans in summer of 2009, plenty of time to put a campaign together for the 2010 race.

Posted by Michele McNeil at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)