In a short video narrated by my colleague and Politics K-12 guest blogger Dakarai Aarons, Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson raises the idea of a “lockbox” on education and financial reform.

He was referring to the big changes going on in Detroit Public Schools, as chronicled by Dakarai in this must-read story. Johnson said that whatever education and budgetary reform initiatives that the district’s state-appointed emergency financial manager helps implement need to be carried through by his successors. Or, as he described in the video embedded below, these reforms need to be “lockboxed.”

In a much different sense, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is asking states and other school districts to embark on transformative change, too. And he’s using the Race to the Top program as his instrument to leverage this change. But soon, we’re going to start seeing new education chiefs, governors, and state board of education members take the helm. They may be from different political parties -- and they may, or may not, have had a role in deciding how to use a Race to the Top grant or other stimulus money for education reform.

Can, or should, stimulus reforms be lockboxed?

Decline and Fall from Education Week on Vimeo.