By Ron Tupa, DFER’s Director of State Legislatures
Years from now, lets hope ed reformers looking back on 2011 and gauging the Republican “position” don’t liken it to the opening of Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities, with it having been among “the best of times and the worst of times” for education reform. Of course, at first blush this scenario would appear to be highly unlikely – an exaggeration at best -but sadly such a pronouncement seems less farfetched with each passing day of the new 112th Congress and with the emerging priorities of at least some self-proclaimed education reform governors.
Huh? Wasn’t 2011-12 supposed to be a ‘banner year’ for all things education reform?
At the state level at least, the optimistic prediction of 2011 as a breakthrough year for reform is true if one measures it by the toughness of the rhetoric. But the bar for what is considered real education reform should be action and that bar should be kept high. After all, over the last two years we have seen unprecedented progress in dozens of states on several fronts: private and philanthropic contributions to the cause have been in the hundreds of millions of dollars; media attention for many major legislative changes has been steady and positive; the resounding success of the ‘Race to the Top’ and ‘i3’ competitions resulted in states passing more reforms in two years than over the previous 10 or 20 years combined. Moreover, numerous new state and local level networks and advocacy organizations have been mobilized, energized, vocal and increasingly influential. Though their emphases vary, all share a common goal of fundamentally changing and improving the current system and putting student interests above those of individuals and systems that are still clinging to old and ineffective education policies.
These developments help explain President Obama’s high profile emphasis in his state of the union address, and subsequent events across the country to tout school reform over the past several weeks. With two years of successful federal reforms behind him, he is now engaged in an all-out effort to capitalize on that momentum and to push the winning combination of investing in state and local reform efforts that are bold, ambitious, and innovative.
To a large extent, Obama’s leadership has changed the overall political climate for education reform, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle. Polls show that voters, especially Democrats, are significantly more likely to support education reforms like charters and performance pay if they are told Obama supports them, than they are without knowing Obama’s position. In short, the messenger, in this case, is at least equally as important as the message itself. See the pie charts from a 2009 poll conducted jointly by the trade journal Education Next and Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) below.
With a Democratic president proposing significant reform measures (with federal money attached!) on one hand, and with groups like DFER and others providing crucial financial support and political cover on the other, reform-minded state officeholders have begun to free themselves from the collective ‘toe-the-line’ mindset that previously had them conjoined at the hip, heart, and campaign coffer with one of the Democratic Party’s largest benefactors – the teachers’ unions. Such fundamental political realignments have allowed reform legislation to foster in many states, including blue states long resistant to even the most modest measures.
With these recent history-making changes among Democrats in mind, which have been developing for 20 years, now consider the historic gains made by the Republicans in the 2010 elections. First, understand that these gains have higher total numbers than those following the Gingrich-led ‘Republican Revolution,’ of 1994. While media reports in the 2010 elections were heavily focused on national outcomes (i.e., change of power in House, and the shrinking margin of the Democratic majority in the Senate) the more significant consequence of Republican gains in the 2010 election may be the shift in power at state level. Here, the GOP gained over 685 legislative seats nationwide with the result that no fewer than 21 statehouse chambers flipped political party control, every one of them changing the state from blue to red. In fact, more legislative chambers (57) are now controlled by Republicans than at any time since the 1920’s.