RALEIGH – After the Obama administration announced that Tennessee and Delaware were the initial winners of Race to the Top grants, North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue restated her intention to claim a share of the federal funds in the second round of the process. “We clearly made a strong showing, and with more than $3 billion up for grabs in June, we will be back,” the governor said.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that between 10 and 15 states will be able to claim some of the $3.4 billion available in that second round. Because North Carolina was one of 16 finalists for the initial award, it’s reasonable to see Perdue’s statement as more than just bravado, although it’s important to keep in mind that the process starts over entirely – states that didn’t make the finalist cut last time will surely rework their applications to be more competitive.
Still, if the governor and other state education officials want to increase their odds of success significantly, all they need to do is wipe away North Carolina’s statewide cap of 100 charter schools – and make sure their allies in organized labor don’t raise a stink about it.
That’s all.
Look at the math in the initial Race to the Top round. North Carolina’s application received a score of 414 out of 500 possible points, ranking the state 12th. The charter-school section of the application is worth a maximum of 40 points. North Carolina scored only a 23, compared to Tennessee’s 30 and Delaware’s 31. It’s true that even if our state had received a perfect score, the extra 17 points would have left us 13 points below Tennessee’s 444. But in the next round, with more slots available and money at stake, an extra 7 to 17 points could well make the difference.
As the nonprofit Parents for Educational Freedom has pointed out, there’s plenty of time for North Carolina to improve its application. The deadline for the next round is June 1. The short legislative session convenes in May. State lawmakers and the governor can send a clear message of support for public-school choice by taking immediate action to lift a charter-school cap that never made much sense, and has caused great mischief.
Unfortunately, presenting a plan to improve teacher quality, offer incentives for superior performance, give parents more school choice, and ensuring accurate and transparent reporting of student achievement, and other policy matters is not sufficient for a state to secure a share of the funds. Under the Obama administration’s plan, “stakeholder support” for Rate to the Top applications is also quantified and factored into the final score. That means state officials have to make sure that local school boards and teacher unions are on board.
Not surprisingly, given the deference North Carolina politicians have traditionally paid to the education establishment, our state’s initial application received near-universal approval from the “stakeholders” – a category which, revealingly, does not appear to include students, parents, or taxpayers. If state policymakers decide to make a more competitive bid by lifting the charter-school cap, will they risk being stabbed in the back by the state’s school boards and the North Carolina Association of Educators?
Perhaps a better way to pose the question is: Will the state’s school boards and teacher union be willing to risk of being blamed for costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes North Carolinians have already sent to Washington and are just trying to get back?
Allowing the creation of more charter schools will hardly budge the establishment’s vise-like grip on North Carolina education. What it will do is give many students and their families hope for a better educational future. There are thousands of families on waiting lists for the oversubscribed charter schools we already have, and thousands more in counties where no charter schools have yet been allowed to operate. These North Carolinians deserve the opportunity to choose educational options that they think will better serve the needs of their children.
The fact that extending this opportunity to them may also brighten North Carolina’s fiscal outlook a bit should be merely an extra incentive for Perdue and the General Assembly to do the right thing.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation