RALEIGH — Throughout his campaign and during most of his first year in office, Barack Obama declared that charter schools would be an important component of his education agenda. It was a commitment that his reform-minded Secretary of Education Arne Duncan shared. When the time came for the Obama administration to introduce its plan, it was no surprise that Obama and Duncan made charter schools one of the centerpieces.
Obama’s first major education initiative is a $4.5 billion program called Race to the Top. Race to the Top is a competitive grant program initially designed to reward states that embraced promising educational innovations and reforms like charter schools. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has retreated from a purported commitment to charter schools — and education leaders and elected officials from North Carolina were partly to blame.
Throughout the first half of 2009, Duncan warned state education officials that artificial caps on the growth of public charter schools would put them at a competitive disadvantage for Race to the Top funds.
Despite Duncan’s warning and with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, the Democratic majority in the General Assembly (ever obedient to the will of public school advocacy groups) refused to pass bipartisan legislation that would have raised or ended the 100-school cap on charter schools. North Carolina’s cap has existed since 1997, and it remains one of the most restrictive in the nation.
Two weeks before the legislature adjourned, Gov. Bev Perdue, State Superintendent June Atkinson, State Board of Education chair Bill Harrison, and representatives from North Carolina’s largest public school advocacy organizations sent a letter to Duncan complaining that charter school caps should not preclude a state from receiving Race to the Top funds. The letter suggested that virtual schools, early college schools, and other novelty schools were the only forms of educational innovation worth expanding in North Carolina.
On the same day, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Education for the National Conference of State Legislatures, N.C. state Rep. Larry Bell, also sent a letter to Duncan strongly criticizing the Obama administration’s support for increasing the number of charter schools nationwide. Ironically, Bell introduced a bill during the 2009 legislative session that would have raised the cap on charter schools, albeit the legislation only would have raised the cap from 100 to 106.
Upon the publication of the final Race to the Top guidelines, Center for Education Reform president Jeanne Allen observed, “Specifically, the ‘Race to the Top’ — which had been touted as a boon for charter schools — now de-emphasizes charters, even allowing states without charter school laws to qualify for federal funding.” Perdue was ecstatic, telling The New York Times, “Secretary Duncan listened to us, and that’s phenomenal. I’m really pleased.”
The prospect of receiving more federal dollars — without the bother of lifting the cap on charter schools — stirred North Carolina’s education establishment into unprecedented action. Perdue assembled a team of 150 to prepare an application for Race to the Top grants. In the end, Perdue requested $470 million in federal funds, a portion of which would fund her mediocre “Ready, Set, Go!” education initiative.
Of course, changes in rules and regulations tell only part of the story. The U.S. Department of Education will award the first Race to the Top grants in April. Will they provide funds to states that have charter school caps or no charter schools at all?
Rewarding states that restrict or prohibit charter schools would be an implicit endorsement of the kind of anti-charter sentiment that pervades states like North Carolina.
Terry Stoops is education policy analyst at the John Locke Foundation.