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Who's fooling whom? Yes, the new public school reform legislation rushed through the N.C. General Assembly last week to the governor's desk was aimed at lassoing millions of federal dollars. Why rush it through if not?
That said, so what? Better yet, hooray! With at least $300 million in cuts to education funding on the table, N.C. lawmakers should be looking under every bush for dollars. If this bill does what it actually aims to - unties state bureaucratic restraints and gives school districts flexibility to use innovative strategies to boost student achievement at low-performing schools - and the state gets federal money to accomplish the task, that would be a win-win.
Of course, the "if" in that sentence is key. The promise of this legislation won't be fulfilled if the state doesn't actually remove administrative and other obstacles that have hamstrung local school districts from employing nontraditional curriculum and strategies.
One example: In 2004, legislators passed a law requiring local districts to begin classes no sooner than Aug. 25 and end by June 10. That rigid mandate provides no flexibility to allow local systems to set school calendars to meet the needs of their students. They should remedy this absurdity this session by repeal.
The low-performing schools reform package has several familiar elements. But most of the attention has been focused on the one truly new idea - allowing districts to restart a school by giving it the same flexibility as a charter school without making it independent. The district could operate the charter or an outside educational management group could be selected after "rigorous review."
This idea is promising. It could finally provide a vehicle by which charters could live up to a key goal of the N.C. law that created them - as incubators for innovation that traditional public schools could emulate to boost performance. Few charters have become such incubators.
There are some good ones that are using creative approaches - longer school days, for example. But state policies and attitudes have hindered even those from filtering into traditional public schools.
Charter school proponents criticize the bill because it doesn't lift the state's cap of 100 regular charter schools. They blame the limit on charters for North Carolina's failure to get Race to Top funds the first time. But, as we noted in April, that's not borne out by facts. Tennessee, one of the two winning applicants, caps its number of charters at 90, and further restricts charters to the state's largest districts.
We also noted that most of the judges' criticisms of North Carolina's application were about insufficient and inadequate teacher performance, data and student improvement plans. These reforms get at some of those issues but we hope Gov. Bev Perdue has addressed the others in the application the state is submitting to the feds this week. Ten to 15 states are expected to share in the $3.7 billion to be disbursed this month. North Carolina's chances at funding are good. It came in 12th of 16 finalists the last time - 40 states and the District of Columbia submitted applications.
Still, even if the state doesn't get more federal money, this legislation - if taken seriously and implemented accordingly - would give school systems a badly needed tool to boost student achievement: flexibility. Why not give it to them?
