ContreDemps

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Obama White House are facing an early test of their school reform street cred. Earlier this week the Senate Appropriations Committee, where Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over education, stripped out of the stimulus package several provisions being pushed by school reform groups, the administration, and Democratic leaders on education in the House. Harkin, a pro-labor guy, dropped money targeted to charter school construction from the infrastructure section of the package, lopped off a $100 million that would have doubled the size of Teacher Incentive Fund (a federal effort to promote teacher performance pay), jettisoned language requiring school systems to distribute teachers equitably among affluent and impoverished schools as a condition for portions of the incentive funding, and struck language requiring states to establish computer systems capable of linking students and student test scores teachers, a prerequisite for rating schools and teachers on the basis of how much their students learn. Since these initiatives have been opposed by teacher unions seeking to preserve the hegemony of public schools and the current practices of paying and assigning teachers on the basis of credentials and seniority, it's not much of a stretch to assume that the teacher unions got to Harkin. The looming question is how Duncan and Obama are going to deal with the divisions within their own party on the education issue.