Why the Primary Schedule is Bad for Education

John at AFT blog asks "Who Lost Vilsack?" in response to the Iowa Governor and '08 candidate's call, at a DNC event, for repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act. But who ever had Vilsack on this issue? Contrary to leftwing bloggy conspiracy theorist opinion,* my former employer, the Democratic Leadership Council, does not have any special mind control over the elected officials connected with it, nor can it bend them to do its will or follow a preset party line. The DLC is not a monolith but a network of elected officials who share some similar values and goals but also have their own perspectives, priorities, and constituencies to represent. And sometimes these people disagree with DLC leaders on specific policy issues.

Vilsack is clearly on record as a critic of NCLB. Take this from a 2003 speech to the Democratic Governors Association:

Unfortunately, the President’s education plan is fundamentally flawed. The “No Child Left Behind” program is focused on failure and it is funded for failure—it is currently $6 billion short of adequate funding. The program assesses a schools performance and punishes accordingly, but fear of failure serves as no incentive to schools that are already struggling. We urge him to join us in a renewed effort to improve education.

I mean, the guy's from Iowa, for crying out loud, one of the strongest local control states in the country and the only one that didn't adopt state standards in response to the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act. So he's probably naturally not disposed to be a big fan of the law. And his campaign depends on the idea that the Iowa native will do well in that's state's primary. So of course he's gonna be talking smack on NCLB.

This leads me to a broader concern, though: The current structure of the early presidential primaries is particularly inhospitable to education reform. It's a common complaint in political circles that Iowa and New Hampshire aren't demographically representative of the rest of the country, and that their particular parochial concerns tend to skew policy (support for ethanol subsidies, anyone?).

The consequences for the national debate on education policy are significant: These are both very strong local control states that aren't fans of state standards, accountability, or the federal role in education. They're not big fans of school choice either, and they have some of the country's weakest charter school laws. While most states have been debating how to expand pre-k, New Hampshire hasn't even required all its school districts to offer kindergarten. Perhaps most significantly, the extremely pale hue of these states' populations means that the nation's most serious educational challenge--the huge achievement gap between white students and black or Hispanic students--doesn't resonate there. Instead, we saw campaigning there during the 2004 campaign pushing some Democratic candidates in a more stridently anti-NCLB direction.

Will the same forces play out in 2008? Will a speeded up primary calendar make a difference? I don't know. There's plenty of room for candidates of both parties to offer constructive criticism of NCLB and new, innovative ideas for how the federal government can help improve education. My colleagues and I might even offer them a few ideas for how to do that. I hope they rise to the challenge.

*I don't mean to imply that John is a leftwing bloggy conspiracy theorist.