RALEIGH -- North Carolina is among 40 states and the District of Columbia submitting applications for federal "Race to the Top" funds. Race to the Top is a competitive grant program designed to reward states for innovative educational initiatives. North Carolina has applied for a $470 million cut of the estimated $4.5 billion available to states.
Compared with the recent $100 billion federal "stimulus" giveaway to the nation's public schools, Race to the Top is small potatoes. But Race to the Top teaches us an important lesson about the progress of education reform in North Carolina - the status quo is still in charge. Education leaders and elected officials here would rather appease special-interest groups than follow President Barack Obama's efforts to increase educational options for parents.
Despite pushback from teachers unions and his own political party, the president continues to call for a nationwide increase in charter schools - nonreligious public schools that are exempt from various state and local regulations. To this end, he has dedicated a notable part of the Race to the Top program to expanding these "laboratories of innovation" in every state.
Thus it is no surprise that Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan oppose arbitrary, state-imposed limits on the number of charter schools. Duncan recently declared, "States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund." North Carolina has a 100-school cap that has existed since 1997, and it remains one of the most restrictive charter school caps in the nation.
Despite Duncan's warning and the hundreds of millions in grant funding at stake, Democratic legislators in our General Assembly in 2009 blocked several bills that would have raised or lifted our state's charter school cap. As in past years, the problem was that a handful of powerful and well-funded special-interest groups, led by the N.C. Association of Educators, colluded with state education leaders and the Democratic legislative majority to block attempts to raise or lift North Carolina's cap. Legislators in Illinois, Louisiana, Tennessee and California took heed of Duncan's warning and embraced pro-charter laws and policies. The General Assembly chose the business-as-usual route.
Instead of supporting genuine reform, Gov. Bev Perdue, State Superintendent June Atkinson and State Board of Education chair Bill Harrison joined the NCAE and representatives from other public-school advocacy organizations to send a letter of protest to Duncan. They complained that the focus on charter schools is a "very narrow way to look at innovative options for successful schools." They argued that the federal Department of Education should judge North Carolina's application based on a number of costly and unproven education programs implemented by former Gov. Mike Easley.
The Department of Education eventually relaxed, but did not eliminate, the charter school requirements in the final Race to the Top guidelines. Fearing that the cap would prove to be a competitive disadvantage, state education officials labeled Easley-era education programs as "charter-like schools without charters."
The phrase is silly at best and deceptive at worst. An infinite number of "charter-like" schools would not change the fact that North Carolina maintains a restrictive 100-school cap on charter schools. A charter-like school without a charter is just another public school.
Raising or lifting the cap on charter schools would have been a win-win situation for parents and public schools. Parents would have enjoyed greater educational options, and our Race to the Top application would have been as competitive as those in states that took charter school reform seriously.
North Carolinians will learn in April whether the state's charter school cap was a roadblock to federal funds. If the Department of Education denies our state a share of Race to the Top funds, then state education leaders and their allies in the General Assembly deserve blame.
Terry Stoops, a former teacher, is director of education studies for the John Locke Foundation.
