Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Washington campaign theme, but early scoring showed Texas in bottom quartile in competition

Gov. Rick Perry is expected to walk away from the pursuit of the federal Race to the Top money today, a sign that some consider political posturing in the Governor’s Race but which may also indicate Texas’ completed application ranked the state too weak to be competitive for federal grants.

The first of two rounds of applications for the $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funding is due next week. Texas, given its size, was eligible for a grant between $350 million to $700 million in funding. Yesterday, Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) sent a letter to Perry as the vice chair of the House committee tracking the stimulus package, indicating he understood the Race to the Top application had been completed and was waiting in the Governor’s Office for approval.

“Submitting the application for Race to the Top funds will allow our state to compete with other states for grants,” Coleman wrote. “Race to the Top money is not like unemployment insurance stimulus funds, which you turned down for ‘possible strings’ attached. This is a competitive program where states that do better will receive larger allocations.”

Forget the politics of Democrats and Republicans, Coleman said when reached by phone last night. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s education policies are, more than almost other area of the Pres. Barack Obama’s administration, in tune with Republicans and, more specifically, Perry’s own education agenda: tougher accountability measures for both schools and teachers; support for improved math and science education; uncritical support for the charter school movement; and incentive pay for teachers that are the most effective in the classroom.

“Perry keeps laying on Hutchison for being part of the federal government and taking federal money, but he doesn’t even understand a good deal when he sees one,” said Coleman, who is not a supporter of charter school expansion. “These are all policies that he liked and favored at some point.”

Looking at the national scene, Perry’s best weapon in the Governor’s Race – the Texas economy and the state’s ability to turn down Washington money – appears to have been a handicap in the Race to the Top application.

The downturn in the economy – combined with pressure applied by supporters of Duncan’s agenda such as the behemoth Gates Foundation -- has added urgency to the pursuit of Race to the Top funds. It allowed governors on both sides of the aisle to leverage education reform on the back of a fund that is, frankly, only slight more than half what Obama set aside for passenger rail funding in the stimulus package.

Among recent efforts around the country:

--In the much-maligned California, where sentiment is the state will be getting a cut of the pie, more than 800 school districts have agreed to sign onto the effort in an order to indicate the broad support for education reform;

--Gov. Phil Breseden opened a special session on K-12 education this week in Tennessee, calling on lawmakers to seize the opportunity to create a “transformative effort” for the state’s K-12 and higher education systems;

--In Nevada, Gov. Jim Gibbons, who faces a tough re-election campaign, has used the Race to the Top to propose sweeping education reform, including support for vouchers;

--And lawmakers in New York continue to work feverishly, even at this late hour, in order to break a deadlock on lifting a cap on charter school expansion in the state.

Efforts in Texas do not appear to have come close to other states. Neither the agency nor lawmakers indicate heightened urgency to pursue the money during the last regular session. Nor did Perry appear interested in adding education reform to the agenda on the last special session.

Coleman said his committee tracking the stimulus package spent much of its time questioning whether the state’s initial application would clear the bar to qualify to compete for Race to the Top funding. Instead of funding innovation in education – which was being encouraged by the Obama administration – state leadership used the money to plug ongoing holes in the state budget.

“We were disappointed that the Obama administration approved the way we spent money, but that’s the whole point,” Coleman admitted. “Texas leadership wanted to spend money simply to fund education spending. Now, however, we’re talking about money that could actually go directly to innovation, the type that Rick Perry, et al, said they liked… There’s no reason to leave money on the table, even if they end up saying we weren’t very innovative.”

That doesn’t mean everyone has agreed with Race to the Top. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal last week, teacher unions in Floridaand Michigan have refused to sign onto the reform agenda. And newspapers in Michigan – ironically, the state hit the hardest economically in the current economy downtown – report pushback from school districts that are grousing that they may end up spending more money to meet than standards than they would actually get from the grant. One superintendent described it as “the tail wagging the dog.”

That’s the same argument that Commissioner Robert Scott laid out for rejecting the federal money in an interview with the Texas Tribune, saying the numbers on the grant worked out to no more than $75 to $150 per student.

That statement, however, would be a bit disingenuous. When the Gates Foundation offered to supplement the Texas High School Project back in 2003, then-Deputy Commissioner Robert Scott created an entire division that resided within his own office at the Texas Education Agency that dealt exclusively with the Texas High School Project, plus the implementation of other Governor-backed initiatives.

That division was dissolved when the agency was reorganized, but it appears all those efforts over the last six years hinged on about $140 million in leveraged private funding, which would be about a quarter of what Texas could receive if it had qualified for a competitive grant under the Race to the Top application.

As to how well Texas might do on the Race to the Top application, early indications would be “not very well at all.” While Scott has focused on the controversy over participation in the Common Core standards – Texas is one of two states that declined to participate – other areas of the application look weak as well.

For instance, the National Center for Teacher Quality sent out a report card in early December, outlining the point tally spreads on Great Teachers and Leaders. Holly Eaton of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association, who agreed to walk through the ranking with the Quorum Report, tallied a state score in the bottom quartile of the ranking. She also added, however, that some of the reforms supported by the report card might not necessarily be ones supported in Texas, by either teacher groups or lawmakers.

Asked for a response at the time, agency spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman expressed confidence that the state would receive points in areas on the application that might not be credited by NCTQ.

“We are working diligently on our Race to the Top application but the ultimate scorecard will be left up to the Department of Education,” Marchman said.

Coleman said he hoped Perry would make a final decision that benefits the schoolchildren in the state of Texas.

“The opposition right now to Mr. Obama nationally is Rick Perry,” Coleman said. “Anything that the Obama administration has presented has been opposed by Perry, even if it’s the type of policy he’s actually liked. We need to put that aside.”