Who lost the $400M?

Posted in: Opinion Politics on September 8, 2010 at 2:27 pm |

By Douglas E. Hall

It’s no surprise that Governor Christie fired Education Commissioner Bret Schundler.  You can’t expect to survive after you’ve made a $400 million mistake.  Especially after an earlier run-in with your boss when you kept him in the dark about a compromise you had orchestrated with the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA).

As he trudged out the door on Friday, Aug. 27, one might expect that the former mayor of Jersey City wished he had never heard “Race to the Top.”

For in both of his missteps, it was the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” competition that brought the education commissioner down.

It’s bad enough that Mr. Schundler was fired by the governor, but his dismissal has lead to particularly bad feelings between the two men. Each have indicated that the other is lying, and Mr. Schundler, now out of the Christie Administration is out to defend and clear his name.

The real culprit here is the “Race to the Top” competition itself.  The education of this nation’s children is not a game, not a sporting event, which in this case New Jersey and Ohio are pitted against each other.

Who can make any logic out of the fact that Ohio wins $400 million in federal funding to better educate its children, while New Jersey must do without these funds making do with very limited state funding as it seeks to educate its children.

Bret Schundler

Politics could be one answer, but we hope not.  Winning a $400 million federal grant for Ohio schools might help Ohio governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat, who in seeking re-election this November in an uphill battle with former Republican Congressman John Kasich.  Rasmussen Reports lists Kasich leading Strickland 52 to 40 percent.  So a Democrat judge in the “Race to the Top” might reason better to give this $400 million to Ohio instead of New Jersey where its Republican governor, Chris Christie could well be an opponent to President Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

All children in our nation deserve only the best that can be provided in their education.  If the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan devised this contest to turn educating our children into a crap shoot depending upon which state can submit the best 1000-page application, then he is the one who should be fired.

If all of the 50 states competed in this lottery, the bureaucratic burden on the nation’s taxpayers would be overwhelming.  As it turned out for New Jersey a page was missing, which cost the state four points, putting the Garden State three points behind Ohio.  And that was the deciding factor.

In the previous administration of George W. Bush, his Secretaries of Education Rod Paige and Margaret Spelling both were advocates of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, one of the first initiatives of President Bush when he took office.

NCLB supported standards-based education reform, which is based on the belief that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education. The Act required states to develop assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades, if those states were to receive federal funding for schools.

This led to charges that teachers had to teach to the test and the concept was generally criticized by numerous liberals, despite the fact that one of the sponsors of this act was the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and it won wide bipartisan support when it was passed by Congress in 2001.

In contrast, it could be said that “Race to the Top” leaves whole states behind.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for New Jersey losing out in this “race.”

First, there’s the Obama Administration for concocting this “Race to the Top” with its onerous  application form.  Then, there’s the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) which balked at a requirement of the “race” that teachers had to demonstrate improved proficiency.  After tough negotiations led by then Education Commissioner Schundler a compromise was reached with NJEA, but this hard-won agreement was torpedoed by Governor Christie.  That set off a rush revision of the application without NJEA’s full support, which led to an error in the application, which left New Jersey penalized and behind Ohio in points.

So it’s like Tinkers to Evers to Chance, only in this case all three dropped the ball.  Our governments, at all levels, ought to be able to do better than this, especially for our children.

Tags: Chris Christie featured Hall NJEA Schundler