Duncan's Trip Down the Waiver Rabbit Hole
by Frederick M. Hess • Apr 28, 2014 at 11:09 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
On Thursday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan yanked Washington State's NCLB waiver, forcing the state to again operate under provisions of a law that Duncan has declared "broken." I criticized the move, prompting several readers to ask whether I was being unfair and what I would have Duncan do instead. Duncan apologists cheered his decision as simply a case of him enforcing the law, while explaining that he's only acting because Congress won't, promoting good reforms, got the approval of state education leaders, and had to do something about misbehaving states.
I find these claims laughable. Indeed, they reflect a profound lack of respect for, or understanding of, our system of government. First, living in a nation of laws means we don't bypass legislatures even if they fail to act. Duncan could have worked with Congress. Instead, his waiver band-aids have made action more difficult. Second, "good" reforms can be much less so when mandated on recalcitrant states, especially absent legislative support. Third, state leaders are okay with this largely because they know Duncan's bureaucrats can make their lives harder or easier, depending on whether they play ball. Fourth, laws provide measures for dealing with bad actors. Duncan's problem here is a product of him wanting states to do something that he has no standing to make them do. Duncan's waiver strategy has taken us down an ill-advised, lawless rabbit hole. (Note: This is not about conspiracy theories or questioning Duncan's good intentions. I'm happy to stipulate that Duncan means well.)
No law requires Washington State to do what Duncan demanded. There is a relevant law here--the No Child Left Behind Act, which has the virtue of actually being a law. It was enacted by Congress, signed by President Bush--the whole deal. A Secretary of Education invested in enforcing the law could have, you know, enforced it.
Now, NCLB is a troubled law, for reasons that Checker Finn and I wrote about a decade ago. So I'm all for revamping it. And Duncan could have tried. He could have tried in 2009 and 2010, when the Democrats had hefty majorities in the House and Senate. He didn't. Partly because he and his team were having so much fun with make-it-up-as-you-go projects like Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants, cases where a Democratic Congress had given him carte blanche to do pretty much whatever he felt like. Duncan clearly found that more engaging than the dreary business of negotiating with Congress.
Heck, the administration took more than a year to even offer its sketchy "ESEA blueprint" and those big Democratic majorities never moved a bill out of committee. In 2011, 2012, or 2013, Duncan could have worked to pass a bipartisan bill. In fact, last summer, the House passed an ESEA reauthorization (the Student Success Act) that I think is pretty terrific.
Instead, Duncan opted to gut NCLB by waiving key parts of the law for states that promised to do stuff he Duncan's Trip Down the Waiver Rabbit Hole :: Frederick M. Hess:
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