I recently attended my first White House briefing along with my education policy colleague, Casey Lartigue. The subject of the briefing was the administrationâs implementation of the new No Child Left Behind Act, dubbed NCLB (âNicklebeeâ) by DC wonks for short.
A White House briefing is an invitation only, handbag-search required, high-security event inside either the White House itself or the Old Executive Office Building next door. The OEOB is where all the spillover staff belonging to the administrationâs inner circle is housed. The building is connected to the White House by an underground tunnel, and is full of people who are amusingly desperate to secure office space on the other side.
Casey and I arrive half an hour early at the OEOB with two forms of ID and pass through two layers of security. Weâre directed to one of the small auditoriums several floors up. When we get there, we see representatives from most of the important school choice organizations with offices in town. Christina Culver from Children First America and Krista Kafer of the Heritage Foundation are there. Trent Barton, who runs the education task force for of the American Legislative Exchange Counsel says hello. We spot Maureen Blum, recently with IJ, in the back of the room. We understand she is now a consultant, and is doing direct lobbying for a school choice pressure group in New York.
We notice Virginia Walden-Ford sitting at the front of the room and decide to join her. She is a wonderful lady, and a tireless local advocate for school choice here in DC. Her parent group - called DC Parents for School Choice - has been working closely with Casey in his efforts to raise public awareness about the need for school choice in the nationâs capital.
Members of the administration come in right on time, and we all sit down to hear what they have to say. Nina Rees, new Deputy Under Secretary of the Department of Educationâs Office of Innovation and Improvement, speaks first. Itâs loosely true what they say about titles in Washington: the longer they are, the less important the title-holder. But this isnât true of Nina. Still in her (early?) thirties, she previously advised Vice President Cheney directly on education issues, and is widely considered an up-and-comer. And the Officeâs budget â Washingtonâs measure of status â is huge.
She thanks us all for our efforts to push for school choice around the country, and says she sees choice reform as the core mission of the new office. She specifically mentions the outstanding work that the Cato Institute has been doing on the issue! Casey and I sit up a little bit in our chairs. She doesnât mention any other organization by name.
Then Education Secretary Rod Paige gets up to speak. He touches on some difficult issues with respect to NCLB. It was a political compromise, he said, and that is why private school choice is not in the law. He focuses on the public school choice aspect of the legislation, which in theory requires states accepting federal funds to provide exit options to kids trapped in failing schools.
Secretary Paige then says that he knows that real choice â private school choice â is a necessary part of the solution to the problem of failing public schools. âWithout choice, real reform is impossible,â he says, âThe difficulty is mustering up the political will to do it.â He urges us â the school choice advocates â to keep the faith and to continue to advocate for choice, especially at the state level.
Now Casey and I believe choice reform should occur at the state level anyway, so we donât have an argument with that approach. But what is interesting about the briefing is how apologetic the administration appears over the shortcomings of NCLB.
Not placated by our praise, I ask the tough question during Q&A. Isnât NCLB rendered toothless, I said, because states can simply claim that no space is available at non-failing schools? After all, the media is full of reports like the one in the Chicago Tribune: 125,000 kids in Chicago attend failing schools, but the non-failing schools selected by the district to take them only had âroomâ for 3,000.
Thatâs been a problem, administration officials agree, but itâs being worked on. They emphasize the need to move at a speed that lumbering public school bureaucracies can reasonably be expected to match.
The purpose of the briefing, I realize as I exit, is damage control. The administration is asking us, writers and speakers with ideological rather than political allegiances, not to give them a hard time about the shortcomings of NCLB. To leave them with political capital, they imply, to fight the next battle.
But I am even more convinced than I was that it is not a commentator's function to support the administrationâs efforts where those efforts fall short. Its members get enough free media to explain their miscalculations and political defeats. Itâs our job to hold the administration to higher standards, and to discipline them when they back down on their few promises to America that actually involve more freedom, rather than less.
Posted by Marie Gryphon on May 28, 2003