So eight legislators snap their
fingers and Gov. Bobby
Jindal overturns educational policy just like that? Well, it’s not quite
that simple to summarize a series of events performed by all parties more to
impact perceptions than substance.
At the beginning of the week, the
legislators fired off a note asserting that, by their reading of a memorandum
of understanding relevant to the Partnership
for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, that Jindal
unilaterally could withdraw the state from the program. PARCC is one of four of
the testing regimes related to the Common Core for State Standards, of which
Louisiana has joined along with 15 other states and the District of Columbia.
After a brief interval, Jindal
announced that, if the Legislature did not do that on its own through
legislation, he thought he could. To which the state’s superintendent of
education John White said Jindal was just one
of three entities that had to approve of this, the other being him and his
employer, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, represented by its
current President Chas Roemer. Neither White nor Roemer favor this, as with the
first PARCC-based testing already underway in the state, with their thinking
that PARCC was more than adequate to do the job, perhaps because it was based
in large part on what Louisiana already was doing, and that starting over would
cost both in tangible terms and in nonpecuniary ways, such as the confusion it
would sow within schools.
While it may appear that this
sets up a battle royal, in reality the legislators and Jindal in collaborating
have created a Sun
Tzu situation already maximizing their political gains, which assures much
less friction actually will transpire over the issue. Understanding this
requires knowledge of both what they want and what they can do.
Note that Jindal did not call for
the abandonment of CCSS, and that he said he would act to dismiss PARCC only if
the Legislature did not act. This was Solomonic in two ways: a good portion of
the utility of CCSS comes from the ability of states to compare performances on
a common assessment, and he invites the legislature to first stick out its neck.
In the related issues of PARCC
and CCSS, the former seems closer to having a consensus about its rejection than
the latter, given legitimate
data privacy concerns. Thus, if one wants to split the baby on the larger
subject of education reform, that’s a good place to do it. Jettisoning only the
former still leaves the benefits of the latter in terms of improved chances of
better educational outcomes, but with difficulty in making comparisons. While
other legislators are moving bills to quell data privacy concerns, it would
make more of a favorable political impression on CCSS opponents to scrap PARCC
yet by forging ahead on CCSSS could please also its supporters.
And by telling dissident
legislators he’s right behind them as the Hail Mary specialist in case after a
brutal drive they can’t get it in the end zone and have but one play remaining,
to PARCC supporters he can claim that if the dissidents turn the tide in the
Legislature and actually get a law for withdrawal through he was just following
the will of the Legislature and apparently the people represented, and if they
fail he then attempts the unilateral deferral only to be thwarted by White and
Roemer he can claim he tried (further signaled in that he would be unlikely to
bring any such matter to trial), but if somehow he legally can make an excision
unilaterally, he makes the successful halving.
Regardless of the outcome, Jindal
wins because he can offer something to both sides: support of CCSS and a good
faith attempt to sink PARCC, if not success there. He doesn’t even have to
spend political capital lobbying the Legislature, because letting the effort
wither costs him nothing. Nor does he have to in regard to BESE and White, for
while Jindal helped all but two of the eight elected members get elected with
him in 2011, and appoints three others, and together they appointed White, given
his term limitation his ability to influence them has diminished vastly: he
simply can’t provide help for the elective members in 2015 and the reappointment
of the others then doesn’t depend on him. That reduced leverage makes a claim
legitimate on his part that their independence absolves him from trying to win
their approval of his action.
Neither can the dissident legislators
lose, who already are experienced in the tactic of seeking
symbolic wins while giving short shrift to genuine, substantive policy
improvements in their association with a faction in the House of
Representatives styling themselves the “budget hawks.” They go down guns blazing
and get credit for flipping the governor, making them seem more important. And
in the unlikely event they pull off PARCC abandonment by law, to the desired
symbolism they add a policy win.
That’s not likely because most
Democrats support all aspects of CCSS (which is what makes some opponents
suspicious and fuels conspiracy theories about how it’s all a federal
government takeover of education for nefarious purposes) and enough Republicans
see little credence to the speculative and alarmist scenarios about CCSS to
make for a majority coalition to block any attempts to turn back. Still, achieving
this serves only as a bonus to the strange bedfellows who often have butted
heads in the past; just what they have done until now is more than enough to
boost their credentials to facilitate attainment of their various future political
goals.
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