Race to the Top -- Of What?<2>

Even in California, where the NEA's powerful affiliate has poured $200 million into political campaigns over the past decade, Race to the

Top's bountiful kitty has united Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrat-controlled legislature against the union and its allies. Since

last September, the Golden State's political elite have stopped their usual squabbling and passed a series of reforms. California joined

seven other states in passing laws allowing for the growth of charter schools -- the publicly funded yet privately managed entities that are

the nation's most successful version of school choice. The state also passed a more radical measure called Parent Trigger, which allows

parents at a failing school to replace the principal, teachers, and even the school district itself with new management.

At the very least, Race to the Top has given Obama a rare measure of success during his term. The law's focus on expanding charter schools

has helped increase educational options for families -- especially the poor urban whites, blacks, and Latinos usually forced to attend the

worst public schools. If Obama can incorporate elements of Race to the Top's emphasis on competitive grants into the proposed revamp of the

No Child Left Behind Act -- the Bush II-era school reform law that is the bane of teachers' unions and suburban school districts -- he may

even reshape how the federal government ladles its $64 billion in education funding to states and school districts. It also makes clear to

the NEA and AFT that they can no longer count on the Democratic National Committee -- now dominated on the education front by centrist school

reformers -- for unquestioned support.

As with Bush and the motley crew of conservatives and centrist Democrats who make up the school reform movement, Obama believes that public

schools can be fixed only with a prescription that includes school choice, more rigorous curriculum standards, improving how teachers work in

classrooms, and an overhaul of failing schools. But as Bush and others have painfully learned, reforming public education involves battles

with teachers' unions -- which have successfully used their collective bargaining power and lobbying in statehouses to gain virtual control

of how traditional public schools operate -- and their allies among generally mediocre suburban school systems. Neither increasing federal

funding (the method embraced by liberals during the Great Society Era), nor imposing more stringent restrictions (the method Bush favored)

has achieved measurable gains.