Bill Clinton & school reform

I got three replies to my email last week in which I asked for comments on what Bill Clinton did for school reform:

 

1) NYS Assemby member Sam Hoyt of Buffalo, one of the few Democrats in Albany with both a clue and a spine on this issue, wrote:

As I recall, Bill Clinton was one of the founders of the Democratic Leadership Council which I believe has played an important role in promoting charter schools to moderate Democrats across the country.  As a current DLC member, I can attest that we continue to promote charters as a major policy initiative on our national agenda.

2) Ember Reichgott Junge, who spearheaded the nation's first charter school law in Minnesota, wrote:

As Andy Rotherham can affirm, President Bill Clinton was a strong supporter of public school choice from the beginning.  After Minnesota passed the first mandatory open enrollment legislation (1988) allowing  public school students to attend any public school in the state, Arkansas followed as the second state to do so, under Gov. Clinton's leadership.

 

When Minnesota passed the first charter school legislation in the country in 1991, Clinton was a leader of the DLC, and fully supportive of the DLC efforts to take the concept of charter schools to Congress.  The DLC hosted several press conferences and panels for me (as author of the law) in DC, and connected me to Sen. Lieberman to introduce legislation.  The Durenburger/Lieberman legislation was introduced in late 1991.   During fall, 1992, just a few weeks after the first charter school opened in Minnesota, President Clinton came out in favor of charter schools during his presidential debates.  I had been in touch with his campaign as his Minnesota co-chair, but was truly surprised when it rose to the level of his education platform during his campaign.

 

Once elected, he was a firm and strong supporter of charter school Congressional legislation, proposing start up funds and various other funds for charters.  His Education Secretary (Riley) was highly supportive.  Both Clinton and Riley visited charters, and Pres. Clinton came to St. Paul in 2000 to celebrate the first charter school. 

 

A better friend of charters was hard to find.  As a Democrat, he (and the DLC) gave cover to many other Dems struggling to pass state charter laws during the 1990's. 

3) And DFER board member Andy Rotherham wrote:

Couple of thoughts.

First, even conservatives credit Clinton’s support for the Federal Charter Schools Program as helping with the expansion of charter schools by seeding them.   Two examples of his thinking on charters, here’s a speech President Clinton gave at City Academy (the nation’s first charter school) in 2000:

http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/New/Education_Tour/stpaul/remarks/

And here is a radio address where he discussed charters:

http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/08-1999/wh-0828.html

More generally Clinton’s formula of invest more – demand more worked politically and made reform go down easier within the party.  In 1989 he and President Bush led the first National Education Summit and out of that, and what I think is often overlooked, came the 1994 Clinton reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the Improving America’s Schools Act or IASA was his version), which instituted standards-based reform as a key component of federal policy and laid down the predicate that demanding more accountability and better results couldn’t be held hostage to Washington budget fights and partisan politics.   Like No Child the law wasn’t perfect, faced implementation and enforcement issues, etc…but the 1994 law laid the groundwork for No Child Left Behind in some key ways and was a real step forward.  To get there Clinton made some hard choices there that are easy to forget 17 years later.