Obama coaxes states to change with school dollars

WASHINGTON — One year after his election, President Barack Obama is coaxing states across the country to rewrite education laws and cut deals with unions as they pursue his vision for school reform.

Obama is visiting Wisconsin, where lawmakers are poised to change a law to boost their state's chances at $5 billion in education grants, the most money a president has ever had for overhauling schools.

Nine other states have taken similar steps, even though states can't apply for the money yet and only a few states may end up getting grants.

"We're seeing extraordinary progress," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm hopeful the pace of change will continue."

Wisconsin lawmakers planned to vote Thursday to lift a ban on using student test scores to judge teachers. That helps clear the way for an Obama priority, teacher pay tied to student performance.

California lifted a similar ban last month. And before that, charter school restrictions or budget cuts were eased in eight states — Louisiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Delaware, Indiana, Ohio, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Duncan had repeatedly warned that such restrictions would hurt a state's chances at the money. The administration can't really tell states and schools what to do, since education has been largely a state and local responsibility throughout the history of the U.S.

But Obama has considerable leverage in his nearly $5 billion competitive grant fund, dubbed the "Race to the Top," that was set aside in the economic stimulus law.

No president has ever had that much money for schools at his discretion. Only Duncan — not Congress — has control over who gets it. And only some states, perhaps 10 to 20, will actually get the money.

Obama will use the trip to Wisconsin to call attention to the actions states are taking, one year after his election, to put his vision of reform in place, Melody Barnes, Obama's domestic policy director, told reporters Tuesday.

Obama sees the test score data and charter schools, which are publicly funded but independent of local school boards, as solutions to the problems that plague public education.

The national teachers unions disagree. They say student achievement is much more than a score on a standardized test and say it's a mistake to rely so heavily on charter schools.

"Despite growing evidence to the contrary, it appears the administration has decided that charter schools are the only answer to what ails America's public schools," the National Education Association, the largest teachers union, said in comments submitted to the Education Department.