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Shake
'em Up!
Investing
in K-12 may be the state's No. 1 priority, but that
shouldn't exempt public schools from budget cuts and
structural reform.
Somebody’s
got to ask the question, so it might as well be me.
How come K-12 education is getting off the hook?
Virginia
is enduring its worst budget crisis in living
memory, but cutting state aid to public education,
which accounts for one third of the revised general
fund budget, is not up for discussion. With the
apparent agreement of General Assembly Republicans,
Gov. Mark R. Warner is whacking every state agency
in sight but he isn’t taking one dime out of K-12. Public safety is the only other
government function that enjoys such sacred cow status.
The
state is allocating close to $4 billion this year to
Virginia’s
public schools, which cities and counties match with
a comparable sum. We’re talking about an $8.4
billion industry (fiscal 2001 figures) that’s
doing business as if the 1990s boom had never ended.
As
observers from Gov. Warner to House Majority Leader
William J. Howell, R-Fredericksburg, have noted when
defending cutbacks in other state agencies, hard
times can be beneficial: They spur innovation and
force people to make tough decisions. Judging by the
rhetoric emanating from
Richmond,
however, Virginia’s
public school systems don’t stand in need of
making hard choices. All they need is
more money.
Don’t
misunderstand me. I agree that education should be
one of our society’s highest priorities. It’s
certainly my personal priority: I’ve made
financial sacrifices, accepting a significantly
lower standard of living, to send my daughters to
St. Catherine’s School here in Richmond. I believe
there’s only one thing of lasting value that I can
buy my children, and it’s not clothing, vacations,
or cars – it’s the best possible education. I
want to prepare them intellectually for the lives
and careers that await them in a tumultuous,
knowledge-intensive global economy.
I
also believe that we are all
better off -- even those of us who send our kids to
private schools -- if every Virginian has access to
a quality public education. We live in an interdependent
society, and to a greater or lesser degree, we all
prosper or decline together. An educated populace is
more creative, more innovative, more attractive to
business and better equipped to participate broadly in
the fruits of economic growth.
So,
Gov. Warner has set the right priorities. K-12
education, along with public safety, is the thing
that Virginians want most from state and local
government. But that’s no reason to exempt public
schools from the fiscal discipline and structural
reform that the Warner administration is applying to
virtually every other branch of government.
In
the spirit of constructive debate, I submit a number
of propositions that should guide Virginia’s approach to K-12 education.
Budget
cuts are good – in moderation.
Periodic budget cuts are a good way to goad schools, just like private businesses and state
agencies, into rooting out waste and inefficiency. School
divisions are hardly immune from the organizational
proclivities to accumulate bureaucratic overhead,
generate red tape and procrastinate on unpleasant
tasks such as pulling the
plug on failed and marginal programs. Wasteful
practices persist until an outside force, such as a
budget crisis, motivates school boards and
administrators to make the painful decisions they would
gladly avoid.
State
cuts on the order of five percent would yield $200
million in General Fund savings, a handy sum which,
no doubt, could be applied elsewhere. Because
localities provide more than half of educational
funding, school boards would actually lose only two
to three percent – hardly enough to cripple the
educational system. The idea would be to purge inefficiencies
from the educational system, then
to restore funds in later years as justified.
Promote
alternatives to public school.
Is the objective to educate Virginia
students, or to provide them a public
school education? Virginia’s
commitment should be to the students,
not to teachers, to school administrations nor even
to the public school system as an institution,
which, after all, originated to serve public needs.
There
is no denying the necessity for vibrant public
schools. But as long as students develop the
knowledge base and critical thinking required to
participate in the economy and civic society of the 21st
century, Virginia
public policy should remain agnostic as to
where
they obtain their education.
Vouchers
and charter schools are anathema to certain ideologues and
vested interests whose top priority is to defend the
structure of the existing educational system as
currently configured. Defenders of the status quo
worry, with some legitimacy, that allowing parents
freedom to choose where to send their children would
result in a flight of students from many public schools.
The concomitant loss of state and federal funds
would deprive those schools of the resources they
need to improve and compete.
But
the private sector is far more innovative. If
anyone is going to develop radical new educational
models for providing educational services of higher
quality at lower cost, it will be private-sector
entrepreneurs. The Potter's School in Springfield,
for instance, combines home schooling with distance
learning to provide a full high school curriculum
for about $2,000 per student -- compared to $7,100
per student for Virginia's public schools. (See CyberHouse
Rules, Sept. 30, 2002.)
How
do we make private school tuitions more affordable
and stimulate private-sector entrepreneurs?
Carlisle E. Moody, an economics professor at the
College
of William
& Mary,
recommends
giving a tuition tax credit to parents who
home-school or pay private school tuitions. He has
structured his proposal to create a win-win arrangement for all
parties, including the public schools.
On average,
Moody observes, educating a student at a
private school costs about $2,000 a year less than
at a public school. Under his proposal, he
estimates, about 10 percent of public school
students would switch to private schools, providing
ample savings to spread around. Although
public
schools would lose students and some funds under his
scheme, they would wind up with more money per remaining
student.
Experiment
aggressively with technology.
The increasing affordability of PCs and PC-based
software provides schools with effective new
teaching tools. Virginia should move forthrightly to
adopt new technologies as they prove their
effectiveness. The Potter School, noted above,
vividly demonstrates the potential of distance
learning.
In
another arena, Charlottesville-based
Explore Learning develops software
that allows students to visualize the changes to an
algebraic equation when they adjust a variable. To
see the power of interactive, PC-based teaching in precalculus,
check this linear
programming exercise (link no longer functions)
on Explore Learning’s
website.
In
another experiment, Henrico
County
has issued laptop computers to every student in high
school – the first county in the country to do so.
This expensive county-wide initiative has won its
share of both admirers and detractors. As long as
administrators move quickly to correct mistakes and disseminate best practices, I would argue that
the experiment is well worth taking. It is crucial,
however, to develop a penchant for objectively
analyzing what works and what doesn’t. Which
brings us to the next point….
Develop
a rigorous
methodology for appraising new pedagogies.
Debate rages unabated over teaching methods from phonics and new math
to the integration of computer-related
technology into school teaching methods. Plausible
arguments can be made on both sides but the issue
will never be settled unless schools settle
pedagogical disputes through controlled testing.
As
an example, Chicago-based United Learning sells digitized educational content that can be
streamed over the Internet. The product offers teachers the option, instead of showing full-length videos,
to select only those sections, or “chapters,” that
best supplement normal classroom instruction.
To test their claim in
real-world conditions, United Learning hired Cometrika, an independent research company,
to set up a controlled experiment in four different
school districts in Southside Virginia.
Dividing
students into a control group and an experimental
group, Cometrika tested students for their level of
knowledge in a body of social sciences material both before and after instruction. The experimental
group using the United Streaming material
demonstrated measurably higher mastery of the course
material than did the other students. Thanks to this
rigorous methodology, teachers can integrate United Learning’s
streaming video into their classrooms secure in the
knowledge that it does improve learning.
Don’t
rely solely on SOLs to make schools accountable.
The Warner administration seems genuinely committed to making
the Standards of Learning work. From all that I have
read, SOLs are great tools for ensuring minimum
competencies in math, reading and other subjects.
The one criticism that resonates with me,
however, is that schools begin “teaching to the
SOLs,” focusing resources on those students whose SOL mastery seems most in
doubt. The unintended consequence may be that the
brightest students are neglected, with the result
that SATs and other scores of higher-level
achievement suffer.
A
system that helps the weak and mediocre students at
the expense of the best and brightest is seriously
flawed. School divisions should be evaluated not
only on their ability to teach minimum competencies
but their success in helping star students excel.
Good
teachers help pupils learn by continually pushing
them to the limits of their abilities. It's the
state's job to make sure that school systems, like
the students they educate, achieve maximum
performance. Only by pushing educators out of their
comfort zone -- something we're not likely to do if
we never ask them to make tough fiscal choices -- can
we expect our schools to deliver superior results.
--
January
6, 2003
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