Tag Archive for 'spending'

Eduwonk’s $5 Billion Challenge

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 4, 2008 in Opinion. 2 Comments

Over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham poses the following thought exercise: What would you do with $5 billion to improve American education? Great idea.

My favored reform, not surprisingly, is a national curriculum. That would cost about a buck, since it already exists and merely needs to be implemented. What to do with the other $4,999,999,999? Two ideas:

  1. Scrap existing state tests in favor of a random testing arrangement. If schools only know that they will be tested twice a year, but don’t know which day, grade, or even the subject to be tested, the only way to guarantee good results would be to actually educate kids. Keep existing state reading and math tests, if you like, but use them for diagnostics, not to determine AYP. Until the laws of human nature are repealed, it’s naive to think the current prep-and-test regimen will do anything other than narrow the curriculum, and stress the heck out of teachers and kids. If you insist on testing (and there’s no reason not to; as public servants schools and teachers need to be held accountable) then you have to have a testing strategy that encourages the results you seek. Random testing would also give you a much clearer picture of what’s actually happening in schools. But prepare yourself, it’s worse than you think.
  2. This one idea will make me unpopular in certain circles, but teaching in a struggling inner city school, and observing in lots of others has solidified my belief that nothing matters more to student achievement than a positive, productive school environment. In a good environment, virtually any curriculum or pedagogy will work. You could put Nobel prize winners in front of every classroom in a dysfunctional school to no good end. Use the money to hire teachers for one-on-one home tutoring for our most disruptive students. The vast majority of kids come to school, even in our most challenged schools ready to learn, but their education is sacrificed minute by minute by constant disruption and discipline problems. I don’t know of any data on this, but I’d bet that the achievement gap is really a time-on-task gap. It is hard to overstate just how profound this problem is. Vast amounts of learning time are sacrificed to discipline problems, and the need to organize classroom management around behavior issues changes the entire classroom dynamic. It turns the teacher into an entertainer, not an instructor. If a child chronically demonstrates that he or she is cannot participate in a classroom setting, that’s a terrible shame. But by allowing that child to completely dominate and alter the school and classroom environment to the detriment of others, we lose not just that child but damage 24 others. Educate that child at home on the school’s nickel, and you help establish the positive, productive, achievement-oriented environment that is a prerequisite of success. This by the way, is probably the real secret of KIPP’s success. Every kid is down with the program. If not, they’re not a KIPP student anymore. The best schools — public, private and charters, show they’re serious about learning. Struggling schools will not improve until we show the students who are ready to learn and fully invested in their education that they’re the most important people in the building.

Feel free to cross post your best ideas here and over at eduwonk.

Teachers Wanted: $63 Billion a Month

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 3, 2008 in Employment. 0 Comments

The government of Zimbabwe has awarded teachers a salary increase to $63 billion per month. (Hat tip: Mike Antonucci)

The Cradle of Differentiated Instruction

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 3, 2008 in Education Practice and Teaching. 0 Comments

Today we call it differentiated instruction. Back in the day, it was called the one-room school house. Is it an idea whose time has come around again? At Pajamas Media (hat tip: Joanne Jacobs), Charlie Martin costs out what it would take to bring back the one-room school house…in midtown Manhattan. Martin built his scenario using the average cost of about $14,000 per year that it costs to educate a New York City public school student.

We assume 24 students in Manhattan, and a one-room school built in quality office space in midtown. I laid out a floor plan and discovered we could fit it nicely into 1,050 square feet; equip it with good quality desks and chairs and with one iMac computer for every two students, plus one for the teacher and a Mac Pro as a classroom server; and add Internet connections and $1,000 per student for books and supplies. How much remained to hire a teacher? $230,000. Almost a quarter of a million dollars.

“I think we’ve solved the problem of recruiting good teachers,” Martin dryly comments. “For $230,000 a year, it would be the rejects from elementary teaching who would go to Harvard.”

Martin concludes of his own thought experiement that we spend amazing amounts of money per student, struggle to pay teachers well enough to keep them, while outcomes decline. “We’ve seen that we could go back to the model of a hundred years ago. It’s not only possible, it would make teaching into one of the most well-paid jobs in the country, even the world, and still save money,” Martin concludes. “As a close friend put it, ‘where is the money going?’”

California Screamin’

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 4, 2008 in Educational Policy and School News. 0 Comments

Last year, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pronounced 2008 would be “The Year of Education” in the Golden State. Now, it’s hasta la vista, baby.

Mercury NewsSharon Noguchi of the San Jose Mercury News looks at what lies ahead for California schools and doesn’t try particularly hard to mask her contempt: “Likely coming soon to a public school near you: ballooning class sizes, a wave of teacher layoffs and more outdated textbooks — courtesy of the spiraling state deficit. What a difference a few months — and a projected $14.5 billion budget deficit — make.”

The $4.8 billion dollars in projected cuts to education over the next 18 months are the deepest in nearly three decades, she notes, adding the cuts are based on optimistic economic predictions. “Art, music, elementary-level science, physical education? Forget about them,” says Noguchi. “The proposed cuts are daunting because schools have little discretionary spending. About 85 percent of their expenses pay salaries and benefits, locked in by union contracts. And much of other spending — for instance, updating textbooks — is required by law.”

What Would Horace Mann Do?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 12, 2008 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 0 Comments

The AtlanticIt’s time to finish what Horace Mann started in 1843 and end local control of schools. Writing in The Atlantic, Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says we must carry the insights of Mann, the father of public education to their logical end and nationalize our schools to some degree.

Describing local control of schools as a uniquely American obsession, Miller convincingly analogizes, “It’s as if after Pearl Harbor, FDR had suggested we prepare for war through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of small factories. They’d know what kinds of planes and tanks were needed, right?”

When states are allowed to set their own standards, they set the bar low, as the Fordham Foundation’s essential The Proficiency Illusion conclusively proved. Local control also leads to fiscal inequity, Miller argues, since wealthy communities can tax themselves at low rates and still generate more dollars per pupil than poor communities that tax themselves to death. But Miller really hits it on R&D. Local control means there are 15,000 curriculum departments in the U.S., none of which can afford to invest heavily in research. The federal government “now spends $28 billion annually on research at the National Institutes of Health, but only $260 million—not even 1% of that amount—on R&D for education,” Miller writes.

Can’t happen, right? Republicans will reject national standards like a body rejecting a baboon liver. Democrats hate standards, right? Wrong. Miller quotes former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta who believes the public is far ahead of the conventional wisdom.

“Once upon a time a national role in retirement funding was anathema; then suddenly, after the Depression, we had Social Security. Once a federal role in health care would have been rejected as socialism; now, federal money accounts for half of what we spend on health care,” writes Miller. “We started down this road on schooling a long time ago. Time now to finish the journey.”