The Rightwing's War on the Public Schools
From a special edition of PLAN's Stateside Dispatch .
It's no secret that one of the top priorities for the rightwing movement has been privatization of public education through vouchers and tax credits. But the raw fact is that the public has consistently rejected their initiatives when they've come to a vote-- every time the voters have faced ballot initiatives on the issue, they have overwhelmingly rejected them by a cumulative 68% to 32% margin in the 12 ballot initiatives from 1970 to 2000.
While the privatizers have not given up on voucher efforts in specific states, nationally they have increasingly turned to subtler approaches to set the stage for later campaigns to dismantle the public schools. They attack the need for additional funding for schools, while concentrating on distracting tactics like the so-called "65% Solution" and incremental privatization such as "virtual schools" springing up across the country.
Fake "Report Cards" Downplay Funding Needs
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recently issued its 2006 version of its "Report Card on American Education", the organization's annual propaganda that public schools are failing and that more resources for poorer schools won't make a difference.
It's hard to believe that anyone takes these ALEC "Report Cards" seriously, since they are a statistically silly but headline-grabbing gimmick written by Andrew T. LeFevre, a writer with little educational training whose previous work was as a flack for the Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations (APCTO), the private prison industry's lobbying arm. The "Report Cards" compare student success averaged across each state as a whole – with no breakdown for wealthier versus poorer communities or any account of special education needs that might vary between the states. LeFevre's career is as a political hit man for corporate privatization of public institutions, not in educational statistics, and it shows in the simplistic statistical analysis used in the ALEC "report cards."
While there are obviously individual schools in need of more help, serious studies have shown real improvement overall in the public schools over the last few decades. For example, the Nation's Report Card, issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a branch of the federal government, shows performance gains for most age groups from 1971 to 2004, with the gap between white and minority students closing over the last three decades.
Conservative flacks like LeFevre downplay these gains as insufficient for the money spent, quoting a statistic that "per pupil expenditures have increased by 78.0 percent" in the last few decades. But this number exaggerates spending increases by ignoring inflation in service sector costs and the fact that a substantial portion of increased spending has been for special education and dropout prevention. The increased special education spending was crucial for expanding the percentage of the school-age population attending public schools – and saving taxpayers money due to lowered institutionalization costs for the physically and mentally disabled. But it's just a dishonest statistical trick by rightwingers to count such special ed money as an increase in spending for the general school population.
And here's the core statistical lie of the public school privatization crowd—they overstate the funding going to schools, especially to those in poorer communities, then argue that no more funding is needed for the schools that do need help. Yet the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has highlighted a range of studies showing that increased investments in public education produce substantial benefits in student achievement, particularly among low-income students:
Because low-income students lag in academic achievement, and many poor school districts continue to receive funding levels below those of wealthier districts, high-poverty school districts represent both the greatest need for education funding and the greatest opportunity to improve student outcomes.
Nowhere in the ALEC report are educational spending differences within states discussed, a glaring omission given that there are lawsuits and political campaigns challenging unequal funding of schools in nearly every state in the country.
But distracting the political debate from such problems is exactly the point of statistical frauds like ALEC's report cards.
The 65% DistractionAnd distraction is what the newest rightwing educational campaign – the so-called "65% Solution" -- is all about.
The proposal requires each district to spend at least 65% of all revenue "in the classroom." It's poll-tested and sounds good-- Georgia passed it just last month, with many other states proposing similar bills.
The problem is that their definition of spending "inside the classroom" excludes teacher training, speech therapy for students, curriculum development, and school libraries, while athletics and field trips count as "in the classroom." It's hard to explain how a rule that creates incentives for a school to cut libraries to fund uniforms for the football team is some magic solution to educational problems.
And there is zero evidence from the experience of school districts that the 65% mandate will make a difference. The credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's published a report last November which found "some of the highest-performing districts spend less than 65%, and some of the lowest-performing districts spend more than 65%" and concluded that "no minimum spending allocation is a ’silver bullet’ solution for raising student achievement."
But then, the point isn't to fix education; the proposal was hatched by rightwing consultant Tim Mooney and Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a big funder of school voucher initiatives. A leaked memo written by Mooney laid out the goals of the proposal:
- Pit Teachers against Administrators: "Because most state education unions represent both administrators and teachers, the proposal will create tremendous tension within the organization."
- Bankroll Ballot Initiatives with Soft Money: "In the era of campaign finance limitations on candidates, PACs and parties, galvanizing an electorate via the initiative process is a tremendous opportunity."
- Lay Groundwork for Vouchers: "Targeted segments of voters may be more greatly predisposed to supporting voucher and charter school proposals, as Republicans address the voting public with greater credibility on public education issues."
Tellingly, money for private vouchers or other subsidies would count within the 65% mandate.
Instead of getting more money to school districts that need it, the proposal, in the words of the National PTA, is just a "one size fits all" approach that creates a rigid formula ignoring the reality of different school districts:
District expenses differ based on climate, geography, and types of students. School districts can serve very rural areas that will have high transportation costs, or serve only disabled students and incur high facilities and health care costs. Schools in areas where heavy snowfall is common will have high operational costs, and schools that enroll a super-majority of Free and Reduced Lunch eligible students will have high food services costs.
On top of the mandates from the federal No Child Left Behind law, the 65% mandates will just add another inflexible rule to the strained budgets of local schools. But that's of course the point for a proposal meant to distract voters from real reform for the schools and prep them for school vouchers.
Vouchers and Virtual SchoolsWhile Ohio and a few other states have established statewide voucher systems, the voucher movement has generally been moving forward more incrementally through privately-managed charter schools and what are known as "virtual charter schools", online teaching programs combining aspects of home schooling with corporate privatization.
More than one million students are now in public charter schools, with over 200,000 students in schools managed by private companies and an explosion of firms receiving contracts for after-school tutoring under No Child Left Behind mandates. With an estimated $400 billion in public school spending at stake, the corporate privateers are step-by-step outsourcing spending to the corporate sector.
The newest privatization innovations are virtual schools, where private companies often manage the curriculum for children being schooled at home—with about half the states having created some version of virtual schools, and new or expanded programs being proposed in legislatures across the country. K12 Inc., one of the more prominent companies in the field, highlights the entanglement of rightwing politics with the whole movement. Founded by among others William Bennett, Secretary of Education under the senior President Bush, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation revealed that K12 Inc. had used its political influence to improperly receive a $2.3 million federal grant from the Department of Education.
Some of the political shine has been coming off of these privatized schools as new studies have cast doubt on their effectiveness. The Bush administration tried to bury the results, but a US Department of Education study found that students of similar economic and racial backgrounds usually performed no better and usually worse in charter schools compared to students in regular public schools.
The Progressive ResponseWhile these facts are unlikely to change the minds of rightwing legislators looking to hand out slices of the education spending pie to their corporate sponsors, progressive legislators can use them to stand up against the privatization agenda and push for the education reforms that really help children learn:
- Better early education, including guaranteeing free pre-K for all
- More equitable funding for poorer districts in states
- Smaller class sizes for all students
- Professional development and better retention of teachers, especially in poorer districts
- Accountability that is more than a mandate to "teach to the test"
In a sense, the gimmicks of ALEC's fake report cards, the 65% Solution and virtual schools reflect the rightwing's failure in selling the American public directly on privatizing public schools. But it also highlights the need for defenders of public schools to respond to their gambits and their distracting tactics and to fight for the increased funding and reforms that will actually help student performance in the long-term.
Perhaps its true that vouchers and other experimental approaches to education mask a secret agenda to 'dismantle the public schools". Certainly the right has stuck to its belief in vouchers despite any actual empirical evidence that they've made a difference in the few places they've been tried. This is usually the sign of an ideological campaign, as opposed to an ideologically neutral attempt to improve on the status quo.
But while Republicans keep flogging the vouchers and "choice" dead horses, the Democrats continue to flog a dead horse of their own - extra funding. The notion that what ails American public education can be cured by injecting more money into the system is absurd. Bad public schools have one overriding cause - bad teachers and bad administrators. More money will do nothing to cure either one. While international comparisons are not always applicable, it is worth noting that the US spends as much or more than most industrialized countries on education yet ranks well behind other countries, especially those in Asia, that spend far less.
The right has tended to lay the troubles in public education at the feet of the teachers unions. Given Nathan Newman's background, one can hardly expect a sympathetic hearing to this argument. But those who are actually concerned about public education and preserving it need to consider the degree to which structural rigidities - which basically means inflexible teachers unions more concerned with preserving jobs than improving education - make innovation difficult. While vouchers are probably not the answer, neither are the teacher union arguments that improvement would be seen if only more money is provided.
This is why progress in public education has stagnated for so long. One party is dedicated to undermining public education and is anxious to destroy the teachers unions for political reasons. The other party, in its desire to preserve the union and the support it gives, embraces an outdated, inflexible, blinkered view of education.
One has to ask: what about the kids?
March 20, 2006 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Teachers don't have collective bargaining rights in quite a few states-- are you seriously arguing that those states have delivered better education? If unions were the problem, then states with no collective bargaining for teachers, such as Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, and West Virginia would be outpacing schools in the rest of the country.
Folks throw out this blame on the unionsdespite the existence of states with no teachers unions and often far worse schools.
Implicit in your argument is that making the work conditions of teachers worse would improve the education of the students. But decent treatment of teachers, including better pay, is one of the key factors in recruiting better teachers and keeping them on the job. And unions are a big part of achieving that in most states.
Folks talk about getting rid of bad teachers, but many urban schools can't recruit teachers who want to stay because the work conditions are so brutal and the pay so much less than similar professionals make in other careers. Folks want better teachers, but think they can get them magically without increasing compensation.
March 20, 2006 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I live in New York City where teachers can definitely organize and negotiate. It is near impossible to get rid of bad teachers and principles. However, probably the biggest impediment has been the inability to deal with unruly students. One problem student can derail a whole class.
Two problems with public schools are the two few mention. It is famous in New York that until Bloomberg took control many schools had broken windows, pealing paint and the like, This still continues but is being reduced. Students aren't stupid. They know where they and school stands if the buildings they attend are mess.
The other is the role of parents. Schools can't make up for parenting. If parents don't show that they are interested in their kids education the kids won't. Despite class arguments to the contrary. What really separates private school parents and some, not all, public school is degree of involvement.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
March 20, 2006 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
A couple of comments based in relative ignorance, which is one of the joys of a pseudonymn (but if I ever attach the phrase "rocket" to any part of this pseudonymn, it's time to lock me away).
With respect to these ballot initiatives--are they all identical such that they can be lumped together? Did they have, for example, different funding sources; require a tax hike; require a dollar for dollar takeaway from public schools? Were they in union states? Were all of them substantively identical? (for example, a state that rejected vouchers without a teachers' union in the public school would be much better evidence than one with a very strong union--especially since unions have such high turnout.).
Second, the idea of teachers receiving higher compensation is one of those things that at least some of the folks round these parts (myself included) would strongly support--if anything, teachers are grossly underpaid. That question, however, is entirely separate from the cost of dismissal for incompetence which, at least in heavily unionized cities, is extremely high. If the cost of keeping (legal, financial, and administrative) employee is less than that of firing, then that person is not going to be fired. And it seems to me that it's here that the interests of the students and their parents, on the one hand, and the economic interests of the union's members in high compensation and job security on the other, are directly at odds. Reducing some of these job security problems might well make working conditions "worse" for some union members, but improve conditions overall.
In short, characterizing the last guy as a closet paycutter seems a bit like constructing a strawman.
March 20, 2006 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even assuming your claim that "the US spends as much or more than most industrialized countries on education yet ranks well behind other countries, especially those in Asia, that spend far less" is true, it is misleading. Other countries may be able to attract good teachers for far less money than in the US because alternative careers pay far less money as well. If you want an example, consider computer programmers in India.
The key to improving education in the US is improving the quality of teachers--this in turn depends on making the teaching profession more attractive with better working conditions and pay, both of which largely depend on increased funding.
The notion that more money can't help improve education and that greedy (but in fact fairly powerless or nonexistant) teachers unions are to blame for the problems in education is just silly.
March 20, 2006 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
One has to ask: what about the kids?
From inside an urban district, it looks as if the real RW strategy is to make public education more of a social expenditure akin to welfare, focused on the poor and disabled. In the wealthier districts, however, it is quite a different story. These communities here in MI have shown quite a bit of ingenuity in developing ways to skirt funding limits and provide even more funds for their schools. Given that, it is difficult to see how any private school, even one with some sort of voucher program, can effectively compete. Far more likely is that vouchers wil be seen as a more middle class affair especially attractive for those in the first or second ring suburbs.
The debate about vouchers and privatization also misses out Brad's point. If all we do is focus on the means of providing education we stand in danger of missing the far more important issue, that of structuring our educational system to provide education for those who are not members of the lucky gene pool. What fuels much of the middle class discomfort about schools -- what gives the Right its credibility -- is that there are some genuinely awful schools out there. Terrible. It is not simply a matter that these are the result of bad choices by teachers or parents (the two common views), the failure of these institutions lies in no small part on issues of poverty and the failure of vision.
Let's be honest, our urban schools can often suck the hope out of policy makers from all corners.
It is this failed promise that needs addressing. The RW solutions are one expression of the abandonment of hope; the tendency of others to look only to their own kids is another sign of this missing hope. The current system does need restructuring if we are to capture the promise of our children; how remains the question, and it is a worthy one for progressives.
B Harris
Grand Rapids
March 20, 2006 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a bullshit argument, as you know as well as I that no one factor can explain variations in school performance, which is a highly complex issue. Furthermore, school performance is highly correlated with wealth and the states you cite are all among the poorest in the country.Again I cite the experiences of other countries that have a cost of living on a par with ours, don't pay their teachers more than we do, yet manage to build first-class education systems. Japan, Singapore, South Korea as well as many countries in Europe fall into this category. There are other ways to attract good quality teachers, including offering them merit pay, something teachers unions have traditionally fought.
Furthermore, it is well known that within large urban school districts, school quality varies widely. There are some school in New York City, for example, that are renowned for high quality, and they aren't all in the most affluent parts of the city. If quality were merely a function of teacher compensation, how do you explain these wide variations in quality within the same district? In fact you can't. The competence of the administration is the single biggest factor. Those schools who are lucky enough to have high quality administration will prosper regardless of the funding levels. If unions really wanted to be useful, they'd facilitate the transfer of knowledge about what works and what doesn't in teaching in poor areas. And they'd also agree to allow teachers and administrators to be fired for non-performance, something they've also resisted.
Lest I sound too much like a right-wing shill on this issue, I would also argue that there are certainly legitimate arguments about how urban school districts get shortchanged in state education funding formulas. It is also true that rich suburban districts have other means to make up for funding shortfalls. So I don't want to completely discount the funding issue. I would just argue that funding isn't the biggest issue in improving education.
March 20, 2006 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's also an insidious and gross campaign afoot to discredit teachers and make them out to be liberal activists and/or sexual preditors. Just note how the MSM plays up stories of teachers that allegedly have affairs with students or the recent "liberal scaremongering" in Colorado. Lots of reporting on the allegations, but darn few convictions.
I wonder why.
Swiftboating teachers? Why not.
CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com
March 20, 2006 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jonathan Kozol's new book is all about the re-segregation of US schools. Even in NYC (a place he has studied extensively) there is a wide disparity in the resources between the schools in the upper class, white, neighborhoods and those in areas like the south Bronx. Rich suburban districts like Long Island can spend up to twice as much per student as in inner cities. (His numbers $22,000 for Manhasset LI, vs $11,000 in NYC).
Just today the NY Times had a front page article about the devasting effect poor education has had on inner city black males. Unemployment can be as high as 70% for those without a high school diploma, for example.
The bottom line is, it really is about money, and the weathy not being willing to spend revenues on public education. Vouchers are also a scam since a $2000 voucher still wouldn't allow a poor parent to send their child to a private school with $20,000 tuition. It would just be an implicit tax break for the rich. Good schools cost money - period.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
March 20, 2006 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course good administration matters, but it is precisely because a lot of administrators are not always competent that teachers don't want to put their careers in the hands of often petty managers who wouldn't fire teachers for incompetence but for innovation that "rocked the boat." I doubt you could find a teacher or a union official who wouldn't agree to allow incompetent teachers be easily fired if you could guarantee that the administrators exercising those decisions would do so only in the interests of the children and with fairness.
But precisely because many administrators won't exercise that power fairly, teachers demand due process rights to appeal such decisions. It's worth reading the UFT's arguments on behalf of tenure and fair disclinary hearings -- see <a href="http://www.uft.org/member/rights/bulletin/tenure/index2.html">here.</a>
In fact, the teachers proposed changes in termination policy in the last contract: "Under our plan, our Peer Intervention Program would, for 90 days, help teachers threatened with dismissal. If they don’t improve (and most do), the union would either counsel them out of the profession or allow the conclusion of whether or not the intervention was successful to be evidence in a 3020-a hearing." i.e. if the teacher fails to improve, that failure would become more evidence justifying their dismissal. But the point is to start with trying to improve their skills, not jump to termination.
March 20, 2006 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for an informative post. I especially appreciate the info about virtual schools -- I had heard about these but had no idea what they were all about.
You wrote: ... a substantial portion of increased spending has been for special education and dropout prevention. The increased special education spending was crucial for expanding the percentage of the school-age population attending public schools – and saving taxpayers money due to lowered institutionaliza tion costs for the physically and mentally disabled. But it's just a dishonest statistical trick by rightwingers to count such special ed money as an increase in spending for the general school population.
I was under the impression that what's driving increases in special ed funding is federal mandates (FAPE), and that while school districts are getting some more money to meet these mandates, in fact a lot of the special ed increases actually come at the expense of regular ed. In Oakland CA, where I was living until recently, the state appointed trustee blamed OUSD's fiscal crisis on out of control special ed spending, to a large part.
(It's really a shame, it's not as if the special ed students are getting too many resources themselves; they are fighting for an appropriate share of a pie that is simply too small.)
If this is true, it supports your general case that the stats from outfits like ALEC are misleading.
March 20, 2006 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Teachers demand due process rights and can get them because their union is powerful. Good for them--they want to be insulated from every possible risk of management excess. That's great for union members, but I still don't see how that's in the interests of non-union members.
Thus, the statement that
presents a false trade: present an impossible condition, and then follow it up with lengthy protections if that impossible condition can't be met. THe idea of being "guaranteed" insulation from managerial incompetence is absurd. The predicate question that should be asked is whether such conditions are in the interests of students in general, and there's some pretty convincing arguments (devoid of such rhetorical tricks) that suggest that might be so. Similarly:
I tried to look at this a bit more, but couldn't, (broken link above) so I have a couple of questions. First, are there any predicate standards for threatening someone with dismissal? What is a 3020-a hearing? How many hoops do you have to go through before such a hearing can take place? And since when is every worker -or administrator-"guaranteed" that their supervisor is going to make intelligent decisions every time?
It's not that more funding isn't a good idea (it is) but I'm not sure why it should be a controversial idea that the state, as a consumer of education, should get accountability in return for pay hikes--both from teachers and those responsible for school administration. The wingers have a point here.
March 20, 2006 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with 'injecting new money' into the proble isn't the money. It is what it it being injected to.
So many of the 'solutions' that either the left or the right come up with are really band-aids - used more to motivate the base than to fix the problems.
If we invested the amounts of money necessary to actually fix the problems we would all be much happier. Nathan is correct in that we need a universal pre-k program that is free, as we have pushed the much of the first grade curriculum down to kinderagarten (because of the panick do to NCLB). So we need a good solid pre-k program to get more children ready for kindergarten. But that is only the first step.
We need to mandate a MINIMUM of 200 and look at 210 to 220 day school calendar. By increasing a school year from 180 to 200 days, you increase the k-12 career (in teacher-student contact time) by 1.3 years. That is not insignicant when you look at actual teacher-student contact. And, for districts that continue to hold onto the aqrarian-based school calendar - we need to end that now that we are in the 21st century - and move to year-round calendars that eliminate the regression-recoupment impact of our antiquated school calendar. Longer, year round school calendars will cost serious money, but our chances of reaching many more students and assuring much more success, is significantly enhanced if we invest in these things.
Finally, as soon as the teacher associations (unions) give up their dogged determination to protect every teacher (even the worst of the worst) we will, as a society, continue to under pay our teachers. We will never be willing to pay teachers significantly more money, unitl the teachers themselves decide that protecting the mediocre only assures mediocre pay for all. It is the very tradeoff of security versus pay, that holds teachers back in their quest for equitable pay.
As for the conservatives. When they finally figure out that eduation is not an activity that functions on a 'business' model, a 'competive model' and that public education must take every child that comes through the door, irregardless - they will continue to come up with absolutely idiotic ideas to address problems they truly can't grasp.
Beware of the fanatics, they never see gray.
March 20, 2006 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
As someone who has had a child in an public school in a poor, urban area, I can agree that sometimes teachers and even the teachers union has stood in the way on problems, but overall, I don't think that in and of itself lies at the root of the matter.
Most public schools in older areas like the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the South and Mid-West, being older, unless there has been alot of funding for maintenance all along, are usually falling apart. Roofing, heating, ventilation systems, taking out old insultation, asbestos, it runs the gamut. This is all terribly expensive.
Overcrowding, in poor post industrial areas, former milltowns, while the bulk of the even remotely good paying jobs have gone overseas, the populations have swelled by illegal immigration. With elderly people on reduced, fixed incomes, an ever decreasing middle class population, whether through exodus or downsizing, there isn't the tax base to properly fund education... yet the budget swells by leaps and bounds every year. Arts and music programs have been done away with, even though studies report that arts and music education actually helps develop higher math and science skills. The budgets for ESL skyrocket, this program that was originally sold as being short term to help students keep up with work until they attained English proficiency, is not working.
In the former milltown we raised our daughter in, the school committee, always antagonistic towards any solution to the problem passed some seriously terrible changes to the city laws. Teachers all had to be city residents, which caused the losses of some great teachers who weren't going to sell their homes in other cities/towns to move there. Also, there became a serious substitute teacher shortage. There were times that there would be no teacher in a class for months at a time. While new textbooks were few and far between, there weren't enough old textbooks to go around for all the students in classes, though the school committee caved in to pressure from parents of children in religious schools to purchase new history, science and other textbooks for what state law considers required courses (absolutely pathetic... would they send their kids to schools that don't teach history and science?) as well as providing school bus services for said religious schools, though public school children did not get school bus service.
I have heard the old, "you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it" rationale far too many times. If all schools, private, public were ideally on the same footing, than I might agree, but there is no way you can expect the same outcomes when there are such obvious, glaring discrepencies in the access to important tools like textbooks, teachers who actually majored in particular subjects like science and math, additional resources like a well stocked school library and computer access. When you consider that depending what town you're in, a public or private school in a wealthy area has not only a sound, safe structure, is well lit and equipped, but it has the ability to offer electives like Latin, Russian, golf, etc.. while the public school in a poorer area is decrepit, falling apart, lacks proper resources like textbooks, even adequate teachers, never mind electives.
Sure, the budget in those towns talk about per pupil expenses, but those expenses are lumped together to pay for maintenance and repair, high prices for the privitized school lunch plan which in all honesty makes the old state school lunch plan look like something you'd get at the Ritz by comparison. Not very much is devoted towards education.
I've heard the rigamarole about how private schools do so much more for so much less... and know it for the hogwash that it is. Tuition for even low cost religious schools is subsidized by the church involved (in RI alot of catholic schools have been closed by the church because they didn't like paying money out of their own coffers to keep them operating) Private schools are subsidized by alumni organizations and private trusts.
Frankly, if public schools in the poorer towns in RI had the same money per student as say, the private school Moses Brown does, we'd see far better outcomes. At Moses Brown, per student, per year, from grades K-12 the tuition ranges from $19,990. to $20,650. ( http://www.mosesbrown.org/page.aspx?ID=46851 ) they offer a full range of arts, music, even science and technical electives, the students are exposed to cultural and wider educational opportunities. Whereas in my daughter's school the Army, Navy and Marine recruiters visited every three months, and the only job training recruiters that showed up were business representatives from KFC, with a college fair that consisted of New England Tech, Sawyer School and the state college and university, the more privileged at Moses Brown are treated to academics from all the top ranging schools and are promised that they are "the future".
No, I don't really expect all the bells and whistles, but before any more right wing rhetoric and the blame game, I think that at the very least students in less affluent areas are entitled to modern, clean buildings with textbooks and resources that are comensurate with those in more affluent surroundings. They should have fully funded arts and music programs and a decent amount of class trips to museums, etc.. to light the spark of interest and desire for education within them... they need to know that they too are the future and have a stake in it's outcome.
March 20, 2006 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
bluebell
I can tell you the test scores of the school if you give me an address because the higher the value of the housing the higher the children's test scores.
If you want to improve public education, ban poor kids from schools. It will be kind of like kicking their mother's off welfare. The metrics on the government program will improve. The poverty won't change.
March 20, 2006 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
To follow up on rdf's post, I'd remind everyone to read Kozol's classic Savage Inequalities. Anyone doubting the effect of funding on schools need look no further.
Kozol highlights in particular the injustice of property-tax based funding for school districts, which guarantees that wealthy districts will have more money for their schools. Truly a sobering read.
Voteless In DC
March 20, 2006 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Blackcommentator.com had an excellent piece on the fraud of the Republican 'education' agenda. Included how Bush wants to defund the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in favor of the newly-invented, pro-voucher, typically misnamed American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE). Founded in 2001....
and the involvement of the Walmart group in the ELC, which questions certification of the teaching profession.
the BC page is at LINK
It starts:
BUSH ASSAULTS TEACHER STANDARDS TO BOOST STAFFING OF VOUCHER SCOOLS
Feb. 26, 2004
Rod Paige could hardly wait to get to the meeting at the White House, where all the best lies are told. The nation’s largest teachers union is a “terrorist organization,” exclaimed the Education Secretary to an audience of state governors. The place got quiet all of a sudden, and Paige had to regroup. It was “a bad joke; it was an inappropriate choice of words," he back-peddled to reporters. If only George Bush had been in the room – someone to share Paige’s wild-and-crazy-guy sense of humor.
It is no wonder that Paige has lost his mental balance, and imagines that the National Education Association’s 2.7 million members are under the sway of (Al-Gebra) terrorists. Paige’s Department of Education has become an Alice In Wonderland lie-ocracy where not a word of truth is spoken; where arch racists claim to be civil rights activists, government divests itself of public schools to improve them, and higher standards of teaching require the abolition of teacher standards. Paige’s brain has been left behind in the rush to privatize the nation’s schools.......
March 20, 2006 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The power of teachers unions is vastly over stated. In NY, for example, teachers are not allowed by law to strike. This means that they really have very little power to change working conditions. For example, in Yonkers the teachers have been without a new contract for three years. The board of education just keeps stalling (not helped by various scandals and general city incompetence).
As for poor teachers being kept on "at all costs" this is false as well. Many really poor teachers are screened out during probationary periods (typically two or three years). Many others leave because they find they don't like to teach or don't like the environment. The problem is keeping the good, experienced teachers. Suburban schools pay 20-50% more than inner city schools.
Everyone likes to blame the victims whether it is the teachers, the principals or the "lazy" students. This serves to divert attention from the real problems - underfunding and poor social service support for the underclass.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
March 21, 2006 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a retired public school teacher, I must agree with Daniel Gee. Adequate funding, teacher competency, competent administrators are all important, and they all basically have to do with money. What does not have to do with money is parental involvement. And it makes a profound difference in student performance. Parent attendance at parent-teacher conferences illustrates my point. Parents of Asian children regularly show up by the droves - grandparents, aunts, uncles - you name it. Their children do very well in school. Anglo and "other" show up now and then and often never at all. Compared to Asian children, on average they do not do well. I'm making sweeping generalizations here, but you get the point. Parenthetically, Americans, especially politicians, speak as though education is of great importance, blah,blah,blah. But who do Americans admire? Not academics, not science nerds, they honor people with money. A good education does not necessarily lead to high-paying jobs. The black kid in a poor neighbor is going to be admired if he has money, and the fastest way to get money for him is to deal in drugs. Children are not stupid. They know what's important in the American adult world.
March 21, 2006 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Part of any progressive approach to education should be funding public schools with progressive income taxes, instead of with property taxes like they usually are.
This would eliminate a perverse incentive to live in wealthy suburbs where the schools are better. You shouldn't have to make six figures to buy your way into a decent school district where your kids can attend a great school. Maybe, given a great school wherever they live, more wealthy families would choose to live in the city where they don't have to commute 2 hours each way.
This would have benefits for transportation, air quality, family dynamics, reliance on foreign oil, and things far beyond the scope of this post.
-- All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. (John Kenneth Galbraith) --
March 22, 2006 2:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whenever some right winger brings up the "money doesn't matter, blah blah blah" argument I say "fine then lets normalize the funding between the rich suburban schools your kids attend and the inner city schools"
March 22, 2006 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
a) That was not a "Department of Education study" that indicated inferior dharter school performance, but an AFT study using NCES data. Since it usually students who are not doing well in conventional schools who will move, comparing the charter school population to the population of students in conventional schools is not a valid indicator of school effectiveness.
b) Across the US, the correlation ($/pupil, enrollment) is positive inall but three or four States with five or more districts over 15,000 enrollment (or 20,000 enrollment, depending on which year of the Digest of Education Statistics you use). The corelation (%minority enrollment, $/pupil) is positive in every single State with five or more districts over 15,000 (or 20,000...). The myth of the under-funded, inner-city minority school district (Kozol) is a lie. Dilapidated buildings and obsolete textbooks are not due to insufficient funding; the bureauctats steal poor kids' life chances.
c) The education industry is not a natural monopoly, and beyond some very low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of teh education business as it currently operates. Education only marginally qualifies as a public good and the "public goods" argument impies subsidy and regulation, at most, not State oparation of school.
d) State (government, generally) oparation of school is a threat to democracy, just as State oparation of news media would be (is, in totalitarian countries). Compulsory attendance at State-worshipful indoctrination centers is a feature of totalitarian countries like Cuba and North Korea, and of most US States. Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, the Netharlands, the Czech Republic, Chile, Hong Kong and Singapore subsidize a parent's choice of school.
Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez, ["Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings", pg. 16, __Comparative Education__, Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb.]
"Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where private education is more widespread perform significantly better than countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987; Jiminez, et. al, 1991).
This finding should convince countries to reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the field of education".
See also...
Joshua Angrist, "Randomized Trials and Quasi-Experiments in Education Research",___NBER Reporter___, summer, 2003.
http://www.nber.org/reporter/summer03/angrist.html
Homeschool if you can.
March 23, 2006 6:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have a BA in Math and a PD (fifth year certificate) in Secondary Math Education. I was for ten years a teacher in the Hawaii DOE. Currently I tutor.
College of Education classes (required for certification) add nothing to teacher competence. Schools would gtet better teachers if districts allowed schools to hire graduates with degrees in the subject as department gofers, (in-house substitutes, test graders, tutors, teachers' aids) and gave them two years' OJT.
Homeschool if you can.
March 23, 2006 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
With the influx of today's "deluxe" secular mind into the ranks of the "educator"... can you blame them.
That Darn Republican
March 30, 2006 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nathan,
I would correct that title heading... the only ideology that has attacked the school system with the intent of underminding and destroying it, is the left.
-That Darn Republican
April 2, 2006 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink