Some Sad Truths about Public Education in America

I have been trying to think of something federal besides Title 1 Reading support, Head Start and the school breakfast program that has had a dramatic, positive impact on public education in my thirty-three year career in teaching and I’m having a difficult time. The July 23rd issue of “The Week” reported on a Brown University study involving students at a private high school in

Rhode Island.  The school agreed to delay the start of school by half an hour, moving from 8:00 to 8:30 am with startling positive results, including a near 50% drop in tardiness.  In my experience, there is little that benefits a struggling student more than being in class when it
begins.  The last two sentences of the excerpt say it all:  "School districts have resisted calls to start school later, though, citing factors like bus schedules and parents’ work hours.  ‘It’s about adult convenience,’ says Mel Riddle of the National Association of School Principals.  ‘It’s not about learning.’"  Perhaps those officials heading the latest reform movement, "Race to the Top" (RT3, as I’m going to call it) could agree on one question to ask with respect to all parts of their initiative: Is this about learning?

If so, they could create a matrix revealing each element of their initiative for which they were able to answer "yes" to that question.  After separating the “yes’s” from the "no’s", or even those where the answer was "yes, but,” the public would be able to respond appropriately. Some publications may consider this point ancillary, but this question should be an obvious priority for parents as well as education administrators.

Our local school district made changes in the schedule this spring for two weeks in order to make up a snow day.  They split time to both start earlier and end later.  Teachers, myself included, noticed that we had time to repeat the homework at the end of class and have students check to make sure they had written it down, and the addition of as little as four minutes of time for which we had not planned additional activity, resulted in a noticeably more relaxed atmosphere during those two weeks. It might be that the relaxation was due in part to the elimination of a day at the end of the year, but it was a moot point for discussion, as the bus company informed us that, in no uncertain terms, they would be unable to accommodate such a schedule for the following year.

What will follow is an introduction to RT³ pros and cons or basics - - I might put off why I wouldn't want my principal being the only determining factor in whether or not I deserve additional performance-based pay.  I certainly would not want that pay determined by how my current 8th graders score on the ITBS as compared to last year's 8th graders, a Granfalloon (meaningless association) as Kurt Vonnegut would put it.  (Oh, yeah, we already have that, and it is called "No Child Left Behind!") Instead, base it on how Bobby J. did this year compared to last year and we're getting somewhere.  Better yet, judge my performance on how he did on an assessment based on district requirements (which do not coincide, by the way, to the ITBS) and we're getting closer.  Now, throw in a safeguard* against him drawing interesting patterns on his score sheet because he's angry that Dad left Mom, he was caught cheating on my semester exam, or he lost his place on the track team, and we're approaching something I'd be willing to put in my contract.

School districts and union leaders were asked to sign on to an RT³ ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ that included an agreement to use certain district assessments to determine performance-based pay. The memoranda were incomplete, however, since in my state no such assessment had been identified and would not be until we were notified whether our application had been filed. Even our local school board rejected the idea of signing a blank contract! We were not confident that the assessment would be anything other than the ITBS in the same format that had been used for NCLB, comparing Macintosh apples to Fuji apples. We were given no assurance that we would have input into the selection of that assessment. We were in the process of making a ten percent cut in a 30 million dollar budget and this still seemed too far to ask us to simply trust our government.

Another area parents should voice concern about is the origin of certain pots of the project’s federal funding. Most parents and non-parent citizens are aware that in troubled schools where students are permitted to opt for schooling in another district, they take some money with them to their new school. Schools are obligated to either transport students to those new schools or pay for such transportation. Under NCLB the Bush Administration allowed schools to use Title 1 money to pay for that transportation. Title 1 money is intended for remedial reading, so districts could be using money intended to support disadvantaged and/or underperforming students in order to transport other students to better, or at least less troubled, schools. So in these matters it is vital to ask from what other programs the money may be redirected.

This is just a very cursory swipe at a couple of glaringly obvious questions educators have about RT3 but it allows for the start of a conversation. Other posts will return to questions surrounding evaluation and performance-based pay, including, but not limited to: how to compensate those who contribute to student progress, but whose contributions are not assessed by standardized tests; how much of an evaluation should be weighted toward test performance vs. other factors; and whether the federal government will ever stop the practice of legislating unfunded mandates.