Nobody likes having their budgets cut or income diminished. But my gracious, what a lot of griping, blaming and gnashing of teeth there has been in recent weeks with regard to public-school budgets. A blizzard of articles has chronicled the fiscal agonies of school systems whose revenues are pinched by the present downturn in state and municipal tax collections. This week, The New York Times reported that a dozen states have issued layoff notices to teachers, that there will be no summer school in San Francisco and that students at two Kansas elementary schools "emptied their coin jars to keep nurses and foreign-language teachers." The Washington Post recently quoted school officials predicting that "the reductions would take a toll on student performance as districts increase class size, pare teacher training programs and cut services..." and that "the Bush administration's signature effort to raise the performance of all students could be in jeopardy if the budget crises persist another year or two."
That, in any case, is the conventional wisdom in education land. And nobody denies that belt-tightening is painful. Yet the conventional wisdom sometimes harbors fallacies and illusions, too. Half a dozen such may be at work here.
First, school spending keeps rising in many places, if not as fast as before. The Census Bureau reports that the average per pupil outlay in U.S. public schools in 2001 ($7284) was up $448 from the previous year, despite the recession's onset. True, some states and communities are actually REDUCING their school budgets. Yet the basic trend line remains upward, as it has for decades--and today's cuts are typically being made in increases that occurred only yesterday.
Second, despite the passage of almost four decades, our public-education system has not yet internalized the central lesson of James Coleman's famous 1966 report and a million subsequent studies: there's no reliable link between the resources going into schools and the learning that comes out. Here and abroad, some superbly effective schools operate on cramped budgets in shabby facilities, sometimes with enormous classes, even as too many generously funded schools in fancy digs are places where children learn very little. (Think of Catholic schools as examples of the former; the school systems of Newark, Kansas City and the District of Columbia as specimens of the latter.) The big question about U.S. schools is not whether we're spending enough on them but whether we're getting our money's worth.
Third, observe the tendency to seize upon budgetary stringency as a rationalization for achievement gains that may not materialize. Especially worrisome is the habit that many state and local officials (and more than a few Congressional Democrats) have slipped into: proclaiming that No Child Left Behind is toast unless Uncle Sam antes up billions more to pay for implementing it. Because they will always find the billions too few, they seem to be stockpiling an excuse for later education failure. How much easier to blame skinflints in Washington than to undertake the heavy lifting needed to change one's school system into a high-performance enterprise.
Fourth, in too many town meetings and legislative hearings, the budget pinch is also becoming a sneaky, self-serving way for the public-school monopoly to strike out at charter schools and other unwanted rivals. This takes the form of scapegoating the competitors as thieves that pilfer scarce dollars from the "real" public schools--and as a luxury that perhaps the state or community might experiment with in flush times but cannot afford when money is tight.
Fifth, we see signs of the "Washington Monument gambit," i.e. the threat by the National Park Service that, if it doesn't get more money, it won't be able to keep one of the Capital's foremost tourist attractions open for visitors. Its counterpart in public education is to say that, if we don't get more money from (take your pick) the county, the state or the federal government, we'll have to (take your pick) eliminate sports, increase class size, abbreviate the school year, scrap gifted education, end after-school programs, curb college counseling, close the school library, etc., etc. That's how school systems think about budgets: in terms of "programs" and "services," not efficiencies, productivity or such tradeoffs as personnel versus technology.
Sixth, that's because public schools have a terrible time coping with budgetary adversity. They put nearly all their money into salaries and benefits--80.6 percent of school operating budgets, says the Census Bureau--and they keep hiring more people and giving them across-the-board raises. Then they confer tenure and enter into contracts such that it's nearly impossible to let anyone go, much less cut their wages.
Yet the regular world isn't like that. Airlines faced with the threat of bankruptcy have been renegotiating contracts, slashing salaries (from mechanics and cabin attendants up to top executives) and laying off thousands. So do most organizations outside government--including, when necessary, private and charter schools. But when did you last hear a school board talk about pay cuts or contract re-negotiations? Of laying off less productive and higher-priced workers? (Most public-school RIFs take the form of scrapping entire programs or activities rather than pink slips for individuals.) What about introducing distance learning and teacher aides in lieu of more full-fledged teachers with ever-smaller classes?
To be sure, airlines can eliminate flights while schools cannot eliminate students needing to be served. Many schools, however, are being paid for youngsters whom they're not actually serving. State aid in Ohio, for example, is based on the number of pupils carried on a school's rolls, not the number that attend--yet a pending proposal to shift the basis from "average daily membership" to "average daily attendance" has been met with howls of outrage. (In some school systems, absenteeism runs as high as 15% on a typical day.)
Airlines also opt for smaller planes and lower-salaried pilots when they must. Technology replaces baggage handlers and check-in people. The Internet substitutes for reservations offices and staff. Why can't public education think that way? Put some of its creativity into devising cheaper ways of doing things? It could, of course, but so far it seems to prefer whining, scapegoating, slamming rivals, threatening to shut down its most popular offerings and explaining that any shortfalls on the student-achievement front are nobody's fault but the taxpayer's.
"States, Facing Budget Shortfalls, Cut the Major and the Mundane," by Timothy Egan, The New York Times, April 21, 2003
"States cutting school funding," by Dale Russakoff and Linda Perlstein, The Washington Post, March 15, 2003
