With less than $50 billion of discretionary spending, the US Department of Education's 2010 budget seems downright quaint compared to the money it's getting through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Even though the 2010 budget is mere pocket change compared to the figures being thrown around in DC nowadays, it's still worth a perusal. Three things jumped out at me.
First, evidently there's going to be more money to help turn around failing schools ???????with strong supports, not just sanctions.??????? This is interesting for a bunch of reasons. A) In general, turnarounds don't work, B) It's unfair to suggest that the No Child Left Behind act or the Bush administration only sanctioned failing schools, and most importantly C) Will shutting down bad schools count as turning them around? Because there's this little initiative taking place in some Midwestern city that's partially built around closing scores of persistently low-performing schools???????
Second, there's a little bit of tough talk: ???????The Budget supports additional investments in State and local efforts???????to implement systems that reward strong teacher performance and help less effective teachers improve or, if they do not improve, exit the classroom.??????? (Emphasis added). Who knows if they actually intend to help get rid of low-performing teachers, but this language is bolder than expected.
Third, it actually refers directly to the Harlem Children's Zone as a model for the new ???????Promise Neighborhoods??????? program it hopes to create. Reformers on the left LOVE the idea of HCZ, which provides lots of different support programs????????academic and otherwise????????to students to help them succeed in school. I've been skeptical of such ???????full wrap-around service??????? efforts in the past because they reinforce the Broader, Bolder notion that we can't fix education until we fix poverty and because HCZ's charters have had mixed results in the past. However, I just checked the NYC Public Schools website and was encouraged by the report card of one of the HCZ schools????????though I couldn't find the report card for the other two charters.
I'll just go on the record now as being opposed to a big ???????Promise Neighborhoods??????? initiative for the same reason I'm opposed to a big Pre-K initiative: There's a good chance we'll spend lots of money on these programs and end up with little to show for them in terms of academic gains. We should spend our scarce resources trying to create great schools.