I must take issue with Mike Petrilli's comment--from his thoughtful editorial, "What if improving teacher quality isn't THE answer"--about those like me who advocate closing the "comparability loophole" in ESEA/NCLB Title I. He somewhat mischaracterizes what it is we support and then he calls us naïve.
Petrilli writes, for instance, that comparability advocates want "to ensure that each [district] schools' payrolls would be roughly the same." No. We want all schools' expenditures to be roughly the same. Payroll is a large chunk of expenditures, but not all of it.
But the big problem is that Petrilli believes teachers would, if comparability were law, be "compelled" to transfer to "rough schools." Yet we at the Center for American Progress, and many others who believe as we do, oppose the forced transfer of teachers for precisely the reasons Petrilli outlines. Instead we propose spending the new, fairly distributed money in high-needs schools on a differential salary structure with mentor and master teachers and bonuses for retaining effective teachers; on expanded learning time; and even on lower class sizes for beginning teachers, among other things.
We are not naïve about the challenges inherent in adopting a fairer system that distributes real dollars and not staff. But we're confident they can be addressed. Of course we know that money cannot be yanked out of the schools benefiting from richer budgets under the current fund distribution systems. Some sort of hold harmless for these schools, even accounting for inflation, will be needed. Even in tough economic times that is possible, especially given the history of growth in education budgets nationwide. Wealthier schools will simply need to live within the new budget structure when replacing their high-paid teachers who retire. With the huge retirement numbers that are forecast for the near future, this doesn't seem so difficult. Long-serving teachers with higher salaries have certainly traditionally jumped at the chance to transfer to less-challenging schools, but new dollars in challenging schools can provide new bonus incentives to retain the most effective and experienced teachers.
And besides, though we can't be sure, all the experts say the new generation of teachers (and there are going to be a lot of them) won't stay in teaching for long careers. So perhaps our current pattern of school budget inequities won't be as tough to tackle down the road. That seems to be what is happening in New York City now.
If you want to learn more about this issue, take a look at the Center for American Progress compilation of papers in our June 2008 publication Ensuring Equal Opportunity in Public Education: How Local School District Funding Practices Hurt Disadvantaged Students and What Federal Policy Can Do About It.
Cynthia G. Brown
Director of Education Policy, Center for American Progress