So reports the Associated Press. Will our Washington Insiders believe him? Diane Ravitch will be disappointed if he's serious. (So will I.)
(Due to technical difficulties, we're giving everyone another chance to enter the name-the-next-education-secretary contest. If you already entered, please enter again).
Think you know your who's who in education policy? Well here's your chance to prove it. Don't wait! Cast your vote by 6:00 p.m. Friday and enter to win an autographed copy of Checker Finn's Troublemaker! Just email us your best guess to [email protected]. If multiple people pick the eventual nominee, books will go to the first three entrants. So vote today! Winners will be announced as soon as the nomination is made.
From Fall intern Molly Kennedy:
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the faltering economy is forcing schools to tighten their belts. The number one cost-saving step school districts have already taken? Altering thermostats. That's according to a survey by the American Association of School Administrators. Other steps include hiring reductions, fewer supplies, larger class sizes, and a decrease in extracurricular activities. Read media coverage of the survey here, here and here.
Thermostat photograph from midnightcomm on Flickr
Over the past quarter century, Ohio-following national trends-has added an average of $760 million per year to K-12 education. In no year has a funding increase been less than $376 million (see here). In ten years, Ohio has seen its average per-pupil expenditure, using inflation-adjusted dollars, rise 25 percent (from $7,500 in 1997 to about $10,000 in 2007, see Graph I below). In 2007, Ohio spent $16.8 billion on public education-some $1,930 for every adult living in the state.
This new spending, however, has not resulted in commensurate levels of student achievement growth. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Ohio students have made slight gains over the past fifteen years in math achievement, though these gains do not outpace the national average and still leave well over half of all students below the proficiency bar. Ohio's progress in reading has been slower, and according to NAEP just 36 percent of Ohio students in fourth and eighth grade are proficient at reading (see here).
Despite this increased spending and static achievement gains, school districts in the Buckeye State face unpredictable funding realities and real fiscal pain. Considering Ohio's troubled economy it is fair to ask if state government and its citizens can maintain the pace of the recent past.
For these reasons, Gov. Ted Strickland's long-awaited school-funding proposal is being anxiously anticipated and it will surely jump-start the school-funding debate when it is released in early 2009.
Fortuitously, on Dec. 1, the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington (see here), will weigh in on school finance in America with the strongest data yet-the result of a six-year, $6-million study of school funding. The study examines four states, including Ohio, where it found volatile financing, teacher contracts, and partisan politics blocking actions to improve student performance. The report led to the conclusion that "school finance today works against the focused and efficient use of resources to promote student learning."
The project is the compilation of more than 30 separate research projects. Paul T. Hill, the director of the Center, led the effort. More than 40 economists, policy analysts, school-finance experts, and others worked on the study, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded it.
What follows is an essay by Shelley De Wys, a researcher on the project, who outlines early findings and what they portend for Ohio:
Ohio students place second to special interests
Ohio's system for financing public schools does not work for all students. This is no secret. Several lawsuits have found Ohio's education finance system to be unconstitutional. But the Ohio legislature has failed to improve it. Meanwhile, Ohio's educators are working hard to raise student performance. Unfortunately, they face many barriers. While many school and district administrators want more money, they also think they could do better with what they have if only they were less dependent on local levies and if decisions were not so heavily influenced by stakeholder demands and politics.
At the end of the day, it's Ohio students who suffer.
These conclusions arise from interviews conducted with 62 state, district, and school administrators as part of an in-depth study of Ohio's school finance system, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We found that administrators throughout Ohio know they must raise student performance. Some think they know how to do it. Others want to test different ideas to see what works. The trouble is, their efforts are constrained by a volatile finance system, rigid union contracts, and partisan politics.
Ohio's tax system requires districts to pass frequent levies just to keep up with inflation. Some taxpayers think districts are just asking for more money, resulting in voter levy fatigue. Meanwhile, districts must pay ever-increasing energy and health care costs. The result is fewer dollars to educate Ohio's children. Many Ohio districts find the state's per-pupil funding to be inadequate and, therefore, levy more than the minimum property tax required by the state.
In addition, some districts in Ohio can raise more money than others. Property values in some wealthy districts are approximately six times those in the poorest districts.
That's why some districts with very few needy students have access to as much, and sometimes more, resources than districts with greater numbers of needy students, even when special state funding for needy students is factored in. As one educator told us, "Most [education] funding is based on property taxes, and people in urban areas make the least amount of money... and many times, the property values... are [less] than they are in suburban areas. So, we find ourselves struggling with respect to achieving adequate funding based on the demographics that we have to serve."
This system of funding education has significant and negative repercussions.
Disadvantaged students often do not receive the educational supports they need. In addition, when levies do not pass, cost-cutting measures in poor districts often result in the elimination of programs or classroom staff.
A second major impediment to improving student performance is teacher union contracts. Educators told us contracts prevent changes they believe are necessary to improve performance, such as lengthening school days and implementing new instructional practices. One principal noted, "I have a very lengthy, very detailed contract. And the contract, I think, should be thrown out and started over. It's become so cumbersome that the contract and the union have lost sight of what's best for kids, and it's [focused on] what's best for teachers."
Contract requirements regularly clash with the concept of providing "highly qualified" teachers in every classroom. Seniority provisions allow experienced teachers to avoid working in schools most in need of improving student performance. Such provisions also constrain administrators' efforts to hire, layoff, and fire teachers. A respondent noted that, "[The contract] does not allow us... to put the right people in the right place at the right time. We just don't have the flexibility to do that," while a principal said it is almost impossible to remove an ineffective teacher: "To make a long story short... once you get tenure, short of killing someone, you can't be fired. That's somewhat of an exaggeration, but that's the gist of it."
In addition, union opposition has blocked the adoption of teacher-pay systems based upon performance. The bottom line is that teacher contracts lock in strict working conditions so that innovation is all but impossible, underperforming teachers are protected, and students get short shrift. Ohio policymakers need to figure out how to ensure fair treatment of teachers in a way that also truly serves the needs of students.
Finally Ohio policymakers seemingly can't get beyond partisan politics and special interests to address key education finance issues. Divisions exist on the basis of different district funding profiles and socio-economic demographics, as well as political orientations.
This study spotlights how Ohio's finance system works like a brake pedal, slowing educators' abilities to improve student learning. Without substantial changes to the finance system to better support local improvement efforts, Ohio educators likely won't reach the goal of bringing all students up to standard.
It's a matter of putting the needs of our students, our kids, first.
Shelley De Wys is research coordinator at the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education.
The mom-in-chief better put her foot down about this . Reuters reports that Sasha and Malia Obama have been invited by Billy Ray Cyrus to guest star on his daughter's hit TV show, "Hannah Montana ." Unfortunately, we all know that Miley "stuck in school's so lame " Cyrus is no role model when it comes to education.
On a more serious note, if we give a 15-year-old celebrity a hard time for some ordinary school-centered angst, what's going to happen to the first daughters? I predict an unfortunate but serious case of growing up too fast. Let's hope there are no bedsheets and cameras involved .
"Michelle Obama visits Washington private schools "
The soon-to-be first lady toured Georgetown Day School in the morning and Sidwell Friends School, which Chelsea Clinton attended, in the afternoon. In between, she spent about two hours visiting the residential portion of the White House with first lady Laura Bush. Their husbands met privately in the Oval Office.
Columnist Richard Cohen caught my eye today by endorsing Al Gore for secretary of state, but much of his column is spent suggesting Joel Klein for secretary of education:
...next to Gore at State, nothing would show how much the Obama administration will break from the past than by elevating the secretary of education to the inner Cabinet. My choice: Joel Klein , New York City's schools chancellor.Many people lament all the energy that is not being drilled for offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge . But far fewer people get as exercised over the brainpower that is not being tapped in this country on account of an inexcusably awful education system. Klein would change that by, among other things, altering the way teachers are compensated. Good teachers would earn more than average teachers and teachers who want to teach in the toughest, meanest and most desperate schools would earn most of all.
Teachers unions -- another Democratic Party interest group -- hate merit pay, so here's another opportunity for Obama to prove his mettle. The object is to reverse the current situation, in which most teachers are recruited from the bottom quarter of college classes, and instead go for the top quarter -- as do Finland and South Korea, two countries with excellent education systems.
It's a sad commentary on our schools that Obama is probably going to have to send his girls to a private school in Washington. It's also inexpressibly sad that so many kids pass through school -- and go straight to jail, often leaving a victim in their wake. It's good that Klein's belief that public education can be redeemed is so deep that he quit a high-paying job in private industry to take on the immense New York school system.
Cohen also endorses Lawrence Summers for Treasury. Given the enemies each has made, Summers, Gore, and Klein each would be entertaining nominations, at the least.
Today we live in a different country than we did even 10 days ago. Back then we were partaken with partisanship and infected with invectiveness. Now we watch with awe as the sitting president and the president-elect prepare for yet another peaceful, democratic transition of power. We strain to get a glimpse of the new First Family. We wonder where the girls will go to school. It's as if the mass catharsis of last Tuesday night's river of choked-up tears washed away all of the ugliness of the long election season.
So it is in that spirit that I respond to Leo Casey's post from a fortnight ago, when he accused me of taking up the "politics of resentment and fear" by pursuing "???divide and conquer' strategies designed to set working people against each other."
With pages right out of a Depression era playbook, he proclaims that public school teachers and retirees - not Wall Street financiers and the corporate benefactors of his rightwing political friends - enjoy unearned and undeserved privilege. Our sinecures? Nothing more than our health care insurance and our pensions. Father Coughlin and Huey Long meet the 21st century prophet of Fordham, Mike Petrilli.
Wow. I will assume that Mr. Casey got caught up in the pre-election madness and might now cringe at those words. (It's already happened to me in my short time as a blogger, writing with a wave of emotion that I later regret.)
Because how can anyone possibly argue that it's "divisive" to wonder whether we can afford the retirement promises made to America's public school teachers? Do folks across the political spectrum who worry about the solvency of Social Security also partake in the "politics of resentment and fear"? Of course not.
Here's what I wrote:
Within ten or fifteen years we're going to see the era of ever-increasing education budgets come to an end, as revenue is diverted to entitlements and more and more instructional funds are diverted to teachers' pensions and retiree health costs.
And:
Won't the teachers unions throw their weight around to ensure that education budgets don't feel the pinch? After all, they always say that they are working on behalf of "the kids." But they have their own generational warfare problem, because their most important and powerful constituencies are retired teachers and those nearing retirement age. Which is why we hear the NEA and AFT calling for tax increases rather than pushing for education spending over Medicare or Social Security. If they really were "for the kids," I suspect their position would be quite different.
Look, here are the facts. People are living longer, which is great. But it means that the ratio of retirees to workers is growing, both in our society as a whole and within the public education system. The pension promises that have been made to teachers (and to everyone under Social Security) were based on old assumptions about Americans' longevity. So eventually we're going to have to face some choices: either reduce retirement benefits, delay them, or raise taxes on workers to cover the costs. For education, that means either expecting teachers to stay in the classroom longer, to receive smaller (or 401(k) style) pensions, or to divert more resources from the rest of the k-12 budget in order to cover retiree costs. (Actually, there's a fourth option, which is to boost school spending dramatically to cover retirements without cutting into instructional expenses. But I suspect that will be challenging in an age when Social Security and Medicare costs eat up even more of the public dollar.)
If there are other solutions to the impending entitlement crisis that I'm not aware of it, I'm all ears, Mr. Casey. Seriously. I don't revel in the idea that our schools are going to have less to spend on teacher salaries or classroom materials and all of the rest. And I would love for everyone, including, even especially, teachers to have a secure and dignified retirement. I'm just not sure how we're going to pay for it all. If you do, please share. But keep the namecalling out of it, if you would. That's so November 3rd, and we live in a November 5th world.
Huey Long photograph from the Library of Congress
It's Day Two of Fordham's pick-the-next-secretary-of-education daily tracking poll (results from day one are here), and Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan and former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt have established themselves as the early favorites. Colin Powell is still in the hunt (no pun intended), though perhaps our insiders are wondering about the likelihood that he'd say yes were President-Elect Obama to offer him the job. Meanwhile, Freeman Hrabowski, the one higher education expert listed yesterday, has apparently fallen out of contention. Keep your eyes on Virginia governor Tim Kaine, who pops up on the radar screen for the first time today.
Other mentions (in this order): Beverly Hall, Erskine Bowles, Caroline Kennedy, Chris Edley, Paul Vallas, Bob Wise, Roy Barnes, and Roy Romer. No longer named by anyone: Andy Rotherham, Kati Haycock, Norm Francis, and Michael Bennet, plus, as mentioned above, Freeman Hrabowski.
Mike Feinberg, co-founder of KIPP and current KIPP superintendent in Houston, gives Obama a few words of advice in the Houston Chronicle .
Obama should:
1. ??Open up and simplify alternative education pathways. The human capital shortage is certainly a hindrance to bringing great charter schools to scale--but there are things state and federal legislators can do to help. Steven Wilson explained how in last week's Gadfly .
2. ??Choose a reform minded secretary of education. We couldn't agree more . This secretary needs to motivate and inspire--and choose the right reforms to back up the rhetoric. As usual, Mike was weeks ahead of the competition when he contemplated the right mix of education background, firm grasp of politics, and superlative management skills to fill this key cabinet spot.
3. ??Focus on early childhood education. To my mind, the jury is still out on whether or not we should be scrambling over this one. Despite some anecdotal evidence in support of childhood programs, Checker, amongst others , has been quite critical of universal preschool. Obama endorsed the idea this summer but??(not surprisingly)??we haven't heard much on the topic lately. At this point, let's simply hope Obama checks off points one and two before heading in this direction.