Many legislators seem short on ideas now that voters have put responsibility for education reform squarely back in their laps with last week’s decisive defeat of Initiative 884 (the billion-dollar education tax increase). Post-election commentary about the measure is fixated on money and legislators are throwing up their hands wondering where they’re going to get more of it.
There’s nothing new in the rhetoric—and that’s the problem.
It’s time to consider the fact that we may already be spending enough money on education, we just aren’t spending it effectively. And it’s time to discuss the crucial need for structural reforms in our outdated, monopolistic education delivery system.
Read the complete op-ed in the extended entry . . .
Life after I-884: Move beyond the rhetoric
(Part One)
by Marsha Richards
Many legislators seem short on ideas now that voters have put responsibility for education reform squarely back in their laps with last week’s decisive defeat of Initiative 884 (the billion-dollar education tax increase). Post-election commentary about the measure is fixated on money and legislators are throwing up their hands wondering where they’re going to get more of it.
There’s nothing new in the rhetoric—and that’s the problem.
It’s time to consider the fact that we may already be spending enough money on education, we just aren’t spending it effectively. And it’s time to discuss the crucial need for structural reforms in our outdated, monopolistic education delivery system.
If you’re one of the many people in our state who believe we aren’t spending enough on public education, ask yourself: How much are we spending right now? Are we spending it wisely? How much would be enough?
The most common answer to those questions is a blank stare, which isn’t surprising. Most of us have been the target of a relentless, decades-old campaign by members of the education establishment who have never and will never believe education is “adequately funded.” After all, they want to be in a growth industry just like everyone else.
Understanding and acknowledging that fact is not unkind. It just means we should stop blindly basing our opinions and decisions about education policy on false assumptions.
What are the facts about education spending in our state?
We’re currently spending about $9.2 billion a year for K-12 schools (local, state and federal funds combined). That’s about $9,400 per student per year. K-12 spending increased 31 percent in real dollars between 1993 and 2003. Per-pupil spending during that same time increased 34.8 percent in real dollars (16.5 percent inflation adjusted).
The state’s general fund operating budget for public colleges and universities is roughly $2.7 billion every two years—an amount that doesn’t include capital (building) expenses. Higher education spending increased by 45.4 percent (nearly three times the rate of inflation) between 1993 and 2003.
Of course it costs money to provide a quality education. But how you spend that money is just as important as how much. Of the $9.2 billion spent on K-12 education in 2002-03, only 42.5 percent was used for “basic instruction” (teacher salaries, curriculum, etc.), which means nearly 60 percent was used for other programs and support services.
In our public colleges and universities, millions of dollars are spent to compensate for low graduation rates (only 60 percent of students graduate after six years); low teacher/student contact time (the average teaching faculty reports twelve hours or less in class or meeting with students each week); and high remediation rates (57 percent of all first-year community college students must take high school level courses).
Blindly assuming more money will solve our education problems is bad for taxpayers and students. We’re spending more today than ever before, yet one out of three students fails to graduate from high school, 61 percent of our state’s tenth graders fail state assessments, and 43 percent of our new high school graduates must take remedial courses in reading, writing or math.
Why? Because we have a broken, monopolistic education delivery system that isn’t going to be fixed by expansion.
Imagine running our grocery stores the way we run our schools. Each of us would be assigned a store based on our zip code and the products in that store would be determined by state-level bureaucrats. If we didn’t like the store we were assigned, we could check with another nearby store and hope they had enough products to allow us to shop there.
Outrageous, right? We all know monopolies are bad news for consumers, so why do we imagine they’re good for our kids?
Students need highly qualified teachers, clear and rigorous academic standards, strong school leaders, smaller schools, and meaningful parental involvement. We will never achieve these goals until we eliminate most of the 1,300 pages of small-print rules and regulations that stifle local schools; start paying teachers based on how well they do their jobs instead of how long they’ve had them; give principals the authority they need to select and remove staff and direct budgets; make sure more than half of the dollars spent get to the classroom; and reform the unfair laws that allow a monopoly labor union to control school policies that impact students.
If we care about the children in our state getting an excellent education, we need to stop protecting and expanding a broken system at their expense. Legislators should move beyond the rhetoric and implement the solutions that work.
(Watch for Part Two next week: “Life after I-884: Solutions that work.”)
Marsha Richards directs the Education Reform Center for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a policy research organization dedicated to individual liberty, free enterprise and accountable government.
Posted by Marsha Richards at November 18, 2004 02:00 PM | Email ThisAs always you're one of our state's best.
I think if this is part I, part II has astronomic expectations. Which you'll surpass.
I'll put it this way: This particular piece was just as good as the 1963 Burlington Journal editorial I posted in commentary to your renovated blog HERE . I stridently recommend all involved in public education matters read it and consider greatly what they wrote.
Odd how history bedevils us, eh?
Josef
Posted by: Josef on November 18, 2004 02:21 PMIf 65% of the money (with the corresponding efforts, focus, and prioritization) went into Basic Instruction, requesting more money would seem to be more likely to pass.
Posted by: Al on November 18, 2004 05:03 PMAl, I wish I knew exactly where all the dollars went in education. OSPI provides broad budget categories, but figuring out the nitty-gritty details is still on my to-do list. I plan to dive in to one or two district budgets to set the stage in the coming months.
Bottom line, schools should be accountable to clear academic standards, and dollars should be driven to the local level, where parents, teachers and administrators can decide how to spend them to get the job done.
To ensure efficiency, we should have comprehensive performance audits.
Posted by: Marsha Richards on November 18, 2004 05:39 PMI get a smile on my face when I think about special ed, despite suffering for - I guess it was seven years before we gave up on the public special ed bureaucracy and paid our own money in a private school - due to a story.
This is in a 1993 book by Sy Fliegel, the school administrator who lead the introduction of creating small new schools and allowing parents choice among the public schools in Harlem, New York. Two hunters shot an elk. So they had to get it to their truck; but it was quite a distance and brushy. As they dragged it by the feet the large antlers kept getting caught in the brush. So they tried dragging it by the antlers. And it was much easier to move the elk,. But after a while they noticed that they were getting farther and farther from their truck. That, the veteran educator tells us, is how special education in New York City is run. I got to meet him and hear him speak in person once.
Posted by: Ron Hebron on November 18, 2004 08:37 PMYou're welcome, as always. Let me add some HTML code so your blog with the Burlington Farm Journal opens up in a new window: HERE.
Yours;
Josef
Posted by: Josef on November 18, 2004 09:30 PMExpect more 'no' votes on initiatives of this nature in the future unless the union is broken and real reforms are implemented.
Posted by: Kevin Shannon on November 18, 2004 11:09 PMRespectfully, I don't put all the blame on the teachers' unions - there are many, many good teachers out there. I pin a large whopping amount of the blame on the Educrats.
Even in 1963, they were a problem - you can read THE anti-Educrat editorial HERE. Now, in 2004, they royally manipulate people to push throwmoremoneyatit solutions as you can read HERE and my open letter to the SVC BofT on 884's defeat HERE. If you still want more info, then go HERE for my table of contents. and click on some "(The Best of) I-884 (I-Throwmoremoneyatit)" stuff that I blogged about.
Are the WEA part of the problem - yes. But you can't honestly expect them to be part of the solution with that kind of rhetoric. And what kind of reforms do you mean?
Yours;
Josef
http://josef-a-k.blogspot.com
(In the event my TOC link changes on you because of an update - just copy the above into your web browser. The latest update's in the template on the right side.)
It is interesting that a private school can guarentee, for a tuition of $2,800 and a time frame of 5 weeks, to make up a full year of public school (http://www.morningsideacademy.org/).
I sent my son to this school for a summer when he was in elementary school. He did make up an entire year of school. The location for the school was in the middle of one of Seattle's worst ghettos (I still remember stepping on a hypodermic needle when going in one morning, luckily I was wearing shoes).
Yet the school was extremely successful in bringing my son along and giving him an EARNED feeling of success.
This is an example of a benchmark against which all public special ed programs (and teachers) could be compared.
Laurie: You hit the nail on the head. Hands are tied at the local level by numerous (1,300 small-print pages) requirements about how money will be spent. I don't doubt that there are a lot of good ideas at the local level; just not the freedom to implement them. We need to fix that.
Kevin: I absolutely agree that the union is one of the biggest obstacles facing students today. We have to solve that problem to get to a host of others.
Josef: I'd separate "union" from "teachers." Teachers don't have any choice about union membership in our state. Most of the time they're being exploited by union officials, just like students.
Iconoclast: Amazing, isn't it? It helps that private schools have to compete with each other for business. When public schools fail, they usually get more money. Perverse.
Posted by: Marsha Richards on November 19, 2004 09:56 AMAnd, the WEA will always be a problem and will never be part of the solution. Their goal is not to achieve excellence in education. Their goal is to fill their coffers with more and more dues and to use such dues to increase their politcial power, which can then be used to extort more dues...it's a vicious cycle.
Teachers should be treated like any other professional person and be evaluated based on their performance. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, don't go on strike. We have to produce for our employers or we are out. No unions protect us. We protect ourselves by making ourselves useful and productive.
Unions shield employees from these natural market relationships and create inefficient burueacracies. The unions and educrats are natural allies of one another. The victims are the conscientious teachers and the students. And the taxpayers....
There will never be improvement in education as long as the WEA/NEA dominate the process. I use that type of rhetoric because it is the truth. I do not expect them to eveer be part of the solution.
Posted by: K Shannon on November 19, 2004 10:05 AMWell, I have to tread a bit carefully here... but I agree the WEA may be part of the problem.
That said, I believe the umpteen regulations need review. I believe if anything needs to be regulated - IT IS GOVERNMENT, NOT BUSINESS. As you wrote HERE, "The Constitution doesn't define the rights of citizens; it defines (and severely limits) the rights of government. The Bill of Rights isn't there to list our rights; it's there to make darn sure government doesn't overstep its own."
Like I hyperlinked before, and I hope you read and write back, we have a serious problem here with the Educrats. To blame the WEA for A-L-L of our education problems is illusory, at best. With more constructive dialogue as I tried to call Kevin on, I believe progress can be made.
I also think it's very respectfully unfair to blame the WEA for ALL the evils of public education without starting at the top with the Educracy - who believes in blowing thousands in dollars in retreats like some of us believe in a Higher Power, who believes in bloated salaries - and even now wants to put Community College Presidential compensation on the table for the legislative budget inherently against the wishes of the Governor whom appointed them. I blogged this HERE. I really hope you all - especially you Marsha - read and opine, doubly so since Marsha has a Blogger.com account because she has her own cool blog at http://mlouise.blogspot.com which I hope you all will visit.
Josef
Posted by: Josef on November 19, 2004 11:57 AMI also should have added "AND THE TEACHERS" to buisness.
Sorry :-(. Hope you visit my blog post on the Educrats.
Posted by: Josef on November 19, 2004 12:20 PM
Educrats also. Add any group with anything at stake in the public schools , and they're most likely part of the problem also. It's something that's inherent in a public monopoly, and I don't expect things to get better. I expect them to get worse until vouchers are offered. Then I expect the public school system to shrink to a shadow of its former self.