”
Financial crisis staggers California, Governor outlines
draconian budget cuts.
”
That headline was not from last week. It was from 2003 when
former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was facing a multibillion-dollar
state budget deficit. Yes, it’s dej
à vu.
“Financial crisis staggers California, Governor outlines draconian budget cuts.” That headline was not from last week. It was from 2003 when former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was facing a multibillion-dollar state budget deficit. Yes, it’s dejà vu.
In response to the latest budget crisis, the state is threatening to lay off thousands of schoolteachers. They could eliminate other items without creating much anxiety, but threatening to pink-slip teachers guarantees angry citizens. This political tactic is called ‘The Washington Monument Ploy.’ In it, the government threatens to do something unpopular, like closing the Washington Monument, unless they get what they want – and it usually works.
In a sane system, the public could evaluate the state’s education program by reviewing its goals, accomplishments, plans and the effectiveness of budgets. But this is not a sane system.
What the citizens should be angry about is not layoff posturing, but that 51 percent of the students taking the state’s Grade 10 high school English-Language Arts exit exam were rated “not proficient.”
First, we fund education with more than 41 percent of the state’s annual budget, about $60 billion a year, $45 billion for K-12, but we do it on a year-to-year basis. Doing it that way makes no sense. How can we implement effective programs and evaluate results unless we plan years in advance? Education budgeting should be put on a 5-year plan with frequent reviews and adjustments. Fund the good programs; kill the bad ones.
Second, we must stop rating education programs based, primarily, on how much money we spend. Using spending as the measure is like selecting the Super Bowl winner based on the teams’ total payrolls. For reference, the champion New York Giants had the lowest annual payroll in the NFL. Success defines success, not how much money you spend on failure.
Third, the public needs simplified, widely-circulated report cards useful for evaluating the local education options. Statewide data is interesting, but not useful when selecting a school. Almost nothing in our society has been as overanalyzed as education. The National Center for Education Statistics does if for the federal government, at the web site nces.ed.gov/. Their current “Digest of Education Statistics” has more than 425 different tables in it.
The fourth requirement is that we need to get honest. Currently, everyone cheery-picks whatever data they need to bolster their arguments. Additionally, the education and political establishments are rigging the reporting system to support their agendas. I hope this doesn’t shock you.
According to “Getting Honest About Grad Rates” by The Education Trust (June 2005), some states calculate only graduation rates for seniors, ignoring early dropouts. By ignoring the dropouts in the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades, they report graduation rates 30 percent higher than the actual figures. California’s self-reported graduation rate was 87 percent, NCES has it at 74 percent, and the Trust calculated it as 69 percent. If every state uses a different formula for calculating critical data, how reliable can all that be? I guess they never heard of GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
While it’s true that California spends less per pupil than many states and D.C., (we are 38th out of 51), at the same time we pay the second-highest average public school salaries in the nation, $57,876 a year (according to the NEA, the nation’s largest labor union). That’s $10,200 a year more than the national average. I can’t find any significant connection between how much is spent and educational success. If a simple relationship existed, surely someone would have found it and proven it by now.
California’s inflation-adjusted expenditures per pupil for public elementary and secondary schools have almost tripled to $8,234 (in 2006 dollars) since 1959. From 1990 to 2004, the increase was 25 percent. Yet, the high school graduation rate for the same 14-year period “increased” less than 4.5 percent. Even if you believe those figures, it’s a lot easier to raise the graduation rate early in the program. Now comes the hard part.
The nation has been throwing money at the education problem for decades with little success. With so many vested interests involved, we may never know why we continue to fail. Just don’t tell me, “We’re doing it for the children.”
If we really were actually doing it for the children, we’d demand better results.
