Hey, big spender

Chris Tessone / November 14, 2011

We are going to see increasing in-fighting among big government types as big-spending school districts compete for resources with the rest of the agenda supported by the public fisc. Schools are increasingly going to lose those battles, which they’re not used to. Today’s example comes from Montgomery County, Maryland, where I live.

Democrats on the county council have been butting heads with the school board for months over skyrocketing education budgets, culminating in a battle to repeal Maryland’s maintenance of effort requirement:

But the details of Maryland’s maintenance of effort law have proved unwieldy in tough budget times. Its authors never anticipated a housing bubble nor articulated a logical process for working through it.

The debate has largely played out in Montgomery County. The county’s nationally recognized schools have long been a generously protected fiscal priority, and the county council exceeded minimum spending levels by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade. When the budget outlook worsened, though, the county council said it couldn’t maintain the same level of investment.

“The county government was hurt by the fact that we were doing over and above what we were required to do,” said council president Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring), a former school board member.

Montgomery County provides a cautionary tale to those who see resources as the primary lever for improving K-12 education. MCPS is a very expensive district but not particularly wasteful on

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Hey, big spender

Progress on IL pensions?

Chris Tessone / November 9, 2011

Illinois may finally be addressing its dysfunctional teacher retirement system with meaningful, bipartisan reform:

The sweeping pension changes, presented by House Republican Leader Tom Cross and Democratic Speaker Michael Madigan, would establish three retirement options for government workers to choose from going forward. State employees could keep their retirement benefit in place but pay more; take smaller benefits but pay no more; or set up a 401(k)-style plan that would give employees more control of their investments but also see them roll the dice on the markets.

I’ve made no secret of how little I think of last year’s “reform” in Illinois, which simply took money out of the pockets of young teachers to make up for the bad choices made by legislators and unions. This is a much better start, and it’s cheering that the Democratic leadership is on board.

Labor doesn’t like it, with the Illinois AFL-CIO’s president claiming this measure would reform the pension system “on the backs of working families.” But working people are going to be hurt no matter what, since the retirement system is in terrible fiscal shape. The question is whether reform shares the pain or soaks only new workers, and whether Illinois can compensate new teachers in an attractive and competitive way. The state needs to get both those questions right.

Keep it up, Illinois reformers.

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Progress on IL pensions?

Fixing Rhode Island???s pensions

Chris Tessone / November 4, 2011

Rhode Island's teacher pension system is a mess. The annual cost of the retirement system has doubled since 2003 and will likely double again by 2013. Education Sector has released a report today looking at state treasurer Gina Raimondo's plan to stabilize the pension fund by switching to a hybrid plan and spreading the fiscal pain among taxpayers, retirees, current employees, and new workers.

Ed Sector's analysis hits the important high points of the crisis in teacher pensions: this is a crucial education policy issue (because it's eating up needed funds that no longer reach the classroom), that existing defined-benefit pensions mistreat the majority of teachers in favor of a select few, and that reforms ought to share the pain among stakeholders rather than soak new teachers.

The writers (rightly) single out Illinois as a bad example that Rhode Island and other states should avoid. As I noted a few weeks ago, the "reform" there essentially amounts to theft from all new teachers. The RI plan is going to be painful for a lot of people, but it's smarter and fairer.

Go check out the report. I know it's Friday, but it's a quick read. The folks at Ed Sector have done a great job of making this technical subject approachable and interesting.

? Chris Tessone

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Fixing Rhode Island???s pensions

Feared teacher layoffs mostly didn't happen

Chris Tessone / November 2, 2011

Despite doomsday projections of huge layoffs as a result of the "new normal" of lower or flat education funding, NCTQ found in a recent survey that layoffs in large urban districts were modest ? 2.5 percent on average ? and only affected roughly half of surveyed cities.

The story of how cities avoided layoffs is interesting. More districts cut class time or school days than cut or reduced workers' benefits. Most simply reduced head count through attrition. These data could bolster the case of reformers like Scott Walker who argue that state policy should tackle runaway growth in benefits because school boards and administrators will not. Clearly only a tiny minority of districts were willing to touch these areas of their budget.

Some districts were much harder hit than the average, however, including our hometown of Dayton, OH. No doubt our Ohio team will comment on the particulars of the case there. Overall, however, NCTQ's survey suggests that many cities have found a way around massive layoffs and the Obama administration's dire predictions of huge job losses in education going forward may not be justified.

? Chris Tessone

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Feared teacher layoffs mostly didn't happen