Weighted Student Funding does more than rearrange “inputs”
I’m glad we have Flypaper to vent our internal disagreements, as I take umbrage with Ben’s Gadfly discussion of Weighted Student Funding. In his review of an AIR report examining WSF in San Francisco and Oakland, Ben is far too dismissive of WSF as a reform (it “adjusts the inputs in a field where outcomes are what really matter”). Of course that’s true at an abstract level, but it’s a big oversimplification.
First, rearranging school funding so that the poorest schools are funded on par with wealthier schools may indeed be an adjustment of inputs, but it’s an important one. The Education Trust, Marguerite Roza, and others have long documented the startling funding disparities that exist among districts, and among schools within districts. If we want great results from schools with underprivileged students, step one involves leveling the playing fields on which they compete.
But second, a more importantly, WSF is intended to change the way schools work, so they can produce great outcomes. It is meant to give principals greater autonomy, so they can tailor their school’s offerings to meet the needs of their particular students. It is meant to give them greater say over the teachers who teach there, so that the poorest schools aren’t always stuck with the newest or the cheapest teachers. And it is meant to respond to, and enable, the realities of 21st century schooling, in which students are mobile (so their funding should be as well) and choice options are proliferating.
When we released Fund the Child, arguing for WSF, a terrific list of education leaders agreed.
Of course, it’s important that AIR is evaluating its actual implementation, and the results should be taken seriously - they did not find as many changes in the resource allocations, staffing, or school-level offerings as they expected. But they did find some, and I think they would have found more if purer forms of WSF had been implemented. So we should still be optimistic about the powerful potential of WSF.
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November 22nd, 2008 at 9:58 am
Here’s the one, big fly in the WSF ointment: if funding were the primary consideration that resulted in a good public education system wouldn’t the Washington D.C. school district be pretty, damned good rather then the execrable mess it is?
Maybe WSF ought to include the services of Michelle Rhee as well, hey?
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
The bigger elephant in the tar pit is the lack of human capactity in the schools. WSF requires a competent principal in every school. Ed Week recently attributed, in part, the success of Atlanta reforms to getting rid of 89% of their old principals and training new ones. (someday, even education could try putting the horse before the cart.)
We also overlook an equally obvious reality. There are only so many hours in a day. How are principals supposed to run high-poverty schools, which in itself is a herculean task, learn how to become instructional leaders, and teach themselves the whole new set of skills required by WSF?
If we would actually put paper to pencil and even guess-timate how much time it would take to perform the tasks that are now being imposed on schools, we would then invest in some “no brainers.” For instance, if you want WSF to do more than even out funding, hire building managers to share the workload.
And there would be a bonus that would satisfy allen, effective teachers, and students. Its not that hard to fire ineffective teachers. Pincipals are so swamped, however, that they may go weeks or months without even thinking about classroom instruction issues. Who cares if the termination process is not that time consuming, if you still are too harried to find the time? And the same dynamic helps explain why we can’t have safe and orderly schools under the current system. Why start down the path of assessing consequences to disruptive students if you don’t have time to cross your t’s and dot your i’s, and you know that you will be undercut by the infamous bureaucracy if you don’t?
I’ve got a simple theory and like most simple ones its probably flawed, but I’d like to toss it out. Why not give up on these complex schemes, fully fund special ed, and have the resources follow the students? My neighborhood high school school has 35% of its students on IEPs, and that sort of approach would buy a lot of equity.