Can our schools afford a “haircut”?
Not surprisingly, our editorial arguing that budget cuts are good for schools has stirred plenty of commentary. It’s also exposed a rift between lefty education reformers and those of us on the center-right (not to mention loopy libertarians). Expect more such rifts in coming months and years.
Consider this two-fer from Education Sector. Kevin Carey, writing at The Quick and the Ed, simply refuses to believe that tough budget times could convince schools to make tough decisions and trim their fat:
Underlying the larger argument is the idea that the public schools will implement a whole suite of needed reforms if only we can put them under sufficiently terrible financial stress. I am aware of no evidence to suggest that this will work…Are there any examples–any?–of a state or school district that has ever responded to a fiscal crisis with reforms that actually benefitted students in the long run?
Eduwonk Andy Rotherham* picks up on this line of attack in his own response:
In education tough times can often just force mediocrity and there is little evidence that scarcity forces good fiscal decisionmaking. Rather, across the board cuts and similar strategies (last hired, first fired…) tend to be the norm during downturns instead of creative strategies designed to leverage longer-term solutions. Given the politics of education that’s not really surprising.
So what’s the conclusion, gentlemen? That taxpayers should just happily continue to pour resources into our schools because education leaders are unwilling or unable to identify priorities and take tough actions?
Writing in today’s Washington Post, another New Dem type, E.J. Dionne, writes approvingly of President-Elect Obama’s plans to “root out inefficiency” in government. “For Obama, a highly public war against waste and fraud will ease passage of the stimulus while also showing that Democrats, who propose using government as the instrument for solving a lot of problems, intend to make reform a high priority,” he says.
Hey, I’m all for that. And if the transition team asked me, I’d tell them that the Department of Education could cut its payroll by 10 percent and get stronger–if managers could cut their lowest-performing employees. You could cut a third of the staff (if it’s the right staff) without much harm. (The same is true of contractors, it should be said.) But will Team Obama get permission to override the federal government’s civil service protections, which currently make this approach impossible?
And in education, where almost all the federal dollars flow to school districts, why not demand similar trimming at the local level? Do we have to accept “last hired, first fired” as a given? Do we have to bow to the Gods of Seniority?
To my Democratic friends: You wanted control of the government. You got it. Now if you want taxpayers to provide extra resources, let’s see some serious reforms. And that means not accepting the status quo as a given.
* Update: Eduwonk Andy writes in to say: “I’m not sure that’s a fair take. My key disagreement with you all was this: ‘But they also seem to think that tough times inherently force sensible belt-tightening.’ I very directly said we need reciprocal obligations in these packages only that if we want productivity increasing reforms we have to be really deliberate about it. My point was that less money doesn’t necessarily lead to smart changes.”
Photograph by Maryam S. on Flickr
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January 11th, 2009 at 9:28 am
“My point was that less money doesn’t necessarily lead to smart changes.”
Yes, well more money doesn’t necessarily lead to smart changes.
Our local schools are giant black holes of money. The school board, with the exception of one or two squeaky wheels who are regularly demeaned by the majority, waste money and have little accountability to the people they supposedly serve. Yet, the people in their districts keep electing them.
We are extremely top-heavy in overpaid fat cat administrators. Our teachers are the highest paid in our state. They have increased our property taxes as many times as they legally could in the eleven years we’ve lived in this area. Yet, our schools are always “broke” and always clamoring for more dollars. They use foolish curricula – which other states dropped long ago – that are expensive to implement, difficult for students and parents to understand, and yield disappointing results.
Hey, I’m all for “reform” but not if it means replacing the tried and true with expensive, experimental mumbo-jumbo when it comes to the basics, which kids are not getting these days.
I’m tired of hearing sob stories about schools asking students to bring in toilet paper, paper towels and other items, too. I have no kids in the public school system, and I already pay enough to their ineffectve schools. Let the parents of actual students bring in some TP every now and then – it’s not going to bankrupt someone to contribute to something they benefit from.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:26 am
My latest bandwagon is that money needs to be spent more strategically. I don’t think the point is budget cuts… It’s recognizing and understanding what works and what doesn’t work and prioritizing spending.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
The biggest problem with school funding isn’t the fund’n, it’s the spend’n. No one; from the local administration, to the Columbus education bureaucracy, to the local “customers” are directly and wholly paying for what they’re buying. As we know, when people spend someone else’s money, they will seldom spend it the way they spend their own. With the cost to educate a child in Ohio at approximately $9,500 per student per year; every child’s education will cost the taxpayers approximately $123,500 for 13 years of “free” education. A family of 3 children will consume approximately $370,500 of public money in educating their children. Even if they were living in a large home, they’d never pay back that amount in property taxes. There is no clearer way of saying that if you demand more out of a system than you put into it, someone else is paying the difference. In simpler times we called it welfare.
So where does the money come from? It comes from your neighbors living in the same houses for 20, 30 or more years, who educated their children in more sensible times, but are still paying for the less sensible system we now have. It comes from families moving into our neighborhoods without children, who will forever pay for a system that they neither voted on, nor will directly benefit from. And it comes from families choosing to educate their children outside the public system, but pay for it none-the-less. Now that we have removed the natural, and healthy, instinct to conserve money when we spend our own, we’re left with a system that confuses “wants” with “needs”.
So where is the solution? The solution lies in redefining the community and consumer partnership. The public does have a responsibility to provide basic and necessary education to all citizens; especially the economically disadvantaged. AND the able-bodied consumer bares a responsibility to wholly pay for those things that they “want” beyond that.
Many offerings now provided under the public education system for free or at subsidized levels should be directly purchased by individuals using the service. Why do we provide free transportation, in the form of busing, to students living in affluent neighborhoods? Does the community pay for transporting those children in the summer or the weekends? Why does the community pay to subsidize meals for children of families not on public assistance? Who feeds the children in the summer time, weekends and during the breaks? Does a high school athlete learn any more about teamwork and sportsmanship because they have Olympic-style training equipment or a college-caliber athletic field? Why does the community subsidize, or offer completely free, various forms of counseling, health care, special services, social events, extra-curricular activities, obscure athletic programs, food, transportation, electives, post-graduation and college-credit courses, etc. to students from families who are perfectly capable of paying for these “wants” themselves? Certainly, all these things have value and might be wanted for a specific child’s education, but are these really communal educational “needs”? And even if you believe that they are “needs”, should the community be taxed to pay for them like welfare when many students come from families that have the resources to pay for them?
There is a big difference between providing public assistance to those who need it, and providing public assistance products and services, under the guise of public education, to those want it. Unfortunately, many public education users and supporters have been successful in blurring the distinction. Despite what they say, our communities will not crumble and there will not be chaos in the streets simply because we ask the people who “want” these things for their children, are asked to pay for it themselves.
It is not mean, stingy or even anti-education to say that the community and consumer partnership is out of balance and needs re-adjusting. It is foolish to believe that a community can’t have a great and vibrant school system unless is being artificially propped-up with indiscriminate and excessive tax dollars.