EdNext debate focuses on school spending
Education Next has just released an interesting and tantalizing debate on school funds. In the wake of Flores, issues of funding equity have again risen to the fore. It’s lucky then that the participants in this debate, Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth (authors of the tome Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools) and Michael Rebell (author of the forthcoming Courts and Kids: Pursuing Educational Equity through the State Courts) are here to hash it out. Hanushek and Lindseth argue that spending the money already going into education more wisely is the ticket, specifically by reforming teacher pay scales to a performance-based model. Rebell counters that if you take a second look at the numbers, American education funding is actually neither adequate nor equitable. Definitely worth a read!
And if this topic interests you, Fordham (in concert with Brookings) will be publishing its own (slightly more general) contribution on this conversation in the form of the forthcoming book From Schoolhouse to Courthouse. Keep an eye out for its release in August.
Related posts:
- Ohio school districts should confront spending patterns
- EdNext video: Why school turnarounds don’t work
- Upcoming event: Schoolhouses and Courthouses
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July 6th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Hmmm–I missed the Hanushek on performance-based pay scales for teachers. I had understood his view to be somewhat broader, that of performance related funding in a broader sense, which might include triaging public funds in the direction of greatest need. Coumbus has just allowed something of a motivational bonus to allow the superintendent to move teachers with needed skills and/or abilities to specific schools with high need. I don’t know that I would classify that as performance-based pay, exactly–and seems more likely to have an impact that some more generalized competition for high student test scores.
Of course the difficulty is always prying loose the fingers of those who currently have a strangle-hold on best access to high educational quality–through the public arena. Getting those who start with more to accept that don’t have a God-given right to continue in perpetuity to have more is always an issue.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
It is clear in reading the ednext 20094 document that Michael Rebell believes that all children belong to the state (and not their parents) and that no problem cannot be overcome by attorney (well compensated of course) a court order and new legislation.
I’m always amazed by those who “teach” at some of the most expensive colleges like Yale and Columbia, and are paid handsomely, find it most fashionable to advocate the wealth redistribution socialist economic model. Who do they think would be paying the exorbitant tuition payments in their Ivy League schools that keep them well feed and well sheltered in their fantasy Utopian world?