The World Needs Ditch Diggers Too?
August 20th, 2009 — Education, Federal
The old comedy Caddyshack has a hilarious exchange between a kid who's hoping to get a scholarship and a judge (played by Ted Knight) who sits on the scholarship award committee.
If you don't feel like watching the clip, here's the gist of it:
Danny Noonan: I planned to go to law school after I graduated, but it looks like my folks won't have enough money to put me through college.
Judge Smails: Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.
I keep thinking of that when I hear about Race to the Top, the Obama Administration's nationwide contest for school funding. States compete on a range of criteria and the winners get big cash awards from a $4.35 billion pot of prize money. The losers? Well, "the world needs ditch diggers too."
Apparently someone, probably Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, decided that all No Child Left Behind (NCLB) needed was prize money. I guess we should have seen this coming. When Duncan got the job he said he wanted to make NCLB less punitive. Now schools that don't measure up won't get punished, they just won't get rewarded. <!more>
The news media have greeted Duncan with the same kind of glorification they gave to George W. Bush's first education secretary, Roderick Paige. Paige rode into Washington on the merits of his Houston Miracle, the incredible improvement in Houston schools while he was superintendent. The excitement cooled when people discovered that the incredible results lacked credibility. All Paige had done was induce his underlings to falsify results and lie; he did it by promising great rewards (thousands of dollars in cash bonuses) for reporting great results, and terrible consequences (quick termination) for reporting the truth. He supported that policy by rigorously ignoring even the most obvious misrepresentations.
Paige may have been following the lead of Houston's previous miracle, Enron. It's amazing what the promise of riches and the threat of punishment will get people to do. Enron rewarded employees for adding zeros to inflate earnings, Paige rewarded employees for reporting zeros to hide dropouts. The consequences in both cases encouraged employees to keep mum about the deceptions.
Other school districts have been caught doing essentially the same thing.
In Duncan's case, the plaudits are based on his
Unfortunately, the hype isn't supported by the reality. A new report by The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago pokes some holes in Duncan's record. The report's entitled "Still Left Behind," and it points out that most students still drop out or fail. It says the "general perception" that students are doing better has more to do with changes in the standardized tests than in the level of education.
A more troubling observation is that the students who are doing well are concentrated in "selective-enrollment" schools.
Before becoming CEO of the district, Duncan started Ariel Community Academy. It's financially supported by (and named after) a mutual fund company. In Black on the Block: the Politics of Race and Class in the City, Northwestern Professor Mary E. Pattillo notes that students at Ariel come from richer and better educated families than those at the public schools, and that Ariel has an admissions process that could keep struggling students out.
If that's the case, Duncan's work just adds to the evidence that well-funded, exclusive schools score well on standardized tests. Ignore, pushout or exclude the bottom 10% of students and any school will look pretty good.
Duncan's credentials might not matter much if the Race to the Top rules reflected the president's pitch for it:
"This competition will not be based on politics, ideology, or the preferences of a particular interest group. Instead, it will be based on a simple principle—whether a state is ready to do what works." Obama said.
Nice thought, but the fine print doesn't fit the statement. For instance, one key to qualifying for the grand prize is having the right "conditions for reform." "Reform" in this case, means opening more charter schools and giving them more money. It requires that people in school districts vote to give charter schools more tax money, even if their children can't attend the charter school.
There's a provision that is particularly painful in Colorado. We, as a policy, don't help schools with capital costs, like building and repairing school buildings. There are two exceptions. As a settlement in a lawsuit we give some especially poor districts money to improve especially dangerous conditions in old school buildings. And we give millions of dollars a year to charter schools for capital, whether they need it or not.
That last exception is a testament to the power of the charter school lobby and our general indifference to conditions under which students in poor districts spend their school days. One might think that "reform" would reverse that, but Race to the Top reform makes it official, national policy. One criteria for getting a grant is:
The extent to which the State provides charter schools with facilities funding (for leasing facilities, purchasing facilities, or making tenant improvements), assistance with facilities acquisition, access to public facilities, the ability to share in bonds and mill levies, or other supports; and the extent to which the State does not impose any facility-related requirements on charter schools that are stricter than those applied to traditional public schools.
A non-ideological approach might make that work both ways. It could require states to pay as much for capital projects at public schools as it does for capital projects at charter schools. Apparently helping regular public schools isn't real "reform."
In fairness, there's another criteria that would seem to impose a little rigor on our charter schools:
The extent to which the State has statutes and guidelines regarding how charter school authorizers approve, monitor, hold accountable, reauthorize, and close charter schools, including the extent to which such statutes or guidelines require that student academic achievement be a factor in such activities and decisions, and the extent to which charter school authorizers in the State have closed or not renewed ineffective charter schools.
We've been through this in Colorado. Charter schools are run by small groups of people and intentionally operate outside of the regular school system. Occasionally a parent or teacher will squeal when a charter school is cheating on tests or otherwise undermining accountability, but not always. And even when evidence is clear there are often politically powerful people and groups who will come to the school's defense. In the end, a lack of achievement can be chalked up to a less-than-successful innovation without any consenquences for the school.
Ultimately, Race to the Top is just a new way of pushing states into the failed framework of NCLB. The contest part adds a comic and less punitive element, but it's also adding onto, rather than replacing, the high-stakes testing and punishment that came with NCLB. The combination of reward and punishment may get results, but it's more likely to get them the Houston Miracle way than by really improving education.
The so-called free-market approach to education is inherently contradictory. The free market responds to people who can pay, people who can analyze the value of various choices take advantage of them. The children of those people are already getting a good education. The children who need help most often don't have the money or the resources to take advantage of choices. The problem is exacerbated when there are incentives for schools to erect barriers and keep those kids out.
Failing to educate every child has always been wrong. It's un-American. It's even more wrong today. There was a time when people without an education could work, earn a living and even build a career in America. That's no longer true. Today we really don't need very many ditch diggers.
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