Stimulating Disappointment
Posted by Beardy
February 19, 2009, 4:13 pm
Public education leaders are salivating over their pieces of the $97 billion stimulus pie. Leveraging the myth that school spending on everything from buildings to books translates directly into student achievement, they stand ready to give us the public schools of our dreams: now finally affordable.
But the stimulus bill, and the machinations behind it, were an utter disappointment for many in ed reform circles, but particularly Democrats in the party’s “reform” wing: the splinter that calls for increased accountability, revisions in teacher contracts, expansions of charter schools, and school choice broadly. The stimulus, ultimately, eschews any reforms that upset the adults in the education status quo. And that’s a tragedy.
In reviewing the stimulus’ funding allocations, one thing became immediately clear. The allocations for charter schools were of such small amounts they bordered on insulting. Accepting charters as the “change agent” has become the low hanging fruit for politicos who know it is no longer possible to dismiss the nation’s public education crisis outright. But, with the final $97 billion now in the record books, what was initially $25 million for charters in the House’s monster became zero in the final bill. In effect, charters went from the outhouse, to no house at all. Despite demand in cities like Newark, where the amount of children on waiting lists mirrors the supply of available spaces and public school spending is in excess of $20,000 a student, charters were not, in any serious way, a priority to the Congress, or seemingly to President Obama for that matter, who, though not writing the bill, failed to intervene on behalf of the charter schools he ostensibly supports.
Additionally, the $200 million for Teacher Incentive Grants—support programs for teacher performance—is not at all congruent with the research-based need, and rhetoric by our politicos and teacher union officials supporting, ways to attract and retain the best people to our schools, particularly ones that serve low income students. Assuredly a gift to the NEA and the AFT, it seems clear that this money will go to programs that advance the salary guide grid upon which many teachers sit, not student achievement.
More glaringly, the almost $49 billion in direct state grants, which can be used for “preventing cutbacks, preventing layoffs, school modernization, or other purposes” are the equivalent of giving a martini to an alcoholic. The money, in the absence of clear accountability and directives for reform, is little more than a gift to national public education interest groups and state-based political supporters, not an engine for reform.
Most depressing, Secretary Duncan has sounded more like the Secretary of Labor during this process than the Secretary of Education. More concerned with saving jobs of those in the education sector than saving lives of the students dying on the vine in abysmal schools, Duncan has already shown where his priorities, and loyalties, lie: with the adults. Missing a perfect opportunity to engage the way in which these employees would have been laid off—with the youngest going first without regard for their ability or performance—Duncan has already given his tacit approval to the system “as is.”
School construction is not an education reform. And the challenges of remaking our K-12 system, post stimulus, are now simply the same challenges, but more expensive. The Congress has asserted, loudly, where real K-12 reform is on its agenda, and the President, an icon of change, has said a grand nothing, which is somehow louder than the din of everything else.
President Obama asserted often on the campaign trail that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Were those just words? Unfortunately, signs point to yes.
Derrell Bradford
Deputy Director
E3
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