Co-authored by Melanie Lundquist, Philanthropist & Civic Activist, and Patrick Sinclair, Senior Director of Communications and External Affairs, Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.
You'd think nearly $4 billion would be enough to have a decisive impact on most things. That's how much philanthropy gives each year to improve and transform K-12 public education.
This support goes to thousands of mission-driven, talented individuals who annually commit themselves to transforming education, particularly at low performing inner-city schools. The money and talent flow into reform-minded local school districts, as well as organizations like Teach for America, charter schools, local community and advocacy groups, and many others.
Together, the philanthropists and reformers have spread into schools across the country.
And that's the problem. They've spread themselves too thinly.
The $4 billion philanthropists spend annually on public education is less than 1 percent of the $500 billion America spends on public schools each year. The thousands of committed reformers sent into schools or onto school boards pale in number to the millions of long employed and sometimes entrenched systems in place.
Moreover, lined up against the reformers are all sorts of much larger, better funded, better organized, and equally determined groups who will and do spend hundreds of millions of dollars to thwart the efforts of the reformers.
As a result, education reformers today can point to pockets of success and hopeful trends, but they have yet to produce a dramatic district turnaround -- that singular, watershed moment when the public sees and finally believes it can be done. Right now, the general public hears the increasing drumbeat for change, learns about some successes, some failures; reads charters are good, and bad, hears never-ending, often virulent arguments from the many factions that form modern American K-12 education; and in the end, the wider public can't even begin to understand how the overall, 800-pound gorilla of the problem known as America's public schools gets solved. There is no consensus.
...a problem with no apparent solution (or consensus about a solution) is generally not defined as a problem. Instead it comes to be accepted as "just the way things are."... leaders have been divided about the scope of the problem or about the proper solution when the problem is acknowledged. In this ambiguous context only stakeholders (teachers and sometimes parents) get involved in the political fray while the confused public tunes out.
- Rand Corporation 2005 Report on California Schools
If we continue like this -- and it has been going on like this for decades -- education reform will never achieve the critical mass necessary to effect true change.
So, we have to ask ourselves: How can we get more leverage with what we have?
For instance, imagine for a moment if we took $2 billion of the $4 billion education philanthropists now spend annually and we focus it on truly remaking one or two large urban school districts. Imagine Teach For America deploys all their teachers in these one or two districts, and that the Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst advocacy group focuses their political outreach on the governing state legislatures of these communities.
Further, imagine the reformers use their influence to get all the players in one place -- district, union and political leaders, as well as parents and teachers -- to work together in a bold experiment to rethink and recreate public education. The financial incentives for a district and its stakeholders to participate would be huge, particularly in today's budget environment. It won't be easy and it won't happen overnight, but the focus, talent and dollars of the philanthropists would increase the likelihood of success exponentially.
Now imagine that it works: three years from now a once troubled district is showing the way, making dramatic improvements. Reform strategies and programs have been tested and fine-tuned, and lessons learned are informing a national blueprint for education reform. It won't be perfect, but the point will be made: it can be done.
Is it bold? Sure. Risky? Maybe, but the upside far outweighs the down. The education reform movement needs to take bold risks if it ever hopes to create a consensus for reform in America's public schools. Continuing down the current path promises only more incremental change, if that, and the stakes are just too high to continue to settle for incremental change.
David Mumford and Sol Garfunkel: Bottom Line on Mathematics Education
Derrick Darby: Education Run by the States? #ABadIdea
C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: Block Building
Dr. Mariappan Jawaharlal: Unfair Education for American Undergraduate Students
Even then, I would argue much of the philanthropic efforts already are targeted the way you describe. Many big money donors give to a single district or even subset of schools, often even only to a certain type. For sure thy don't donate across the board, so putting the amount in the context of average spending is misleading. And they do focus outside of direct funding all the time, by trying to control local school board elections and state legislators and governors.
Rhee's org is an example of the latter. In fact, I've never heard her or her org ever argue for increased funding, which is kind of surprising given she wants to raise a billion dollars 'for education'. Some of the laws she's helped get passed are truly frightening though.
Your point about the lack of consensus is an important one, and enlightening IMHO. It is because some efforts labelled 'reform' have the likelihood of making education even worse. This is exactly the reason simply trying something just to see what happens is a bad idea.
That said, I do applaud your intentions. And I do hope there is something positive to be learned from the experience, regardless of the outcome.
The public has gladly handed all of the decsion making power in education over to those who know the least about it, politicians, policy wonks (reformers) and corporations.
We don't need school reform, we need public reform.
The bottom line is, if you put kids from better socio-economic conditions in low performing schools, they will continue to do well, just as if you put kids from disadvantaged backgrounds in great schools they will continue to lag. The root problem is the home environment and access to additional enrichment programs, not the schools themselves.
A better idea would be to focus those philanthropic billions on disadvantaged neighborhoods, enacting social programs that teach parents the skills they need to support their kids through the long educational haul that is the road to college, and to make sure those kids have positive places to go after school that support their academic goals.
Here are two organizations in California that focus on these issues. If we could replicate their successes across the country, we'd go a long way to closing the achievement gap.
www.familyconnections.org
www.apch.org
Hello deformers , what do you say? Blaming the teachers unions will not help, there is no teachers unions there.
Ms. Rhee, Mr. Duncan, president Obama, and the right wing anti- teachers crowd, tell me, where are the results in New Orleans?
We need "district, union and political leaders, as well as parents and teachers -- to work together in a bold experiment to rethink and recreate public education."
The last generation of reformers, with the best of intentions but a lack of knowledge of inner city realities, adopted the tactic of building pockets of success. They were not fully aware of the extra boost they got from creaming the most motivated kids and recruiting educatorss, or the even bigger boost from not retaining the toughest-to-educate kids. They weren't aware of the huge differences between selective and neighborhood schools, and schools that were 75% low income versus 95%. They did not understand the it was "all of the above," trauma, concentraated generational poverty, lack fo trusting relationships, and dysfunctional schools. They really might not have understood the ecology of schooling where the inability to address the 5 to 10% of the most traumatized children undermined school improvement. In fact, they unknowingly worsened the brutality of dumping those kids into the toughest schools, accelerating a downward decline. When educators faced all of the above, yes, they burned out and treated students worse.
Then reformers adopted the same blame game, grew more resentful of teachers who did not recognize the righteousness of their efforts and changed to destroying the educational "status quo." The pockets of success became tools to leverage the destruction of unions, ed schools, etc. Dissent was driven out, and "convergence" created educational monocultures.
you who think of yourselves as reformers need to concern yourselves less with getting more leverage, and more with choosing better tools of reform. privatizing, adding lots of high tech, basing the results on standardized tests and making employment decisions based on those tests have proven not to work. yet people who call themselves reformers seem convinced that those things will work better if only we were to do them more.
here are the things that actually do work and are cost-effective for the results they yield:
early childhood education
health-care/nutrition
family support services
small classes
highly effective principals
actually, the first three things help address the issues you mentioned. support services help parents do a better job of parenting. early childhood ed produces more kids who arrive knowing to behave in a school. and we don't even realize how much of a child's attitude and behavior depend on good healthy diet.
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Personally, I feel terrible for the kids who are victims of lousy parents. I also feel frustrated that kids who are well-behaved have their educations seriously disrupted by these same kids.
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That works out to around $250,000 for a classroom of 25 kids. Cost of teacher salary and benefits is around $50,000 on average. (But let's pretend it's as much as $100,000). One is inclined to wonder what is happening with the remaining $150,000. I can tell you as a former teacher, it's not going to supplies like pencils,paper, etc. as school districts typically assign less than $1,000 per classroom per year for such things.
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Much of that money is simply being wasted. That's what public entities do: waste.
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The solution to this and many of the other problems that face public schools is a simple one: School Vouchers.
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Also, I recognize that there are costs other than classroom teachers. Nevertheless, one is inclined to wonder where so much money goes.
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BTW, I'm not sure if the $10,000 per year per student includes the cost of school construction. I can tell you that $10,000 per year per student is AFTER school construction.
First, you speak of costs and then you suggest vouchers as a way to fix the problem, but at no point in time do you make a connection between the two. How specifically will vouchers solve the problem?
Second, you make a case that a certain amount of money is being wasted elswhere, but you don't look into where that money is going. You forget to account for building maintainence, heating and cooling, electicity, upkeep and investment technology (computers etc), transportation, support staff, the cost of annual standardized testing just to name a few of the big ones.
I love how the pro-voucher people fall for the slogan but refuse to delve into the realities of education.
As to costs, it doesn't take an accountant to figure out that a lot of money is going to waste. But again, feel free to research the area as there is plenty of material available..
You people who insist that public schools are the only legitimate means of educating our children (probably pro-union too) have been trying to fix public education for decades with little to show for your efforts.
Here is a copy of a post I made a few days ago:
British politician says:
''The only way we can catch up, and have the world-clasÂs schools our children deserve, is by learning the lessons of other countries' success."
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And
if country ''A'' has success by enforcing traditionaÂlist teacher-ceÂntered whole-clasÂs teaching with set curriculumÂ,
and country ''B'' succeeds with learner-ceÂntered individualÂised and small group facilitatiÂon lessons using flexible curriculumÂ?
I believe that replicatioÂn is impossible because the vital factors are socio-cultÂural, not means and modalitiesÂ. Solutions are to be found by describing truthfully what is going on here and now.
Begin here:
Compliance system has broken down. So, what do you want to do?
1. Move back - that is restore compliance and even subordinatÂion.
2. Mode forward and democratizÂe.
Current trend is to move back. One problem. Moving back always fails (End
Ms Lundquist, philanthropists giving to high school systems are subject to manipulation or associate themselves with progressives or conservatives.
Problem is, they are both wrong. History overtook them!