Despite some signs of economic recovery, school districts nationwide continue to struggle mightily. The combination of a depressed property tax base and built-in cost escalators produces recurring gaps that demand budget cuts every year just to keep doing the same old thing ... and the long-term outlook isn't much brighter.
Make no mistake: The "new normal" of tougher budget times -- as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls it--is here to stay for American K-12 education.
While that presents plenty of hardships, it also offers local officials a golden opportunity to rethink the way we run schools and to boost productivity and efficiency, a point I make in my new policy brief, "How School Districts Can Stretch the School Dollar."
How?
Let's start with a few key principles to keep in mind when weighing cuts:
Solving our budget crisis shouldn't come at the expense of children. We should do everything we can to protect students' learning opportunities and boost their achievement.
Nor can it come from teachers' sacrifice alone. Suppressing teacher salaries forever isn't a recipe for recruiting bright young people into education -- or retaining the excellent teachers we have now.
Quick fixes aren't a good answer; we need fundamental changes that enhance productivity. The reforms -- and investments -- with the greatest payoff are those that will maximize student outcomes at lower cost. And since education is overwhelmingly a people business -- and most of the system's costs are in personnel -- the most promising reforms are those that rethink our staffing model.
So how can school districts dramatically increase productivity and stretch the school dollar?
Aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce. In a people business like education, it's next to impossible to cut costs without letting some people go. But the answer isn't just to lay off teachers and let class sizes rise (though, in most grades and subjects, modest increases aren't the end of the world). In the last two decades, school systems have hired all manner of instructional coaches, teachers' aides, program administrators, support staff, counselors, psychiatrists, specialists, and so forth. Redefining these roles -- and those of classroom teachers -- provides great opportunities for increased productivity. None of this is easy, but districts should consider:
Pay for productivity. The best way to increase productivity is to ask fewer people to do more work in order to get better results. And they should be compensated fairly for it. Here's how:
Integrate technology thoughtfully. Online and "blended" school models -- where students spend all or part of the day learning online -- are coming to K-12 education. These can be catalysts for greater pupil engagement, individualization, and achievement. If organized right, they can also be opportunities for cost-cutting. Why couldn't students learn foreign languages via Rosetta Stone, for example, instead of in a traditional classroom?
Rather than hope for revenue increases that are unlikely to materialize, smart leaders can turn the present budget crisis into an opportunity. Most of the school dollar goes toward instructional staff and the people who manage them. Rethinking whom we hire, what they do, how we pay them, and how to incorporate technology -- that's where the big payoff is. Local officials need to reconsider the core business of schooling -- and get key stakeholders to buy into a new, more cost-effective, more productive vision. That's no small thing. Are they up to the challenge?
Originally published on the Fordham Institute's Flypaper blog.
Follow Michael J. Petrilli on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MichaelPetrilli
As a teacher of 35 years, I can attest to the damage changing demographics does to families, children and to teaching environments. The U.S. has astonishing 23% student poverty rate, the highest in the industrialized world. As poverty has increased and crept increasingly into suburban neighborhoods, more children come to school w/o the experiential, linguistic, social and emotional readiness and skills to succeed.
The effects of poverty are not well understood by the masses who see poverty as simply people like you and I but who have less money which can be "cured" by good teaching, and sometimes just longer school years.
Additionally to the lack of understanding of the needs of low SES students which complicate teaching/learning, is the simple fact that teachers do not begin work when the students arrive and stop when they leave. That is just the part that the public sees, and regrettably there are conservative think tank "scholars" who refuse to acknowledge the many hours of prep., grading, communicating, and engaging in other school-mandated activities. When we increase classloads, we create a corresponding increase in these "invisible" activities to the detriment of our students.
Conservatives like to cry that a class size does not matter, however one wonders why, if this is the case, the wealthy continue to prefer private academies boasting class sizes of 12.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/04/the_pineapple_story_questions.html
Integrate technology thoughtfully.
I don’t really buy the“thoughtfully” part. Computer based learning is a very new field . We have very little research to show it is effective. (In fact, we have a lot of evidence that it does NOT work for many students.) But by all means, let’s implement it anyway and save all that money we would be spending on living, breathing teachers by giving it to the big corporations pushing the“virtual school” silver bullet agenda. Fire all the teachers and plunk the kids down in front of a computer! After all, computers don’t need health care or retirement benefits? Right? Who needs actual human interaction and “pupil engagement” which is“active” as opposed to “passive.”
I know. I will likely be accused of being unwilling to “embrace change” and wanting to defend the “status quo”. Not true. I have many suggestions for reforms in education. Oddly enough, most of them actually focus on benefiting students rather than on budgetary concerns. I tend to think our children and their future are worth more funding, as opposed to less. My suggestions draw upon experience gleaned by working in the education field for more than 20 years. And rather than speaking from a purely theoretical stance, I advocate for my students daily from within the classroom while engaged in working with those very real, messy, unique, troublesome, HUMAN children.
Redesigning their approach to special education. Ditto.
Pay for productivity. More aggressive salary schedule.
Looks good, till you start thinking about it. How does paying teacher a higher salary earlier in their career actually end up saving the system money? Maybe by having the TOP salary be much lower than teachers can actually make now? “Spiked pay” at the end of a career? Does that mean those last couple years in a 30 year career when they actually start paying teachers what most professionals with a college education and advanced graduate degrees make much earlier in their careers?
Prioritize salaries over benefits.
“Plans should be redesigned so that employees have more skin in the game -- and incentives to keep their own health care costs down.”
This suggest that teachers deliberately get sick. Teachers work in a very high stress field. That takes a toll. The idea of “keeping health costs down” seems to mean that people should simply not seek medical help – even if they need it.
“Co-pays, employee premiums, out-of-network fees, and the rest should be brought into line with what workers in the private sector expect.”
How many million are uninsured in the USA? Health insurance costs are a problem for EVERYONE. Suggesting the private sector situation is one we should emulate is short sighted.
Asking classroom teachers to take on additional responsibility in return for for greater pay.
I already do without and aide. The number of students I serve has increased every year for the past five years. I already sit on two district level committees and three school level committees. As a veteran teacher, I mentor newer teachers. In other words, I already do ALL these things – for no extra pay. It is called doing my job.
Eliminating some ancillary positions.
If we get rid of support positions to save money, the burden fall upon the classroom teachers to take up the slack. Consider – you are asking teachers to meet the needs of each individual student in a classroom of 35 where you may have gifted children with IQs of 160 functioning three years above grade level, along with special education students with IQs of 75 functioning three years levels grade below, and ESOLstudents who don’t speak or read any English at all, as well as behavior disordered students who like to throw chairs, and autistic students who melt down at any change in routine. How difficult can it be?
We should all be asking, actually demanding, from policy makers and think tanks like this, Cui Bono? http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/04/cui_bono_the_question_rarely_a.html?cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS2
More, in other words, of what you've come to expect from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.