What if the Defense Department had to hold a bake sale to make ends meet?1
Is there any public school parent anywhere in the U.S. who hasn’t been called on repeatedly to raise or put up money for their child’s school? PTAs (parent-teacher associations) in all communities sell Girl Scout cookies and have bake sales, raffles, car washes and auctions. The money isn’t for frills but for classroom supplies and other everyday essentials that are lacking, even after teachers have famously dug into their own pockets. According to a recent study, 94 percent of public school teachers spend an average of nearly $500 per year of their own money for such regular school items.2
And that’s not all. In wealthier communities, parents have been known to contribute lots of money for big-ticket items like after-school programs and school security. I don’t blame them. But as a practical matter, the ability of upper income parents to add a significant amount of private money to a school budget creates further disparities between poorer and wealthier school communities. Also, these better-off parents are less likely to politically crusade for more funding for all schools.
These local begathons are the tip of the iceberg of the underfunding of K-12 public schools across our country. You may remember Cuba Gooding, Jr., the pro football character in the movie Jerry Maguire, bellowing to his agent played by Tom Cruise, “Show me the money.” That’s what teachers should be screaming at Us. More than anything else, we as a nation can do our part to end the educational abuse of struggling learners by providing adequate funding. Money isn’t all that matters, but by the great weight of evidence and common sense, it matters a lot. It matters particularly if focused on early interventions for struggling learners through the framework of RTI.
This chapter also addresses what Us can do to hold Educators more accountable for spending the money wisely. Educators need to do a whole lot on their own to improve management (see Chapter 7), but we can make their job easier and more efficient if we streamline K-12 governance. Educators have a right to clearer policy guidance and oversight than our fragmented governance of public schools—a mix and muddle of federal, state and local authority—allows. We also need a truce in the ideological education wars that divert attention from classroom instruction and over-politicize the process of reform.
Parents don’t mince words. Lack of funding is their biggest complaint about public schools. Yet, no subject in the annals of school reform and education warfare has produced as much bitter controversy. How much does money really matter in affording all students equal opportunity to be prepared for college and careers, including students who struggle to learn how to read, compute and write? Do school systems, if they were more efficiently managed, have enough money already to pay for RTI and other essentials, such as higher teacher salaries?
There is no dispute that wide disparities exist between funding for schools in low-wealth districts in big cities, rural areas and some declining suburbs, and high-wealth districts in still-affluent suburbs.3 In these schools, it’s not just the absence of enough money for RTI in general education and IEP services in special education. Across the board in poor districts, class sizes are too large, teachers are less experienced and trained, facilities are decrepit, student support services are missing, school safety is compromised, and so on. Liberals claim that these “savage inequalities” (in Jonathan Kozol’s famous words4), rooted in economic and racial class inequality, are the main reason for achievement gaps.
Conservatives respond that other factors are more important. Since the 1960s, they say, education spending has more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, but student performance is still dismal. They cite the argument, going back to the famous Coleman Report in 1966,5 that school resources don’t matter nearly as much as the socio-economic status of parents. They trumpet research that purports to show that dollars spent on specific school initiatives from smaller class sizes to higher teacher salaries don’t pay off in improved academic achievement. In any event, they argue, there’s plenty of money to go around if bureaucratic waste were reduced, if teachers unions stopped hogging all the revenues for excessive salaries and benefits, and if privatization ruled the policy roost.
Liberals counter with their own research that they say shows significant student gains from budget investments in such areas as class size, teacher incentives, early childhood education, tutoring and summer school. And for nearly 50 years, they have instigated a flood of lawsuits to try to force states to provide “equal opportunity” funding for such programs.
In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision held that the U.S. Constitution did not require states to remedy huge disparities in funding between high- and low-wealth school districts.6 Since then, there has been similar litigation in almost every state alleging violations of state constitutions. Initially the suits sought “equity” or equal spending, but the concept of “adequacy” soon took hold. Adequacy asserts that low-income and other at-risk students, because of their learning deficits and other family and neighborhood disadvantages, require more-than-equal spending if they are to meet academic standards.
The principle of adequacy has become well established law.7 In a majority of the cases, challenges to existing state funding systems have prevailed. Nevertheless, judicial and legislative remedies have been slow to materialize. In some cases, the litigation has dragged on for decades. The disparities in funding persist, from $18,165 per pupil in New York to $5,838 in Utah, when adjusted for regional cost differences.8 About half the states provide more state and local funding to students not in poverty. Twenty-one states provide less funding to school districts with higher concentrations of low-income students.9 As a result, according to an incisive recent analysis, the movement may be evolving in new directions,10 including the constitutional “right to literacy” legal actions discussed in Chapter 9.
All the while, conclusive evidence on how much money matters remains a contentious work in progress. Emerging research tends to show that money matters under some circumstances. A New York Times article in 2016 was headlined, “It Turns Out Spending More Probably Does Improve Education.”11 Hardly a ringing endorsement. But there is probably more agreement than popularly realized. Here’s how it is framed by Eric A. Hanushak, who for several decades has been the go-to scholar and spokesperson for conservative views on school funding.
Of course, it is always important to recognize that none of this discussion suggests that money never matters. Or that money cannot matter. It just says that the outcomes observed over the past half century—no matter how massaged—do not suggest that just throwing money at schools is likely to be a policy that solves the significant U.S. schooling problems seen in the levels and distribution of outcomes. We really cannot get around the necessity of focusing on how money is spent on schools.12
Fair enough. Liberals like me should admit that our efforts to increase school funding have paid too little attention to how the money is spent. Which brings us to Maryland’s current attempts to chart a fairly unique course to both define adequacy and assure that the money is well spent, including expenditures that can end the educational abuse of struggling learners.
By happy coincidence, my immersion in this book came at about the same time as I was appointed to the Maryland commission charged with recommending major reforms in K-12 policy and funding. The commission, formally known as the Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education (widely referred to as the Kirwan Commission, after its chair Brit Kirwan, former chancellor of the University System of Maryland), was created by legislation enacted by the Maryland legislature and signed by the governor in 2016.
Its charge was to update the work of an earlier commission whose report in 2002 led to legislation that vaulted Maryland to at or near the top of the national class in school funding. That legislation called for its funding formulas to be reviewed in about 10 years (which would have been 2012). But state officials didn’t get around to it until 2016. Although the adequacy of school funding had dropped precipitously, elected officials were anxious to avoid as long as possible any consideration of raising taxes or otherwise coming up with revenues to restore or increase the 2002 formulas.
When the Kirwan Commission was established, the Maryland legislature was heavily Democratic, the governor was Republican, and the membership of the Commission was bi-partisan. The 25 members would also generally qualify as “blue ribbon.” They included four ranking members from each of the Maryland House and Senate, the State Superintendent of Schools, one member of the State Board of Education, the governor’s budget secretary, the current chancellor of the University System of Maryland, and representatives of various constituencies including teachers unions, local school boards, and parent advocates.
I was the member of the public appointed by the House Speaker. My reputation as a school reform practitioner and advocate paved the way (but it didn’t hurt that my daughter-in-law is an elected House delegate). And my special mission, no surprise, was to focus on special education and other policies that would end the educational abuse of struggling learners and prevent students from being mislabeled as disabled.
There have been as many studies in the various states to define and cost out adequacy as there have been lawsuits. A blizzard of them in fact, though the studies, whether under the auspices of elected officials, commissions, or judges, have employed relatively similar processes. Mainly they have relied upon a small band of consultants who specialize in adequacy studies and use similar methodologies.
The Kirwan Commission, however, departed in several respects. Initially, the state legislature hired a principal consultant whose study was essentially completed before the Commission was underway. That was a mistake. Over the two years before the Commission convened, the consultant wrote numerous reports and accompanying documents that numbered well over 1000 pages. The Commission members had no chance to interact or influence the study, and that delayed the Commission’s work. But, fortunately, that was a small misstep.
Of far more importance, the Commission has sought to take a great leap forward in the field of adequacy policymaking. As this book goes to press in October 2018, the Commission has been striving for nearly two years to break fresh ground. First, to raise the bar for what constitutes “adequacy.” Second, to erect a twin edifice of “accountability.” Our chairperson Brit Kirwan has repeatedly exhorted us to make Maryland a beacon for the U.S. and among the best school systems in the world.13
In its Preliminary Report in January 2018, the Commission made breath-taking recommendations: for early childhood programs including pre-kindergarten for four and three year olds and other family supports; greatly elevated requirements for teacher preparation while expanding career ladders and substantially raising salaries; world-class college and career readiness standards and innovative and comprehensive students pathways, including career and technical education; and more resources for students at risk, including all struggling learners.
The latter is where RTI and a whole new ballgame for special education come in.
The consultants to the Kirwan Commission recognized the importance of RTI with tutoring as its essential element. It recited some of the research to this effect. Yet, its specific recommendations fell far short of any reasonable estimate of the adequate tutoring that would enable struggling learners to achieve proficiency in foundational literacy and math. The consultants were simply doing business as usual; no state had ever attempted a full and fine-grained estimate of adequate RTI costs.
At my suggestion, Robert Slavin—arguably the nation’s pre-eminent expert on RTI and tutoring as we learned in Chapter 4—was invited to take a stab at it. His presentation to the Commission approximated in persuasive detail the tutoring variables and their costs: the number of students below proficiency in literacy; how far below proficiency they were; and the intensity of the tutoring that would be needed, including tutor/student ratios, years of tutoring anticipated, and days per week and minutes per day of the tutoring in RTI Tiers 2 and 3. These estimates were gleaned from specifically identified evidence-based tutoring programs.14
Dr. Slavin’s rationale for the tutoring that would be required went unchallenged. But with 60 percent of all Maryland students performing below proficiency and therefore in need of some dose of tutoring, the cost estimates—how should I say this?—freaked out the Commission. Still, Dr. Slavin and I pointed out that the enormous immediate need and costs would be greatly reduced over the years as the tutoring took hold. The tutoring would be less intense as deficits closed, some students would no longer need any tutoring, and best of all, special education referrals and services would significantly decrease over time. The Commission’s final recommendations are yet to be determined, but it can be safely said that there is now a new national model for costing out adequate RTI and tutoring services for struggling learners.
It is also likely that the Commission will raise the national bar for accountability for effective spending of funds for RTI-related programs. For all my liberal desire to spend more money for K-12 education in general and RTI in particular, no one on the Commission spoke out more insistently than I did for more accountability for how the money is spent. As explored in the next chapter on management of classroom instruction for struggling learners, there must be unprecedented capacity for evaluation of implementation within an ongoing system of robust R & D (Research and Development).
As I write this, the fate of my proposals and all the Commission’s ambitious recommendations are up in the air. Our final report is not due until the end of December 2018 (after this book had gone to press), and even then, the Commission’s recommendations are purely advisory. The legislature and governor must act on the report, and that is likely to involve a tsunami of politically charged factors: the sweeping program recommendations; the huge price tag; how to raise the revenue and allocate shares of the cost to state and local governments; and, perhaps the stealthiest issue of all, division of authority between state and local educators over policy and practice (i.e., “local control”).
It’s impossible to predict how it will all end. But the implications for RTI and special education in Maryland and the nation could be monumental. Hopefully, Us—in this instance parents, advocacy groups and the general public in Maryland—will mobilize to persuade and pressure our elected officials to seize the moment. No state is more poised to lead a national campaign for school reform that ends the educational abuse of struggling learners than Maryland. We are at or near the top in state wealth. And we are one of the bluest of politically liberal states. So we should be headed in the right (ok, the left) direction.
Still, suppose Maryland fulfills its potential and does its duty. Suppose Maryland raises its per pupil spending by a whopping amount. Where does that leave the children in the 40 or so states that are already spending less than Maryland? How and when will they have the money to pay for RTI for their educationally abused schoolchildren?
Even apart from rock-bottom states like Texas and Mississippi, states like California and Colorado spend about $4000 per child (roughly $100,000 per classroom) less than Maryland.15 These disparities are far more than differences in regional costs of living.
Are the kids in the lesser-spending states just out of luck? Should each child’s ability to learn to read depend on which state or school district she/he lives in? It takes someone pretty hardheaded and hardhearted to say, well tough luck. That’s just the way public schools are run (and run down) in our country.
That the system works this way is another count in the national indictment of educational abuse. There is no rational reason why states should vary so dramatically in the educational opportunity afforded their schoolchildren. This book’s Chapter 8 describes the folly of state and local control of some basic elements of K-12 schooling. For example, how does it make sense that most of the 50 states and about 15,000 school districts have different standards for English, math, science, and social studies and different tests that measure proficiency in those subjects? And with specific reference to the educational abuse of struggling learners, why should there be vast differences in the amounts spent per child on RTI and special education based solely on where a child lives, bearing in mind that where a child lives and attends school is closely correlated with economic and racial class?
The answers to these questions are self-evident. And so is the fact that there is no rational reason why adequate school funding should not be realized nationwide for all struggling learners. As a condition of federal aid, Congress could require states to fund adequate education on a wealth-equalized basis. That is, the amount of federal aid would be based on equal tax effort by the states, taking into account their relative taxable wealth.
With so many of our students ill-prepared for higher education, the workforce and civic participation, we are, in the title of the famous 1983 report on the state of our public schools, “A Nation at Risk.”16 We’re more at risk now than ever. As a nation! And so there must be national action to address the failure of state and local governments and school systems.
A federal guarantee of adequacy is not as far-fetched as you may think. Polls, time after time, year after year, show that taxpayers will pay for higher school spending if they think the money will be well spent. And it can be accomplished without forcing state and local school systems to relinquish major control, as shortly discussed. Sooner rather than later—aided by the political strategies outlined in Part IV of this book—we may as a nation come to our senses and truly guarantee equal educational opportunity for all our children.
Still, more money is not all that Us/we owe our schools. There are two other insufficiently understood ways in which we impede school reforms including RTI. One is micro-management, the other is the “disability of ideology.”
The next chapter of this book zeroes in on how Educators are a major cause of their own problems. The overarching charge is, as the chapter is titled, “Mismanagement of classroom instruction.” So how do I reconcile Educators’ responsibility for mismanagement with micro-management by Us?
Not easily in the mad, mad world of K-12 politics and practice. But, in essence, we make it harder for them to be better managers and harder for Us to hold them accountable. First of all, we subject school systems to a maze of incoherent and constantly changing federal, state and local regulations. I wrote a few years ago:
One underlying reason education reform isn’t cooking is because there are too many cooks in the school cafeteria. Who is in charge of K-12 public schooling anyway? The local school board or mayor? The 50 governors and state departments of education? The president, the Congress and the U.S. Department of Education? It’s all the above, which means no one. The buck is passed among educators and elected officials at all levels, and the public doesn’t know who, if anyone, to hold accountable.17
We must clarify and simplify this balkanization of educational governance. High-performing school systems around the world do it a lot differently than the U.S. All have, in effect, national ministries of education that have overall authority.18
Let’s strike a proper balance. To that end, I have proposed what I call a “New Education Federalism” in which the federal government sets standards for what educational opportunity every child is entitled to, while state and local governments retain wide autonomy in how the standards are met. State and local officials can decide—based on the spectrum of evidence-based best practices like RTI—how students are taught, teachers are selected and trained, and how school dollars are spent.19
Within the framework of this New Education Federalism, I would abolish school boards. This would be another step toward reducing the micro-management of Educators though the proposal steps on the toes of diehard localists. I proposed this even when I was a member of the Baltimore school board. For sure, school boards are a hot-button topic, and only a little time can be devoted to them it in these pages. But let me recount briefly two of my personal encounters with the issue.
One was when I applied to be a member of the Baltimore board in the early 2000s. At that time, members were jointly appointed by the governor and Baltimore mayor. The governor, an ardent Republican, wanted me to shake things up while the mayor, an ardent and liberal Democrat, didn’t. That seemed strange since I was unmistakably on the progressive-left. But the mayor opposed me because the city schools CEO (superintendent), who was well respected and liked, threatened to resign, fearing that, as an outspoken advocate for school reform, I would micro-manage school administration.
On my third application for appointment, the mayor relented and I was appointed. And you know what? The then CEO’s fear was well-founded. I was a leader in the board’s decision to conduct a national search for someone who would be bold and outside the mainstream of superintendents. We were lucky to find such a person (recall how he and I later teamed up to develop the Baltimore One Year Plus policy).
And that led to my second personal encounter with micro-management by school boards. The CEO we hired was so smart and assertive that in the contract he negotiated, he insisted on what became known as “the Buzzy clause.” Buzzy is my nickname. And the clause explicitly prohibited micro-management by board members.
In fact, both the old CEO and new CEO were right in that respect. Board members should hire and fire superintendents, set basic policy, and conduct oversight. They should not second guess and interfere with policy operations. But they almost universally do.
Fiery debate over school boards is usually over whether members should be elected or appointed. To which I say, the only thing worse than an appointed board is an elected one. Both kinds should be abolished. True, giving sole power to mayors or county executives to hire and fire superintendents involves “politics.” But aren’t board appointees politically chosen, with elected boards raising the political heat to an even greater boil?
Many localists—liberals and conservatives alike—are horrified over the potential diminution of “community control.” But there is no evidence that even John and Jane Q Citizen parents, as passionate board members, add enough value to offset the disadvantages. The business of K-12 schooling is simply too complicated for very part-time volunteer policy-makers. The problem is even more acute in school districts with large poor and minority populations, where community involvement is weak despite the best engagement efforts. Not only do school boards do little good; they do actual damage by decreasing the accountability of mayors and county executives, and frequently inserting excess politics into school decision-making. No governance method way is foolproof, but we would do educators and schoolchildren a favor, on balance, by residing authority and accountability in one elected official.
To double down on my heresy, I have come around to the conclusion that for similar reasons, state boards of education should also be abolished. The Kirwan Commission’s quest to hold the state department of education more accountable for how money is spent would be enhanced if a state board did not stand in the way of clear executive authority and accountability. Let the governor appoint the state superintendent with legislative advice and consent and directly take the heat for the educational abuse of struggling learners.
One more way in which Us/we overstep boundaries and make school life more difficult for Educators is the ideological and political polarization of education policy-making. Those words—the ideological and political polarization of education policymaking—are a mouthful. But their meaning is plain. The “education wars” that have plagued school reform forever have been waged mostly by ideological combatants.
That’s as obvious today as it has ever been. At present liberals favor more money, support teachers unions, waffle on charter schools, and tend to oppose strong accountability measures. Shame on us: liberals fought and gained some (though not enough) federal funding for low-income students and students with disabilities in the 1960s and 1970s; yet, we never followed up to see whether the funds were being well spent. Conservatives had a field day, with some justification, complaining that the money was not being well spent and achieving the intended results.
Conservatives, now a political majority in the federal and most state governments, argue even more fervently that more money isn’t needed. They are hellbent on busting teachers unions and privatizing public schools through charter schools, vouchers, tax credits and other aid to private schools.
Add to this, believe it or not, the “reading wars” that are still being waged despite research that should have led to a peace treaty many years ago. Whole language partisans—predominantly education “progressives”—are still fighting rearguard actions against the science of reading instruction.
Lost in the fog of these wars is middle ground. Most of all, we must pay strict attention to and support improvements in classroom instruction. My previous book was called It’s the Classroom, Stupid, and in it I echoed the sentiment of Charles M. Payne, a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago. “A Curse on Both Their Houses” is the title of his superb analysis of the failure of school reform. Reform suffers, he writes, from the “disability of ideology and the way it distorts” policy discussion.20 Preeminent education historian David Tyack observes that the education wars have long “resembled the battles of the old Chinese warlords, who assembled their armies, hurled insults at each other, and then departed, leaving the landscape as it was.”21
The “disability of ideology” should be trashed along with the bogus disabilities of students who are mislabeled as disabled and educationally abused. Us/we will be doing Educators and parents a great favor if we do.
. . . . . . . . .
From this self-censure of Us for our failing report card on money, micromanagement, and ideological interference, we turn to Educators and how they are sometimes their own worst enemies.