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More money for more of the same

March 4, 2009 By

If the feds spend more than $100 billion on the same old education policies, don’t expect anything to change, write Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth on Princeton University Press blog.

While over $100 billion is being doled out for education purposes, most of it is unlikely to improve student achievement and may even impede progress toward that critical goal.  The driving force behind the stimulus package seems to be to spend the money quickly, meaning that past spending priorities and patterns will be largely replicated, rather than spending it effectively to meet our educational goals.

. . .  Over the past 40 years, we have almost quadrupled our per pupil spending (adjusted for inflation), but student performance remains essentially at the same level as it was in 1970.  We have poured money into compensatory programs for disadvantaged students, into lowering class sizes, and into introducing new programs and technologies.  These enormous expenditures have barely raised a ripple in student achievement according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card.”

Less than two percent of funding is directed at “innovation and improvement.” In addition, the education secretary will get $5 billion in discretionary funds, which could be used to encourage ideas that challenge the status quo. Or not.

Hanushek and Lindseth’s forthcoming book is Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s  Public Schools.

Show us (how) the money will be spent, demands the Christian Science Monitor. There are lots of ways for the stimulus money to go astray.

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Obama on education

February 25, 2009 By

Education was the “third challenge” in Barack Obama’s speech last night. He’s for it.

There was the usual nod to the global knowledge economy: “We know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.” He promised “access to a complete and competitive education” to every child from birth to first job. Then there was the one-two punch: More money for programs and more money for reforms.

We’ve dramatically expanded early childhood education and will continue to improve its quality, because we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life. We’ve made college affordable for nearly seven million more students — seven million. (Applause.) And we have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children’s progress.

But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. (Applause.) That is why this budget creates new teachers — new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools. (Applause.)

(Applause was not universal: Check out Edspresso’s How do I react? for the photo of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.)

Obama asked young Americans to commit to at least one year of college or career training after high school.  He offered tuition aid to those who “volunteer in your neighborhood” or in the military. If the Kennedy-Hatch bill, which he touted, is the guide, that doesn’t mean the feds will offer college aid only to those who’ve served in some way.

Education stimulus money won’t be distributed based on need, reports Education Week.

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Dems divide on education windfall

February 25, 2009 By

The $100 billion windfall for education in the stimulus bill may divide Democrats, writes Richard Lee Colvin in Education Next.

One side (of the party) backs strong accountability through reforms such as performance pay for teachers and more support for model charter schools that practice longer school days and longer school years. The other side looks to augment the current system with more support programs such pre-kindergarten, afterschool and summer programs.

Obama thinks there’s enough money to “do it all,” as he promised in a September speech. But there’s enough money.

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Stimulating schools

February 12, 2009 By

Politics K-12 is the place to go for news on the education provisions of the compromise stimulus bill:

The agreement would provide $53.6 billion for the state fiscal stabilization fund, including $40.6 billion to local school districts using existing funding formulas, which can be used for averting layoffs and programmatic cutbacks, and to pay for school modernization. The fund also includes $5 billion for incentive grants to be allocated by the Secretary of Education; and $8 billion to states’ high–priority needs, which may include education.

The agreement would provide $1.1 billion for Early Head Start and $1 billion for Head Start, plus $2 billion for the Child Care Development Block Grant.

It would also provide $13 billion for Title I programs for disadvantaged students and $12.2 billion for grants for special education.

And, on the higher education front, the bill would boost the maximum Pell Grant to college students by $500, for a maximum of $5,350 in 2009 and $5,550 in 2010.

. . .

The $25 million fund for charter school facilities is not included.

. . . The compromise agreement includes $250 million for state data systems, $100 million for teacher quality state grants, and $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund. It also has $650 million for education technology, which is less than the $1 billion provided in both the House and Senate bills. The $13 billion for Title I money includes $3 billion for school improvement grants, according to education lobbyists.

Lots of money, not much reform.

The Gadfly guys have advice for Arne Duncan on how to manage the ed stimulus money.

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Milwaukee seeks millions for . . . ?

February 2, 2009 By

Milwaukee Public Schools could get $88.6 million in construction funds under the stimulus bill — “even though the district has 15 vacant school buildings, a large surplus of property and no plans for new construction,” reports the Journal-Sentinel.

Enrollment is declining every year, and the last major wave of construction in MPS – the $102 million Neighborhood School Initiative launched in 2000 – resulted in projects that are underused, have not met enrollment projections or have closed. A series in the Journal Sentinel in August detailed how tens of millions of dollars in construction spending did not produce the expected results, and the project as a whole has not led to a higher percentage of students attending neighborhood schools.

In general, MPS facilities have been described by school officials as being in good to better-than-good condition.

Hasty public investment often is wasted, writes economist Greg Mankiw.

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More money, less reform

January 27, 2009 By

Flypaper’s Education Reform-0-Meter, which started with a “warm” welcome for Arne Duncan as education secretary, is getting colder.

Senate Democrats have stripped the reformist provisions from the education portion of the House stimulus bill.

The Teacher Incentive Fund (which supports merit pay programs): gone. Charter school facilities dollars: gone. Money for data infrastructure projects: gone. Language ensuring that charter schools have equitable access to the money: gone. The teachers unions firmly in control of the Democratic Party: back with a vengeance.

Where is Obama? We shall see how strongly he’ll back education reform.

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Stimulus and strings

January 21, 2009 By

Schools will receive an extra $142 billion over two years in the $825 billion stimulus bill, reports USA Today.  Strings include:

• High-quality educational tests.

• Ways to recruit and retain top teachers in hard-to-staff schools.

• Longitudinal data systems that let schools track long-term progress.

On Swift & Change Able, Charles Barone, a former congressonal staffer, analyzes the potential to use the extra money to fund change — or more of the same.

For example, states promise that funds will be used “to improve assessments, more efficiently collect data, and equalize the distribution of qualified teachers,” he writes. But states already have made those “assurances.”

All they will have to do is copy and paste language from their old plans and re-submit them.

This means that with all the complaints we have heard about current assessment systems (the responsibility for which lies solely with the states) and the inequitable distribution of teachers (the responsibility for which lies with both schools and districts) and the promises for change, states and districts can take billions and billions in new federal education dollars and do more or less on these issues exactly what they are doing now.

He’s got a lot more on the way to hand out money without creating a giant slush fund. A congressional committee starts the write- up today.


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Bailout billions won’t stimulate learning

January 18, 2009 By

The stimulus bill may include $70 billion to $100 billion for K-12 schools. “For comparison, after the radical expansion of federal education spending that came with No Child Left Behind, the feds now spend about $40 billion per year on K-12 education,” writes Greg Forster of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice on Pajamas Media. But it won’t improve education.

There have been literally hundreds of empirical studies examining whether educational outcomes are related to spending increases. This body of evidence has consistently found that spending more money bears no relationship with the results we get from schools. In fact, the total amount we spend per student has more than doubled in the past 40 years, after accounting for inflation, while educational outcomes are flat over the same period.

It won’t even stimulate the economy.

To spend money stimulating the economy, government has to get the money first, removing it from the economy through taxes and/or borrowing. And when you remove money from the economy, you lose the multiplier effects from whatever people would have done with that money if the government hadn’t taken it.

But aren’t we borrowing it all from the Chinese?

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Stimulating minds

January 12, 2009 By

Spending $1 trillion for highways, bridges and school repairs won’t stimulate the economy in the long run, argues New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. We need to stimulate learning, creating “more Google-ready jobs and Windows-ready and knowledge-ready workers.”

How?

Barack Obama is talking about preparing for global competition by  “investing in the science, research and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries and entire new industries.”

But, again, how?

Friedman proposes:

. . . give everyone who is academically eligible and willing a quick $5,000 to go back to school. . . .

.  . .  eliminate federal income taxes on all public schoolteachers so more talented people would choose these careers. I’d also double the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers, staple green cards to the diplomas of foreign students who graduate from any U.S. university in math or science — instead of subsidizing their educations and then sending them home — and offer full scholarships to needy students who want to go to a public university or community college for the next four years.

Academically eligible students — and quite a few who aren’t eligible — already go to college in the U.S.  Where we lose potential scientists and innovators is in the K-12 system. There’s no quick fix for that, though it would make sense to pay more to competent math and science teachers — and to other teachers with high-demand skills, such as special ed specialists. Exempting all public teachers from income taxes is a bad idea: We’re all in this together.

I back allowing foreign math and science graduates to stay in the U.S.

It’s also important to ensure that community colleges have the funds to offer  classes to laid-off workers who need to improve their skills.

Eduwonk has more on compensating teachers.

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