Not surprisingly, our editorial arguing that budget cuts are good for schools has stirred plenty of commentary. It's also exposed a rift between lefty education reformers and those of us on the center-right (not to mention loopy libertarians). Expect more such rifts in coming months and years.
Consider this two-fer from Education Sector. Kevin Carey, writing at The Quick and the Ed, simply refuses to believe that tough budget times could convince schools to make tough decisions and trim their fat:
Underlying the larger argument is the idea that the public schools will implement a whole suite of needed reforms if only we can put them under sufficiently terrible financial stress. I am aware of no evidence to suggest that this will work...Are there any examples--any?--of a state or school district that has ever responded to a fiscal crisis with reforms that actually benefitted students in the long run?
Eduwonk Andy Rotherham* picks up on this line of attack in his own response:
In education tough times can often just force??mediocrity and there is little??evidence that scarcity forces good fiscal decisionmaking.?? Rather, across the board cuts and similar strategies (last hired, first fired...) tend to be the norm??during??downturns??instead of??creative strategies designed to leverage longer-term solutions.?? Given the politics of education that's not really surprising.
So what's the conclusion, gentlemen? That taxpayers should just happily continue to pour resources into our schools because education leaders are unwilling or unable to identify priorities and take tough actions?
Writing in today's Washington Post, another New Dem type, E.J. Dionne, writes approvingly of President-Elect Obama's plans to "root out inefficiency" in government. "For Obama, a highly public war against waste and fraud will ease passage of the stimulus while also showing that Democrats, who propose using government as the instrument for solving a lot of problems, intend to make reform a high priority," he says.
Hey, I'm all for that. And if the transition team asked me, I'd tell them that the Department of Education could cut its payroll by 10 percent and get stronger--if managers could cut their lowest-performing employees. You could cut a third of the staff (if it's the right staff) without much harm. (The same is true of contractors, it should be said.) But will Team Obama get permission to override the federal government's civil service protections, which currently make this approach impossible?
And in education, where almost all the federal dollars flow to school districts, why not demand similar trimming at the local level? Do we have to accept "last hired, first fired" as a given? Do we have to bow to the Gods of Seniority?
To my Democratic friends: You wanted control of the government. You got it. Now if you want taxpayers to provide extra resources, let's see some serious reforms. And that means not accepting the status quo as a given.
* Update: Eduwonk Andy writes in to say: "I'm not sure that's a fair take.??My key disagreement with you all was this: 'But??they??also seem to think that tough times inherently force sensible belt-tightening.'??I very directly said we need reciprocal obligations in these packages only that if we want productivity increasing reforms we have to be really deliberate about it.?? My point was that less money doesn't necessarily lead to smart changes."
