We've just returned from the School Finance Redesign Project Panel (and were caught in the rain, no less!) Here are some final thoughts:
Great ideas... not so practical. I'll give you two examples.
In the ideas area, I was struck by Guthrie's thoughts on the transformation of American education. 50 years ago, he asserts, you could drop out of high school and still get a job and have a productive, comfortable life. Today, those jobs that don't require education have either disappeared or moved overseas. As a result, we, as a nation, are facing a momentous task: educating everyone and educating them well. He proposes that we're the first modern, democratic, industrialized nation to confront this challenge. NCLB may be an "awkward instrument" but we are venturing into new territory.
Criticizing NCLB is the new "it" thing to do (presidential election, anyone?). I can almost hear someone saying, "It's an axe when we need a scalpel"...[cue laughter] The point is that Guthrie is largely right. Most countries don't even attempt to educate everyone or consider that doing so is a laudable goal. Take Germany, for example. It fits all of Guthrie's criteria (or those that I managed to scribble down during the event--there may have been more): modern, democratic, and industrialized. Yet children in Germany are tracked from age ten into college-bound, vocational, and remedial schools. There is no assumption in the German education system that every child deserves the chance to go to college. As The Economist so candidly puts it, "The cleverest go to??Gymnasien, the main route to university; the ordinary are sent to??Realschulen; and the dullards attend??Hauptschulen, often breeding-grounds for disaffection." (Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, is attempting to reform the system, but facing incredible resistance.) "The dullards?" That's an American lawsuit waiting to happen.
Now, I'm not saying that every student should actually go to college, but children in this country at least exist under the assumption that they could go to college if they wanted to--that they can learn if we figure out how to teach them most effectively. (Some might disagree that we teach students to believe in themselves--the teaching for social justice crowd comes to mind--but??I stand by my assertion that this country is a fountain of opportunities spilling over.) We talk about NCLB as if it were the antichrist--dumbing down education, teaching to the test, ruining children's lives left and right. But what was our education system like before NCLB? Despite its problems of structure and implementation, hasn't NCLB taught us something, at least? Would we know where to go next if we hadn't been where we were?
It's great to contemplate the ideological mindsets behind our schools but when Amber asked how we would couple teacher salaries with weighted student funding, none of the panelists could answer the question. As you can see below, I noted Paul Hill's response, but Jim Guthrie took a stab at the question first--and didn't answer it satisfactorily at all (actually if there was an answer in his response, somebody please let me know. I did not hear one). The problem is that we really do need an answer. Why? Under most school funding schemes currently in place, dollars are allocated based on the number of teachers, administrators, and programs (or that's how I understand it). If we have dollars following children as WSF calls for, how do we a) determine teacher salaries, b) determine teacher pay scales, and c) create collective bargaining agreements? While I appreciated and understood the "real world" aspect that would be injected into schools trying to make a bottom line, I also understand the "real world" aspect of teachers' unions and their guaranteed objections (read: outrage) to this scheme. I merely wish that Paul Hill and company had taken on this question in their report--and moved beyond the niceties that keep this conversation, again, in the land of policy--instead of practice.
