It almost seems too good to be true, but lo and behold, a ???gang??? of moderate Senators from both sides of the aisle are pushing to reduce the amount of money in the stimulus package going to schools. Before you call me a Scrooge, let me remind you why this is good news: as previously structured, the Senate plan was basically a huge bailout of local school systems. And perhaps such a bailout makes sense if your only purpose is to keep any teachers or school bureaucrats from losing their jobs. (I'm not an economist; maybe that is precisely what we should do to stave off a depression.) But educationally, it's terrible policy, because it rewards states and districts that have been profligate with their spending (which has doubled in real dollars in the past twenty-five years) and which have locked themselves into unsustainable spending far into the future. So if throwing an enormous amount of money at the schools is a bad idea, throwing a really large amount of money at the schools (as these moderates propose) is a less-bad one.
But if it's a bailout (and let's be honest: it's a bailout), it should come with some strings. Financial service companies have had to limit executive pay; the auto companies and their unions have had to get rid of the ???jobs bank.??? What should educators and their unions give up in return? In my view, the leverage from these dollars should be used to push states to get rid of policies that artificially inflate school costs and unnecessarily lower school quality, and particularly teacher quality, such as:
Strict tenure protections for teachers with seniority. At the least, these protections should be pushed back several years so that administrators can remove ineffective instructors before they gain excessive ???due process??? rights. (Even liberal Ohio governor Ted Strickland seems to agree.)
???Last hired, first fired??? rules. Yes, ladies and gentleman, these provisions can be found in state law in some places (including Ohio???Governor Strickland?). And they serve to discourage good people from entering the classroom.
Rigid class size reduction requirements. Everybody loves tiny classes but folks, we can't afford them. The world will not end if we put 28 children with one teacher. States should follow the Gubernator's lead here and untie the strings that come with class size dollars.
Pension promises that we can't keep.
For the federal funds to have leverage, though, the Secretary of Education needs to have some sort of discretion so he can make a deal with the states and push them in these directions. The House version of the stimulus bill includes a $15 billion incentive fund that could be used for this purpose, but the moderates would strip that piece out of the package too. That's a mistake. (Though the House draft is far from perfect, as much of its focus is on addressing the inequitable distribution of teachers, a serious problem but one that neither the states nor the feds are well suited to solve. In fact, it might be unsolvable. Better to focus on policies that would boost teacher quality overall than try to play Robin Hood.)
There's going to be a stimulus package (which is a good thing) and there's going to be a lot of money for the schools (which is too bad). Given that, the best case scenario would combine spending that is less extravagant than originally proposed, and reforms that are bolder than currently envisioned. President Obama: are you willing to take that deal?
