(21) 2010

I wanted to go back to the future for a moment and tell you about a conversation that I had last week with an urban school district superintendent. His district is located in California. I was meeting with him to talk about a plan for reaching academic growth targets set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and to support the district's overall reform efforts.

First, a few NCLB reference terms. Program Improvement (PI) is used to describe schools that have not met one or more academic targets for two consecutive years. Targets are set for overall student achievement and for children who belong to specific subgroups. The PI designation forces districts to make targeted efforts to turnaround failing schools or face consequences that may include school reconstitution or in extreme cases, state takeover of the entire district. A school's individual Academic Performance Index (API) is a score (ranging from 200-1000) used to rank and compare schools across districts and the country. A score of 800 or more means you are generally safe. A Similar Schools Ranking compares schools with similar demographic characteristics.

This is how our conversation went:

The Super (waving his arms in front of himself in a slow Tai Chi, swirling motion): Now Sabine, I want you to picture our district. (pause) Now, picture it as if all our schools are in Program Improvement - because that's how I see it.

Me (What was I thinking, but didn't say aloud): Huh? Not all your schools are in PI, actually only four out of the thirty schools in the district are designated PI. But I replied only with an, "OK...."

The Super: Look, I don't worry about API scores. We can't keep up with the national standards. I look at our Similar Schools Ranking. That's where I want to see progress.

Me (Again, what was I thinking, but didn't say aloud): Are you actually serious? You, the superintendent, the leader of this entire HUGE school district is telling me not to worry about students making any real academic growth. You just want to look a little better than all of the other crappy schools and districts that you are grouped with! You cannot be serious! I continued not to say anything. There's really no point arguing with a superintendent, so I said, "OK."

Here's my take on the current implementation of NCLB in the U.S.:

NCLB was created with good intentions. It does focus attention on students who have historically been underserved. It created a framework for defining basic minimum academic standards in each grade level. I don't have a problem with the annual testing. I'm not a fan of using standardized tests as the sole measure of skill or ability, but they do provide a snapshot of students at a point in time.

What concerns me about NCLB, is that it requires the leaders of failing districts to fix things, to fix themselves, usually without outside assistance. This is like asking a dysfunctional family to just snap out of it. The lack of funding for NCLB is an obstacle, but frankly, if you are a district in trouble, it's safe to say that you are probably also having issues managing your resources. I'm just not sure pouring more money into the mix is a wise idea.

The bottom line here is that we are left with district administrators - like the Superintendent here - who are under a tremendous amount of pressure to get out of the hole. They're stressed out, their jobs (and mortgages) are on the line and they're looking for a quick fix. In order to get Language Arts and Math scores up (two subjects more heavily weighted), some elementary schools have had to forsake Science, Art, Music and Social Studies. The instruction of state standards are broken down into unrelated "capsules" of information. Teachers are sometimes even forced to teach directly from 'scripts' so that instruction is uniform across the district. One teacher colleague describes her elementary school as a former Soviet state where the principal comes on the loudspeaker and gives inspirational speeches at times during the course of day on how her students WILL meet the standards and how they WILL NOT continue to be a FAILING school.

As we think about the latest federal legislation designed to support low performing schools such as Race to the Top, let's just ask ourselves, whose standards are we racing toward? When we consider the School Improvement Grants (SIG) that are currently being offered to persistently low performing schools throughout the country (up to $2 million per year per school), you have to evaluate the wisdom of handing large sums of money to districts with "persistently low performing" systems of management.

A penny for your thoughts?

Image credit: from the motion picture, Back to the Future, 1985 & 1989

(22) Things

After the time spent establishing a behavior contract for our fifth grade classroom, I was left with the more daunting task of instructing my students. We didn't have many supplies or books. I did have a pile of teaching manuals for each textbook my students were supposed to have, but there weren't enough of any subject to go around. The school did eventually place an order, but I remember that it took a while for the books to come in. Even if everyone had a text, most of my students' reading levels ranged from first to third grade. I did have two students who were close to grade level.

While the community was poor, the school was not in bad shape financially. We received Title One money (supplemental federal funds given to schools with a certain concentration of students who live below the poverty line) and had a business partnership with the local office of a major oil company (They sent their staff to tutor kids once a week and supported the school financially as well). Our school even had an on site "business manager" (The new principal's idea) who handled all of our different sources of funding.

The trouble with the Title One money was that the school's stakeholders (parents and staff) didn't actually have a say in how the money was spent. The feds require that each school receiving these funds form a School Site Council (SSC) committee and that all the stakeholders are represented, give input and vote on budget items. In reality, parents were either too intimidated, too respectful or too uncertain about what was being presented to them to ever speak their mind.

Title One did pay for a teacher on special assignment (TSA). Her job was to work with the staff and to run small academic student intervention groups. She was given the nicest classroom at school and the room was filled with Title One materials (books, manipulatives, charts) that were supposed to be shared by all the classrooms. It was a beautiful sight. In reality, we were rarely able to use this stuff because the Title One teacher guarded the bounty as if she purchased everything with her own money. She seldom ran student groups and was more of a confidant than coach to teachers. I've seen this setup at several Title One schools over the years. Same privileged teacher, same museum of instructional materials and not a whole lot of support. While it goes without saying that not all Title One teachers fit this description (I've also worked with a few excellent Title One teachers), I bet there are quite a few folks reading this who have crossed paths with this school archetype.

In order to procure materials for my classroom, I wrote a series of library mini-grants (funded by our oil company partners). I also put the word out to students that we were in need of book donations for our classroom library and my students came through. They were excited about giving away their old books and I placed placards in each donated book that read "This book was generously donated to our classroom library by **insert student's name**". They liked that a lot. Just as an aside, I learned over the years that my students were incredibly resourceful. Whenever I put the word out for paper, art supplies, materials for a Science experiment, whatever, there were always a couple of students or parents (different ones at different times) who would magically bring us what we needed.

More about what we actually did with the stuff we acquired in the next post.

(23) School Finance

What follows is another "back to the future - 2010" post and is written in response to a timely question asked by fellow blogger Bartacus:

Q: One comment I hear a lot is that poorly performing schools are simply the result of poor funding, with the amount of money spent per student (out of the local tax base) correlating directly to student performance. Has that been your experience?

Last week, a historic lawsuit was filed against the state of California. This lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of California's education funding system. You can read more about the suit by clicking on ACSA, the website for the Association of California School Administrators.

Before I proceed any further, a disclaimer: My background is not in school finance, but I can share with you some of my observations on how money is allocated and spent at the school site and district level.

How are public schools funded in the U.S.? While specific methods of funding public education vary from state to state, the baseline budget for schools is generally determined by revenue from real estate taxes. Some states allow for a community's taxes to go directly to school districts within its boundaries. Other states pool all of the money collected statewide and distribute it equally (more or less) across the state. California uses this second option.

When you hear of 'state funding' for education, this usually means the baseline amount funded per student, aka the per pupil allocation that makes up the general fund.

The short answer is that school finance is complicated. The long answer is that it can be so complicated that schools and districts have to be in the know and proactive about procuring additional funding for students. Not all schools and school-districts are knowledgeable or effective at applying for and securing these supplemental funds. This can lead to big differences in the resources available to individual schools and school districts even in a state like California that seeks to distribute its funds equitably across school districts.

Here's a menu of options for schools and school-districts seeking more funds for their schools:

Baseline funding from the state, or the "general fund" is unrestricted and usually pays for teachers, staff, instructional materials, building maintenance and anything else that a district needs to operate. This budget is calculated using the average daily attendance (ADA) for each student and the district receives x number of dollars per student. When we hear of teacher layoffs because of funding issues, it's because the general fund is low or is operating in the red.

In addition to unrestricted general funds, school and districts can receive certain restricted or "categorical" funding.

Since the "categorical" funds need to be spent for specific purposes, schools and districts usually can't use the money for full time teacher and staff salaries. Categorical funding can come in the form of additional state or federal money. Some examples of supplemental sources of funding are federal Title One funds for schools where a certain percent of students live below the poverty line; funding for English Learners; Migrant Education; After-School education; and Economic Impact Aid (EIA). Other sources may include state block grants from lottery tax revenue, local bond measures, federal stimulus funding (ARRA), School Improvement Grants (SIG) and a multitude of other program grants. There are still other sources of funding like federal Race to the Top grants that only individual states can apply for.

In order to be considered for any or all of these sources of funding, a school or district usually has a person, an office or department that takes care of applying for these programs. If a school does not apply, they do not receive the funds. Not all schools and school districts apply. When you compare schools and districts across the country, some are more "in the know", "on the ball" and politically connected than others, resulting in a hit or miss desegregation of available resources for children.

Put another way, some schools and school districts have less 'social capital' and are less effective at drawing in these supplemental sources of funds.

To further complicate matters, some public schools form business partnerships with local companies and other community organizations. They are able to solicit and secure additional funding and in some cases, recruit volunteers who work at the school site. Other schools directly raise funds from the parent population. From first hand experience, I know one affluent school district in my area where each school has a non-profit education organization run by parents and devoted to raising funds for the schools. One elementary school receives $400,000 per school year from the fund and pays for teacher assistants, Science Lab and Technology teachers and other priorities on the school's wishlist. In effect this is a local, elective tax.

So to answer Bartucus' question - it's complicated. While state per pupil allocations may be inequitable, I also have concerns about how additional funding is secured and spent. What the general public is presented with in the media doesn't always tell the entire story.

(24) As Seen on TV

Someone asked me the other day if I watch the HBO series Treme. I've heard about the show and I know that it's set in the Treme public housing projects in New Orleans. That same someone said that Treme (the show) was like The Wire, a cable TV show set in the projects of Baltimore, Maryland. While I've watched The Wire, I don't really have the desire to watch Treme. These types of shows, in their attempt to entertain us with their gritty scenes of reality, fall short of telling a complete and honest story.

As an outsider to the Calliope, I came to see the community as a complex system that was highly organized and tightly knit. Even though crime statistics for drug selling, violence, prostitution, robberies, and so forth, were quite high, the community itself did not seem to see itself as a moral failure. What we as outsiders would deem illegal, immoral or even pathological activities, were viewed by insiders as the the means of doing business, part of the Calliope's economic model if you will. Frankly, there weren't a whole lot of other options for earning a living. Transportation in and out of the neighborhood itself was hard to come by and the education system was awful.

But wrong is wrong, right? That depends on how you look at wrong. To use current criminal activity as an example, we have a community of bankers and brokers on Wall Street who bundled and sold real estate mortgages as high grade, low risk investment tools that they knew were worthless. This behavior initiated the domino effect of the mortgage crisis, the creation of billions of dollars of bad loans, Americans losing their homes to foreclosure, the collapse of businesses, and devaluation of pension accounts. There is some talk of these activities being immoral and illegal. But, at least for now, Wall Street continues with business as usual. The Wall Street traders who created the economic crisis, and their chiefs, are still employed for the most part, profitably so. We haven't heard about criminal convictions of these individuals, much less stories of prisons overfilling with investment bankers. In fact, Wall Street had a highly profitable year in 2009, taking profitable positions against the stock crash after the 2008 financial crisis.

I find it interesting that as a nation, our tolerance for crime based on greed is a lot higher than for crime driven by survival. Maybe the latter just makes for better TV.