There is a school board election under way as well as another funding crisis… so I thought I would write down a few of my thoughts on the critical topic of providing all children with a quality education. There is a great deal of impact to be made outside of the classroom, but in this post I will stick exclusively to comments on the classroom and the school system.
Funding is a huge issue that is tied up in the even bigger and more complex taxing issues of funding government in general. But I’m going to restrict my comments to the school issue. In Oregon, I believe the big downturn occurred when the state tried to equalize funding across all school districts in the state. That is a worthy concept, but Oregon’s implementation tossed out several valuable aspects of the old funding system. I believe that direct (by citizens, not elected officials), isolated (school funding as a stand alone issue, not mixed in with all other spending) and local control of school funding is the key to adequate and stable funding of schools.
So here is my proposal:
1- To provide for equitable funding of all schools in the state, the tax basis for schools would be the same in all locations. You would compute state wide property values divide by the total number of students to get a per student tax basis. This means the impact on a property owner in any district is the same for the same level of funding per student. This continues the current system of having the higher property values in the Portland metro area subsidize poorer communities in other parts of the state.
2- Local control. Schools would be funded by a direct vote of the people in the district. No need for all districts to fund at the same level (but they would all be using the same tax basis for their funding decisions, so the impact on local property taxes would be the same in all districts for the same funding level. The vote would not be yes/no on a proposal by the school board, which in the past often meant that school districts had to go the ballot multiple times to get something passed. I would recommend that the budget would have several options to choose from (just like when choosing a candidate): one budget recommended by the district, flat, +/- 10%, other budget numbers that get on the ballot through signature process. It would also be great to apply Proportional Voting technology to this as well. That way people could vote their concerns & yet you would get the budget that over 50% of the people felt was the best given the options available.
3- Tuition. Or I guess you could call this a tax on children of school age. Everyone in a community has a stake in providing good schools so a broad tax to support schools makes sense. But clearly the families with children attending school get the most direct benefits and so I don’t see any reason why they should not be expected to pay more to support the schools. Right now I feel like the notion of tuition for public schools is dismissed out of hand. I think it deserves careful consideration. No child would be denied school access because of tuition. The tuition would be on a sliding scale based on income & I would make it part of the state income tax form. Once again the tuition amount could be different in different districts. It might be appropriate to cap tuition as some % of the general tax funded spending per student. Wealthier districts might end up with larger tuition numbers, since they would get more money for any amount set as a tuition payment (higher on the sliding scale). This could be a reason to set tuition at a fixed percentage of the general fund amount & then all districts share from the tuition pool in a proportional manner, removing any advantage that wealthier districts would have. I guess you could do the propotional allocation even if every district set their own tuition level, it is just that all districts would received the same % amount of the max tuition dollars… thus a fair balance between rich and poor districts.
A culture of innovation. I think making this cultural change and getting a results orientation should be the top priorities of the school district. This is the root cause of poor school performance. It doesn’t make sense to jump directly to specific solutions to school problems. Unless there is a culture that values results and values innovation, then changes will just be short term and not very significant. The schools will not be focused on delivering the best possible education to the children. Charter schools are not going to get the job done by themselves. The public schools must be ready, willing, and able to absorb innovations into their own practices. Key steps in fostering this cultural change are:
1- Local control. The school principal really needs to run the show. This includes hiring and firing staff in a rational and responsible manner. Having large amounts of discretion in how to spend their budget.
2- Centralize accountability. The main job of the district office should be to set standards for reporting on progress and make sure the reports happen, are accurate, and get publicized. They take action regarding principals that are not getting the job done.
3- Increase opportunities for principals and teachers to get training and to share best known methods. Accelerate learning throughout the district, but allow each school to experiment and try things.
Two examples of innovation that I think are particularly relevant in these hard economic times are: Block scheduling and virtual schools.
- Block scheduling… many schools do variations of this without getting significant benefits. I am talking about a significant scheduling change. Lets just say that the normal class load in high school is 6 classes per semester. I would suggest a block schedule that would have each student take 2 classes a day for 1/3 of the semester. So each student would have a morning and an afternoon class, each session 3 times as long as a normal class. The advantages include that each teacher would have 1/3 as many students. While there would be no change in the number of students per class, the reduction in total number of classes means fewer students per teacher… giving them more time to get to know students, more time to grade individual projects, etc. This also reduces by 1/3 the number of text books needed. The longer class periods imply more opportunity to work in small groups, to have peer to peer support and help… lectures 3 times as long would not be the right approach to teaching in this environment. This arrangement also gives students an opportunity for “credit recovery” in core classes by retaking a class a second or third time during the same year. Helping them to stay current with their needed credits.
- Virtual schools/classrooms. It is imperative that schools take advantage of technology, not just to support teachers/students, but to change the way students learn. Much could be learned from what corporations, military, and universities are doing with their efforts at remote training. But the basic idea is to leverage excellent teaching resources across more students and to exploit technology as a low cost method for supporting the learning process. I think there is tremendous potential for both improvements in learning as well as cost savings along this line. There seems to be interesting work going on in this space by the small town of Scio Oregon as well as an innovative grant proposal for NYC schools called “School of One” (I think).
Well it is now June 7th. It has taken me a month to get this written. Yikes, I’m out of control. I attended an “I Have a Dream” Foundation event celebrating the high school graduation for a group of students & that pushed me to get this posting finished up. I must say I relate to a recent “Lou Ann” comic strip where she commented on not being able to twitter if she was actually doing something… I find a similar feeling about writing this blog. When I’m engaged and working on things, I just don’t see the purpose or take the time to write in the blog… I guess that might change if I viewed the blog as helpful to more people.
Oh well, that is all for now.