Reform Costs Money
Reform costs money. That's an inconvenient truth as school districts face their bleakest budget forecasts in decades.
Long before the first stimulus dollar made its way to a central office, some pundits felt that lean budgets would be a good thing, an antidote to the bloat and bureaucracy that, they said, were a deadweight on school performance. Now, as districts prepare to spend what may be their last stimulus dollar, the story of Locke High School should give the pundits pause.
The New York Times reports that the effort to turn around this LA high school has cost some 15 million dollars a year. But this isn't the story of bureaucratic bloat. Locke has all the features that should endear it to the reformiest of reformers. It's run by a charter management group. That group, Green Dot Schools, enjoys support from funders who have made big gambles on school reform: Gates, Broad, Walton and the New Schools Venture Fund, among others. Green Dot replaced most of the old teachers. And Arne Duncan has praised Locke as a successful turnaround.
But Locke hasn't hit on any secret for nickling and diming its way to success. And "success" is a relative term here. Locke made big improvements to the school climate, but big gains in test scores have proven more elusive. It's still early, so the school's champions are understandably asking for patience. (Let's hope other turnaround schools enjoy the same consideration).
So what costs so much money at Locke? Green Dot hired security and fixed the crumbling building. It split the school into small academies. It created new classrooms to deal with overcrowding. And it hired social workers and psychologists to help students deal with the stresses of life in LA's toughest neighborhoods.
What part of that strategy was wasteful? Maybe an audit would turn up some things, but I'd hate to think that a school like Locke would have to choose between necessities like safety and mental health.
The story of Locke should make us fear what looming cuts could do in any number of other schools around the country. What happens to schools that have turned the corner after careful investments in staff and infrastructure?
Schools like Locke are at less risk, because they have become national exemplars supported by public and private figures who have a direct stake in their success. Pity those struggling schools that lack generous patrons.
There is no doubt real waste that can be cut from school systems. But I worry deeply about what happens when we have to swing our budget axe in a blind panic. It takes time to go through our processes and find efficiencies. It's just not that easy to cut costs and reform schools in a single stroke.
So if you think the $23 Billion to save educators' jobs wouldn't make a big difference, think again.
Update (6/28/2010): Alexander Russo upbraids Sam DIllon, author of the Times report on Locke, for lack of perspective. For one, he notes, California's per-pupil spending on students is rock bottom. Another point he makes: Locke is huge, and violence in the surrounding Watts neighborhood is intense.
For an example of how conditions and strategies can influence cost, Strategic Learning Initiatives in Chicago has done impressive work in eight low-income elementary schools for a fraction of the cost of the traditional turnaround model, they report--20% of the $1 million/school allocated by the Department. Of course, their schools and Locke may be apples and oranges, given differences in size, grade level and surroundings, but the example should remind us that Locke isn't necessarily a representative of all turnarounds.
One more point: SLI doesn't employ any of the Department's favored turnaround models, but they report very strong results.
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I don't like the fact that
I don't like the fact that the big philanthropies are proping up their own favorite reforms with millions of dollars and then propping up the fiction that school reform can be done cheaply.
I agree and disagree. This
I agree and disagree. This type of school reform costs money, but there are a lot of ways we are wasting SO much money now, it's really just a matter of re-purposing what's already there. This is also just one story of reform--there are lots of new ways we can educate kids and take education "out-of-the-box" it's been put into.
I have no problem with big philanthropies making change happen--it has to start somewhere and at least some kids will benefit from it. To say that because all kids won't benefit we shouldn't do it is ridiculous.
What I'm sick to death of his being held hostage by this idea that if we don't keep dumping money into our educational system we can't change and improve--but the changes and improvements never come. We just continue to fund antiquated programs, the kids continue to having aging books and materials, their taught in ways that no longer make sense, in buildings that are falling down. (By wonderful people, in large, who are trying to do their best in this framework). And my kid goes to a public school in a good district!
Anonymous #1: I'm at least as
Anonymous #1: I'm at least as concerned about long-term reform strategies that are built on primarily on foundation dollars, because we have to worry about what happens when those foundation dollars dry up. Ideally, districts can find other ways to fund their priorities, but sometimes the funding can be capricious and difficult.
Anonymous #2: I will agree with you about the need to repurpose education fund that are poorly spent. I also agree that there is real waste in the system, and that we'd do well to find and eliminate it. Finally, I agree that our long-term strategy shouldn't be simply to pump money into the status quo and expect everything to change.
But I have to qualify that. First of all, the need to re-purpose lots of existing money in a system when you're under duress is troubling to me. I'm not sure that sets the conditions for "out of the box thinking" and reform. Often it means that really good things get cut, and that the fabric of successful schools--the teams of people who work collaboratively in them--gets torn asunder.
Second, it's important to remember that many of the "out-of-the-box" strategies that get proposed are quite expensive. That was a revelation in a recent Education Sector report on the best-performing charter networks. Educating kids who have lots of disadvantages really does cost a lot of money. Reformers are finding that out.
In other countries that provide free health care and all sorts of other social services--often for much smaller populations of poor children--generally don't have to include the health and social service costs to their schools' balance sheets.
None of this is to say that we shouldn't be working hard to make schools more effective AND cost-effective. But I'm not sure the current slash-and-burn budget realities are creating the best climate for those kinds of changes.
So they fired all the
So they fired all the teachers and then hired new ones and gave them everything the old ones would have told them they needed to improve the place to begin with.
And notice how test scores went nowhere....
If the foundation types teach us anything from all they are doing I suspect it will be that when you put money into schools you can improve them.
Not improve test scores. Improve their climate, resources etc...
But anyone who previously had taught at Locke could have told them this before they spent $15,000,000.
And that still won't change the neighborhood these schools are in. And that has enormous impact on what these kids can learn because the social impact of poverty is that strong.
And understand this too... these foundation types, once they see that test scores on the NAEP and International tests are not going up despite all the money they are spending... Well, they're going to lose interest. Even in a place like Locke.
Or, alternatively, they'll have to lose interest in test scores as a judge of quality education.
But that goes against their nature as "data-driven" managers of businesses in their former lives... Which are very different places than civic enterprises like schools, though they don't realize that yet.
It will be interesting to watch.
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