Unworkable "solutions"

This letter is in response to a Dispatch Op-Ed column published Wednesday, January 25th.

Dear Ms. Smith,

Your January 25 Dispatch column starts by lamenting “More and more money, a lot of tinkering, constant reforms and so little change,” and worrying because “The recession and state budget woes set off alarms, warning that many education needs can’t be met if we keep this up.” But then your suggestions are in large part old suggestions, unworkable, or expensive.

Year-round school, four-day school weeks, education via technology, state-leveraged purchases (buses, etc.), “best practices”/reports, and prefab buildings (“trailers”) have all been around for a while. And who will pay for the air conditioning needed for year-round school? How much expensive investment will techno-ed require if it is broadly applied in all schools? And many schools already temporarily use prefab classrooms to address population fluctuations.

You mention exempting prevailing wage. So, is it a new idea to pay for tax cuts by taking it out of working people’s income? You complain about “More and more money,” but apparently money taken from workers doesn’t count. Your suggestions don’t really seem to be against spending money. How will orphanages be paid for? Don’t you think that eliminating grade levels would require greater expenditures on personnel, software, and planning/ oversight? Do you agree with the governor that this could all be paid for by effectively eliminating collective bargaining for educational employees?

Statewide collective bargaining for salary or salary and fringes would be interesting. Do you actually think the well-to-do suburban schools would reduce their present levels to some overall average? Would the state raise all poor schools to the level of Upper Arlington, or even to a state-average level? We already have a ridiculously low minimum salary schedule.

Moreover, collective bargaining involves many more IMPORTANT aspects beyond salary, such as working conditions, fair and professional treatment, due process in discipline, sensible educational policy, and more. How would a state-level bargaining entity deal with such questions coming from over six hundred districts? Either the local boards would have to deal with this – eating up much of the “savings” – or you intend that such matters would no longer be considered. If the latter, then you would diminish the profession.

Without these options teachers have no way to demand respect, no real way to help mold policy, no way to counteract prejudice, nepotism, vendettas, foolish board policy, and other matters that harm teachers, students, and the educational process.

You end with: “Ohio can either greatly increase systemwide productivity or continue to rely on more local taxes, more district cuts and doing less with less.” Are those the only options? Why are you willing to frame the options as increase local taxes and make district cuts versus taking needed funds out of workers’ standard of living (I know: part of it – you think – would come from “productivity”)– but you don’t even mention calling for higher, progressive taxes to “stop the cuts in important areas such as preschool, the arts and foreign languages”? Is this any different from Tea Party types who MUST balance the budget by cutting the safety net but won’t touch taxing millionaires?

Finally, I am shocked by your asking a Republican governor and legislature, which supposedly hates “big government,” “Tzars,” and the federal Department of Education, to set up a “a board, which would have authority over early childhood, elementary, secondary and higher education, and could make the system function more cohesively.” What happened to “local control”? And even if local boards continue to exist in some form, isn’t this super board, as conservatives like to say, “just another level of worthless, expensive bureaucracy”?

All in all, I don’t think Einstein would be pleased with your column. It doesn’t seem that different from the same old easy (to say) fixes and politically oriented silver bullets. Much of it is entirely impossible to implement - for political and economic reasons; some cannot be universally or properly implemented; some is destructive of a valuable profession.

And your selection of types to serve on the “expert panel” is astounding: “certified public accountants, economists, futurists and technologists and perhaps be chaired by Ohio’s state auditor.” These are the “experts” – not one of them is connected to education in any way. None of them is qualified to understand education! Clearly, you are looking at money, not the education of kids. Would you make the same recommendation regarding a medical practice “expert panel” and keep everyone connected to medicine off the panel? Maybe, if you worked for a health insurance company.

Education doesn’t change because the power structure won’t deal with the real problems and people who have a public platform make proposals like yours that serve the power structure.

Yours - Tom Harker
Retired School Teacher.

Teacher Quality Is Not A Policy

I often hear the following argument: Improving teacher quality is more cost-effective than other options, such as reducing class size (see here, for example). I am all for evaluating policy alternatives based on their costs relative to their benefits, even though we tend to define the benefits side of the equation very narrowly – in terms of test score gains.

But “improving teacher quality” cannot yet be included in a concrete costs/benefits comparison with class size or anything else. It is not an actual policy. At best, it is a category of policy options, all of which are focused on recruitment, preparation, retention, improvement, and dismissal of teachers. When people invoke it, they are presumably referring to the fact that teachers vary widely in their test-based effectiveness. Yes, teachers matter, but altering the quality distribution is whole different ballgame from measuring it overall. It’s actually a whole different sport.

I think it is reasonable to speculate that we might get more bang for our buck if we could somehow get substantially better teachers, rather than more of them, as would be necessary to reduce class sizes. But the sad, often unstated truth about teacher quality is that there is very little evidence, at least as yet, that public policy can be used to improve it, whether cost-effectively or otherwise.

Positing teacher quality as a concrete policy intervention represents circular reasoning. It’s saying that, if we had more teachers who increase test scores, this would increase test scores. Well, yes. But that’s more of an effect than a means. The relevant policy question is: How do we do so?

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State budget decisions severely harming communities

When the governor and legislature passed the buck on balancing the state's budget, the effects rippled down through hundreds of schools districts, districts like Dublin city schools.

Dublin city schools are excellent with distinction. You don't get any better than that. Now being threatened by the reckless budget, this school district is scheduled to lose $10.9-million of state funding over the next two years. Like so many other districts, Dublin has to choose between damaging cuts, or asking the community for their continued support.

Two central Ohio school districts gave glimpses last night of what might be cut if their tax issues on the November ballot fail.

Potential cuts in Dublin schools include “well over 100 teachers,” among other jobs, Superintendent David Axner said at the district’s Board of Education meeting.
[...]
Those cuts would vary depending on whether board members decided to dip into reserve funds. The plan that officials presented last night assumes the board would use about half of the $15 million reserve. But the district still would eliminate about 150 jobs, limit transportation and reduce elective classes.

Although officials haven’t decided on exact numbers, they would eliminate more than 100 teaching jobs from all grade levels, Axner said.

High-school students, who now choose from six foreign languages, would have fewer options. Bus routes would have fewer pickup areas, Deputy Superintendent Mike Trego said. Class sizes would increase.

Not only would an excellent school district be harmed if this levy fails, but at a time when the governor is talking about creating jobs, thousands of quality, important jobs are being lost in school districts like Dublin all over the state.

The budget that passed is now having a three pronged negative effect on the quality of Ohio as a place to live, work and study.

1. It is hurting our future by making it harder to educate our state's children. Less teachers, greater class sizes, less academic choice, less extra curricula activities. Students don't get a second bite at their childhood education.

2. It is hurting our economy. At a time when job creation is hard to come by, we have purposefully decided to destroy thousands of quality jobs that help fuel local economies.

3. Passing the buck to the local level causes either cuts in school quality which adversely affects property values, or causes increases in local taxes to help offset the reckless budget cuts made by the state.

The legislature didn't need to make these choices, other options were open to them, it's hard to imagine a more damaging policy choice than the one that was made.

ps. If you live in the Dublin city school district, vote yes on issue 15.