Articles in the Budgeting category

The week in blogs

If you can’t read, you can’t learn. That statement might seem obvious.

Yet in the United States, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), there are more than 8 million students in grades four though 12 who are reading below grade level. At this time in their schooling – that is, beyond third grade – they should have moved from a “learning-to-read” mode to one sometimes called “reading to learn.” And the fact that they have not reached this point, or have only partially reached it, means they will have trouble keeping up with their peers, graduating from high school, and succeeding in life.

“The students of today will be the workers of tomorrow,” Murray told a group of literacy coaches recently. “Trying to find jobs, struggling to make their way in a world in which literacy is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity.”

Murray, who received NSBA’s Special Recognition Award last month, is introducing the Literacy Education for All Results for the Nation or the LEARN Act, which would authorize $2.35 billion in federal support for literacy programs spanning birth through age 12.
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Lawrence Hardy|May 6th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Curriculum, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Urban Schools, Week in Blogs|

Recession battering, exposing weaknesses of education funding in U.S.

0511CoverASBJIrresponsible Wall Street financiers are rightly condemned for their role in sending this nation into an economic downturn. But when you look at your battered school budgets this year, don’t forget to offer a word of “thanks” to state lawmakers.

They added to your woes.

How so? Read the May issue of ASBJ and find out. The cover story takes a look at how the nation funds its public education system, and it points out some fundamental weaknesses that are exacerbating the impact of the recession and tying the hands of school officials as they try to protect their savaged budgets.

One weakness that can be laid at the feet of lawmakers is their love affair with the decades-old movement to bring “tax relief” to homeowners by eliminating, lowering, or capping property taxes.

You can guess at why that’s a part of this story. By squeezing local revenue streams, state lawmakers made school districts increasingly reliant on state funding to pay the school bills. But when the economy tanked, state sales taxes proved their volatility—and state education funding paid the price.

How big a price? The new tax formula in South Carolina is costing Dorchester School District 2 about $15 million in lost funds. Across the nation, large districts can point to losses 10 times as large.
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Naomi Dillon|May 5th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, NSBA Publications, Policy Formation|

Their future — and ours

First Christmas in America. Ellis Island, 1918. Library of Congress photo It’s an ingenious title, when you think of it. Also a little ambiguous.

The Future of Children — the collaboration between the Brookings Institution and Princeton University’s Wilson School of Public and International Affairs — is it about future generations of children and our commitment (or lack thereof) to them? That’s the way I’ve always read it. Or is it about the future of today’s children and the kind of lives they will lead as adults?

It’s about both, of course, because the future of children — today’s and tomorrow’s — is the most compelling issue facing our society today.

Unfortunately, we often don’t treat children’s futures with the kind of commitment and urgency they deserve. As Laura Moore, of the Brookings-Princeton collaboration, notes in her blog last week on the challenges facing immigrant children, “without purchasing, voting, or lobbying power, the well-being of children can easily get lost in the debates, which is why knowledge and advocacy on the behalf of children is so critical.”

In other words, adults – teachers, school board members, school administrators, and others – must do the speaking for them. That’s one reason why thousands of them are going to NSBA’s 71st Annual Conference in San Francisco this week: to give voice to the voiceless. 

Ironically, those most in need of a voice are also the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population: immigrant children. Thus, by definition, their success and the nation’s are inextricably combined. Appropriately, the latest Future of Children volume is devoted to them. 

 ”Most of the recommendations in these volumes, and other Future of Children volumes, suggest prioritizing and investing in children now — regardless of their circumstances and often ahead of other interests,” Moore writes. “This is simply because investments in child well-being are the smartest ones we can make.”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|April 5th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement|

You get what you pay for, especially in education

stockvault_9810_20080130One of my pet peeves is that people demand that public schools do a better job in educating students—then their elected officials pull the rug out from under any effort to do so.

Case in point: After years of investing in smaller class sizes, state policymakers are giving up on the effort because of severe budget cuts.

Now, I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the class-size movement. Although there is research to suggest smaller class sizes are beneficial, my thinking is that some of those benefits are achievable with more careful classroom assignments—basing class size on the needs of each child and the capabilities of individual teachers.

To me, shrinking class sizes to some arbitrary number is no guarantee of student academic gains. If I’m wrong, of course, then today’s policy decisions to raise class sizes are all the more wrong-headed.

 And that, I suppose, is my real point: If you invest millions of dollars and millions of hours in administrative time to improve student learning, what does it say about your commitment to school reform when you give up on that investment because times are tough?
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Naomi Dillon|March 17th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement|Tags: , , |

Pen may be mighter than the sword, but not the federal budget

2576-1275491944laKRPersuasive writing, technical writing, creative writing, journalism—all have their place in education and are useful in different capacities. Yet, students across all fields of learning must develop basic writing skills in order to excel and communicate effectively.

So why then, did President Obama sign a bill to cut all federal funding to the National Writing Project earlier this month? This all-encompassing program is devoted to teacher development and strengthening writing skills across subjects for students at all grade levels.

The NWP’s 2009 annual survey reports that throughout the nation, program sites (see pages 12-15) are set up on the campuses of over 200 colleges and universities, with over 70,000 teachers serving the program’s objectives. Each year,  1. 4 million students and 130,000 teachers gain academic and professional development through the NWP.

It’s by no means a small program, and results have continuously showed that enrolled students displayed an improvement in basic writing skills by the end. In NWP’s 2010 study , about 92 percent of the NWP students surveyed across seven states showed higher increases in writing achievement than peers who had not participated in the program.
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Naomi Dillon|March 16th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation|Tags: , , |

The week in blogs

This week, education researcher Richard Rothstein takes Bill Gates to task for claiming in a recent Washington Post column on teacher development that student achievement has remained “virtually flat” in recent decades while per-student costs have “more than doubled.”

 Looking at NAEP tests since 1980 and 1990, Rothstein concludes that “American students have improved substantially, in some cases phenomenally.” As far as a doubling of K12 funding is concerned, yes that’s true, he adds, but the statistic begs to be qualified.

“The biggest single recipient of new money has been special education for children with disabilities,” Rothstein writes. “Four decades ago, special education consumed less than 4 percent of all K12 spending. It now consumes 21 percent.”

What can high schools do to help community colleges and their astronomical drop-out rates? Blogger Dana Goldstein offers a thoughtful analysis.

 ”Why are people dropping out of community colleges en masse?” Goldstein asks. “In part, it’s the frustration of being academically under-prepared and thus being forced to pay tuition for credit-less remediation classes. But national surveys of community college drop-outs find that the most cited reasons for leaving school are work and family responsibilities.”

(Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for leading us to Goldstein’s commentary.)

Recent stories in the Washington Post have questioned zero tolerance policies in the Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools. Read a sobering post by the Post’s Valerie Strauss on common myths about zero tolerance’s effectiveness.

 Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|March 11th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Assessment, Budgeting, Curriculum, Discipline, Dropout Prevention, Educational Research, Governance, Policy Formation, Special Education, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools, Week in Blogs|

The week in blogs

Many, many years ago, my brother fought in The Battle of Nashville.

Maybe I should qualify that: He helped re-enact the Civil War Battle of Nashville. And since we were from St. Louis, a nominally Yankee town, he was part of a ridiculously undermanned squad of union re-enactors that somehow managed to overcome a massive army of Confederates. (We’re talking Tennessee, remember?) But even re-enactors must be minimally accurate, so yes, the Yankees won.

Just who will win today’s Battle of Nashville — a battle for public opinion similar to those that have erupted in Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin — is hard to say. But as many as 10,000 teachers are gathering to demonstrate at the capitol in Nashville as I write, preparing to march against a bill in the Tennessee legislature that would limit teachers’ collective bargaining rights.


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Lawrence Hardy|March 5th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

The week in blogs

Tripoli aside, the biggest story this week was the same as last: the extraordinary standoff in Madison, Wis., between Gov. Scott Walker and thousands of unionized teachers and other public employees. Pundits of all political stripes agreed that it marked a new chapter in labor-management relations.

For you pessimists out there (or is that realists?), Russell Walter Mead, of the American Interest, says the events in Wisconsin depict a national economy undergoing a wrenching change similar to the one that befell the proverbial buggy whip manufacturers in the early 20th century. But this time, he says, it’s not just laborers who will feel the distress.

“The US manufacturing sector has actually grown since 1973, producing more even as it has shed workers,” Mead writes. “There is no reason why the same thing can’t happen to lawyers, middle managers, government bureaucrats and many more white collar workers as computers get smarter and firms start outsourcing professional work overseas.”

For a more political take on the confrontation, see Understanding Government (“Scott Walker’s Union Dismemberment Plan”) which links to an earlier New Republic article on the efforts of several Republican governors to change the prevailing management-labor dynamic.

Moving further left, we have Mother Jones on how the billionaire,  staunchly anti-labor Koch brothers helped fund Walker’s gubernatorial campaign.

On the right, there’s the Heritage Foundation, with a sit down interview with Gov. Walker himself, and the MacIver Institute blog on how much protesting teachers could be costing taxpayers in missed classroom time. (Nine million-plus, it says.)

Finally, we have some relief in the form of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and his priceless interview with AFT President Randi Weingarten.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|February 25th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

Schools are getting creative, but not always clever about fundraising

rabbit_hat_oopsHere’s a novel school fundraising idea: Cow Bingo.

How do you play? You paint a grid on a field and number each square. You sell raffle tickets and offer to split the proceeds with whoever holds the ticket with the winning number.

And how do you pick the number? You ask a local farmer if you can borrow a cow—a well-fed cow. 

I don’t think I need to explain the somewhat amusing, somewhat childish way that organizers allow the cow to select the number. Point is, there are a lot of unusual—even silly—ways that school communities are trying to raise money in these difficult economic times.

Actually, I could write quite a lot about school fundraisers today. I could write about how desperate cash-starved schools are for revenue—and the immense pressure out there to run fundraisers.

I could write about burnout among students and parents at the relentless requests for financial assistance. I could write about Grand County, Colo., where parents are trying to raise $500,000 to save two elementary schools that are slated for closure.
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Naomi Dillon|February 24th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance|Tags: , , |

The week in blogs

Library of Congress photo

Library of Congress photo

What a week of contrasts for labor unions. On Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other education leaders praised school districts and teacher unions that have largely put aside their differences and worked together for higher student achievement.

“It takes trust between administrators, school board members, and teachers,” said NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant, one of the participants at the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration in Denver.

Now move to Madison, Wis., specifically, to the state house, where nobody was talking “collaboration.” That’s where hundreds of public employees (including teachers) and their supporters gathered this week to demonstrate against Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to sharply curtail their collective bargaining rights.

None other that President Obama came to the workers’ defense, calling the governor’s actions an “assault” on unions. Said the National Journal’s Matthew Cooper: “Collective bargaining is the infrastructure – the essential core of labor’s rights and power – and so attacks on that right go to the heart of the union movement. That’s why the president weighed in…”
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Lawrence Hardy|February 18th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers|
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