A Candid Discussion on Education Reform

For those who haven't seen this, I squared off on Fox 59 over education reform last week with Josh Gillespie, Hoosier Access's chief blogger and Dan Burton staffer. You always get edited for TV, but it still captures some of my sentiments.



The part that got edited was me saying that if we wanted to improve education for everyone, and we truly believed teachers were the difference-makers, we'd do whatever it took to get the best teachers in the worst classrooms, which would benefit entire schools instead of giving a fraction of students the opportunity to leave for something "better."

I concede that I am wrenched by this question: who am I as a white professional to tell a single, working-class, African-American mother to keep her child in a crappy school just because she doesn't have the money for private school tuition?

But we have to acknowledge that, in many cases, certain schools and systems thrive, not because their administrators and teachers discovered the mystical formula for educational achievement. It's because the schools are populated with kids whose parents are two-income, high achievers who reinforce the value of educational attainment by modeling it. In short, when people move to Fishers for the schools, it's not because Fishers does it so uniquely; the parents are buying an educational peer group based on social class. In fact, in that kind of school, if you have one or two kids who act up, the peer pressure will likely make those two kids conform to the norm of caring about learning.

In contrast, if you have a classroom with a lot of kids from dysfunctional families, kids who have no help at home because either parents aren't available because of insane work schedules, or they don't have the knowledge or inclination, you're likely to get more classroom disruptions, which makes it harder for the children to learn.

You think I'm wrong? Then why does IPS have the highest-ranked school in the entire state on ISTEP scores, even with its top-heavy administration and its allegedly overly-friendly union contracts? Here's why. Because the Merle Sidener Gifted Academy is a magnet school of talented students, meaning that when you put kids who want to learn under one roof, IPS smokes everybody. The problem is that IPS doesn't have enough of these kids to populate every school. Carmel Clay does.

If somebody in Fishers or Carmel thinks I'm wrong, let's do an experiment. Give me the four best teachers in a given elementary school, and I'll send you sixty students who are tragically below ISTEP levels from a Marion County suburban schools and from IPS. Your designated teachers switch out 15 student in their class for 15 of mine. In six months, let's see if the Marion County students have improved, or if those students are the same or worse while the Fishers students have lost ground.

You might say, "Oh, we'd never get sixty new students into our best school because there are already too many students from the neighborhood," to which I'd respond, "There's your voucher program - take just enough to not tip the dynamics of the class, but not enough to give everybody an equal shot at 'quality' education."

What Republicans want to do with vouchers is reinforce a vicious cycle by taking money out of schools that need it the most because its teachers have the most difficult jobs. Do I think IPS could cut some of its 170-plus administrators with $100,000+ salaries? Absolutely. But I doubt that would be enough to recruit the "great" teachers from other school systems, which is what needs to happen.

If Republicans were serious about reform, they'd try to show us all that charters and voucher systems work by passing a law that says if they get the right to do this, they would guarantee existing funding levels plus annual increases to offset inflation for existing schools. I'd let them do their experiment if it didn't cost existing schools. Then they could say, "Look! We told you we'd outperform you!" They won't do that, of course, because charters have mixed records, and they aren't interested in investing more in education.

Or how about this. You get pro-voucher philanthropists to donate to an endowment for a new charter school, and instead of selecting from a lottery system, you select from the poorest ISTEP performers in Marion county. After a year, if a majority of the students haven't improved by 25%, the endowment is forfeited to IPS's worst school with a restriction that the money can ONLY go to acquire new teachers. Will somebody put their money with their mouth is if the student body isn't self-selecting based on a higher degree of parental involvement (which in most cases means higher achievement anyway)? I bet not.

This whole GOP model is upside down. If I had run the Colts back when they were terrible in the 1980s, would I have said, "Hey, fans! Sorry we're terrible. Take your money and watch the Bengals!" No. I'd have opened up my checkbook and paid big money for a free agent or a 1st-round draft choice known as Peyton Manning (who the Colts got by BEING terrible, by the way), and I'd use the new talent to right the ship.

I haven't heard of anybody in either political party who looked at the ISTEP scores, graduation rates, and drop-out rates in this state without concluding that a lot of our schools are sinking ships. But here lies the difference: Republicans want to get a select few "passengers" to the lifeboats. Democrats are trying to save everybody.

A Candid Discussion on Education Reform

Teachers Unions are Killing Education

The Indianapolis Star reports today that IPS cut 300 teachers, including 9 who were nominated for teacher of the year. Why would we get rid of quality teachers in one of Indiana’s worst school systems? Because we have “no choice.” The contract IPS negotiated with the teachers union mandates that all layoffs be seniority-based. This is lunacy.

Anyone expecting a broadside against unions or seniority in every context will be disappointed. Father time is ruthless. As we age, we cannot lift as much or move as quickly. Without seniority, big industry would have stripped many Americans of their dignity and marginalized us. The young and vibrant workers would stay secure until cast out in droves when age (or the pension vesting date) approached, and cheaper, more “efficient” labor emerged. Without seniority, we would have no American middle class.

Seniority makes sense for factory workers, service workers, and even building trades that require a set of technical skills. But teaching isn’t manual labor or artisanship; it’s mental labor. Teaching isn’t automatically grasped by anyone who goes through an apprenticeship; it’s the art of motivation and creating enthusiasm for exploration.

As a Democrat, I believe education is second only to “providing for the common defense” among the services government offers us. Education is “the great equalizer” and the linchpin of the American dream. We tell our kids, “No matter where you come from, if you study hard, you can be or achieve anything you want.”

Then we take away the teachers who get them to study hard.

My goal as a Democrat is to make sure that those who cannot afford private schools have the opportunity for a comparable education as those who do. We cannot achieve this goal without the best teachers in the classroom.

The teachers union might say, “Increase education spending! Then we won’t have to layoff anybody.” This is true, but it also ignores the fact that study after study shows little correlation between education funding and achievement. Perhaps this is because we keep paying lackluster instructors.

I had an eighth grade history teacher, Mr. Andrews, who acted out major events in history in costume and with accents. He was excited to teach, so he tried something novel. I was excited to go to class, and nearly thirty years later, I can still visualize significant events in American history. In contrast, I had a social studies teacher who made government as boring as the textbook from which he read daily. Guess who made more because of seniority?

Of course, all education discussion comes back to “vouchers” or “school choice.” I would not characterize myself as a staunch choice advocate, but I have a hard time stomaching hypocrisy.
Many choice opponents in my party say that schools will get worse if we let some students leave because the remaining students will have a school with fewer dollars. The argument is essentially “we’re all in this together.”

Unfortunately, many of these same opponents send their kids to private or parochial schools. They get out of the boat before forcing everyone else to stay. Oh, and they also shoot holes in the boat by making sure seniority systems stay in place, so anything that could be done to improve the existing schools never occurs. They offer some nebulous promises about change that never comes. With friends like these . . .

What makes the choice opposition particularly insulting is the opponents act like they’re defending the disenfranchised by keeping them in the boat. But the strongest proponents of school choice I have met are single, African-American mothers who want their children to have better than they did.

Seeing a rising tide of political inevitability, teachers unions reluctantly signed off on dirty little compromises. They would permit pseudo-choice, but the students would have to stay in the same school district. This way, the money would at least stay under the same roof, and administrators could move it around. And therein lies the problem. The schools aren’t broken, per se. “The system” is, which is why even a pseudo-choice, magnet school-based system like IPS is still required to sack 9 quality teachers.

You want to avoid school choice forever? Take off the shackles. Let administrators do what they need to do to make the schools thrive. Otherwise, people like me will embrace choice as the means of last resort for the parents who care enough to move their children out of schools with crappy teachers.

The only people who fear the repeal of a seniority system are teachers who cannot deliver results. You know who you are. It’s time to innovate or hand over the chalk.

Teachers Unions are Killing Education