Editorial
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
LAST WEEK saw still another solemn, not to say tragic, hearing about how much progress education is making in Arkansas-or how little. Once again, legislators met to wring their hands over the latest figures showing that, despite a $380-million tax increase, school districts throughout the state were still not spending a greater percentage of their budgets on actual classroom instruction. It was, in short, business as depressingly usual.
Jim Argue, state senator from Little Rock and the Legislature's Mr. Education, sounded frustrated, not to say distraught: "What we've gotten is more of the same. If it's a state responsibility to provide an adequate and equitable education to our children, why aren't we mandating it?" Senator Argue seems ready to make school districts spend a certain set percentage of their funds on instruction, which is what some other states do.
The usual, highly paid consultants were on hand for the legislative hearing. One of them, Allan Odden, agreed that there was a problem, but he advised against demanding that an arbitrary percentage of education funds go for instruction. Instead, he preferred to be condescending: "Many local people don't know how to turn around schools. They need some assistance. You've got to do something different."
In the other corner, the head of the state's school superintendents' association and lobby-Tom Kimbrell-reacted just as you would think: possessively. The superintendents always want more money, but they don't want to be told how to spend it. In short, they're human.
To quote Mr. Kimbrell: "If they're saying as legislators, 'We're going to tell you how to approach instruction,' then I'd say you're not the ones to be making these decisions. We're the professionals."
It occurs to us that we've heard more assuring remarks, for professional educantists have long been the bane of American education.
Observant Reader doubtless spotted what's wrong with this picture long ago: This whole, long, unending discussion has been based on a flawed assumption, to wit: Spending more money on education will necessarily improve it. That's the theory both professionals and legislators, and the courts, too, have been operating on for years, and every time the results disappoint, they all solemnly agree that still more tax money should be raised and spent. The debate has become about what the economists call inputs rather than outcomes.
There's now a way to measure outcomes: standardized testing geared to each child so teachers know just where their students are on the learning curve, and something about their individual strengths and weaknesses.
Instead of making this debate over education solely about budgets and spending, why not make the children themselves the center of our concern? Why not begin-and end-this discussion with how well our kids are doing, or how poorly, and what needs to be done to see that they do better?
Why not focus on measurable results? Why not ask how we can improve the quality of instruction rather than just how to increase the cost of it? That way, maybe legislators and consultants won't have to meet year after year to discuss only how to spend more. That way lies only frustration.
WHAT'S THAT again about trying something different? Well, we've found a place that does. Wakefield Elementary in Little Rock. And, before Wakefield, Meadowcliff Elementary. Last week, a couple of us inky wretches visited Wakefield to be on hand for a ceremony thanking teachers at both schools for their work.
The teachers were being rewarded for their students' performance over the past year. And the teachers were being rewarded not just with words, or a promise of the same raise everybody else gets, but with cold, hard cash.
It's simple, really: The kids at Wakefield-and at Meadowcliff Elementary just down the road-are tested at the beginning of the school year. And tested again at the end. Teachers at Meadowcliff got bonuses from Little Rock's school district. Wakefield's teachers got their money from the Hussman Foundation. (Isn't there a guy around here by that name?) And the size of the bonuses depended on how well each child progressed.
The results? Almost unbelievable.
Overall student achievement-measured by objective testing, remember-improved 26 percent at Meadowcliff.
Think that's something? Well, student achievement at Wakefield improved by 40 percent.
Note well: About 90 percent of the kids in each of these schools are at or below the poverty level. Tell us again that merit pay doesn't work.
COUNTING the bonuses awarded-each was between $3,700 and $9,200-Little Rock spent just over $200,000 on bonuses at Meadowcliff. At Wakefield, the Hussman foundation spent $228,300.
But what about the support staff? Don't they do their part to assure these impressive results? Yes, they do, and they got bonuses, too. Close to $200,000 of that bonus money went to literacy coaches, media specialists, nutritionists, custodians . . . . The amount of each bonus depended on how well the entire school performed.
What better way to keep the best teachers teaching? What better way to recruit the best teaching for these schools? But there's more to this kind of stellar performance than the money. When it comes to the best teachers, we've noticed that there is always something more to it than money.
Karen Carter, principal and guiding light at Meadowcliff, said this was the second conclave she'd held with the teachers of late. The first came a few days earlier, when the teachers and their principal sat down to see how their students had improved on the standardized tests. Through the use of something unfortunately called Longitudinal Tracking, teachers can see how each individual kid did during the year. They can see how the kids progressed. Or didn't. Where they need help. Or don't.
Longitudinal Tracking may sound like a bad line from Star Trek, but it's a terrific tool for teachers.
When Allan Odden said many local people don't know how to turn around schools, he can't have been talking about Wakefield and Meadowcliff.
Some people in our schools, Mr. Outside Consultant, do know how to turn around schools. Here's the proof.
-----P.S. Somebody else needs to be mentioned here. That somebody else would be the members of Little Rock's school board. Without their support-and the overwhelming support of the district's superintendent, Roy Brooks-the whole experiment at Meadowcliff might have ended after only one year. Instead, the school district picked up the tab so that a private foundation could expand the effort to Wakefield.
So while we're patting teachers and students on the back, let's save some kudos for the school board. Without its support, any new ideas about educating Little Rock's kids would never have made it out of home room.
If this state is serious about finding new ways to improve education, and not just spending more on it, the experiments at Meadowcliff and Wakefield might be the place to start looking.
