[Speed Gibson,
Friday October 3, 2008 at 12:33am]
The Myth Busters Return
The new Robbinsdale web site has another edition of referendum "myths" and "facts" to refute them. There are additional sections with "honest responses to tough questions" and more points characterizing the district as an "excellent steward" of taxpayer dollars.
Last December, the chairs of the 2007 referendum that failed wrote an op-ed in the Sun Post to refute the "blitzkrieg of disinformation" waged by referendum opponents. Trouble was, their facts were mostly anecdotal and unresponsive so all that was left was some rather obvious bitterness.
The bitterness is gone this time, but an attitude remains. Some of the questions could have been presented better and too many of the answers are just too unfocused. I'm sure that the authors think they really set the record straight, but not really. They say "We're Listening!" and they are. But the same old words, with a noticeable attitude, get printed.
Communication is more art than science in any organization. It was an issue raised many times during the Strategic Planning process, including the staff. The District is moving ahead trying to get a better grip on its finances. It needs to make a similar effort in communications.
Last December, the chairs of the 2007 referendum that failed wrote an op-ed in the Sun Post to refute the "blitzkrieg of disinformation" waged by referendum opponents. Trouble was, their facts were mostly anecdotal and unresponsive so all that was left was some rather obvious bitterness.
The bitterness is gone this time, but an attitude remains. Some of the questions could have been presented better and too many of the answers are just too unfocused. I'm sure that the authors think they really set the record straight, but not really. They say "We're Listening!" and they are. But the same old words, with a noticeable attitude, get printed.
Communication is more art than science in any organization. It was an issue raised many times during the Strategic Planning process, including the staff. The District is moving ahead trying to get a better grip on its finances. It needs to make a similar effort in communications.
Myth 1: if the state funding that follows the pupil is enough that the district actually gains revenue, then why are any local levies needed at all? If we have classrooms that are not full, then don't we have too many teachers? How can we be complaining about class sizes, and using that as an excuse for another levy?
Myth 2: first of all, the district should not be allowed to count all spending as "costs." Like every corporation that has every existed, it is the management's responsibility to ensure that spending does not exceed revenue. Just because the district has reduced spending in a couple of areas does not mean that they are controlling spending. similarly, it is just ridiculous to claim that the state government is "underfunding" the schools when state education budgets have increased by at least 75% above inflation over the last 20 years. Even were that not true, it would be the job of the district to live within that funding limitation.
Myth 3: apparently it's perfectly acceptable to operate a school district in which minority children fail to much greater degree than white children. It is also apparently acceptable that the district is not making any progress to correct this terrible situation and that, so long as other Minnesota schools are similarly failing, we can claim that our students are excelling because they're better than the worst. That's racist and jingoistic bordering on just plain stupid.
Myth 5: Yes, school districts are not required by law to teach many things beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. Perhaps the law should be changed because it is obvious that our children are NOT learning the basics. The empirical evidence is in that those who went through public schools in the 50s and 60s read, write and cipher much better than children of today. While still learning history and civics and music and all those other things. Nobody is asking the districts not to teach all of these other things, but for goodness sake get out there and TEACH them!
Simple truths: there is almost no evidence, in this school district or in any other, that the amount of money spent has any bearing on academic performance(except for a small NEGATIVE correlation). And so long as we permit schools to claim that they just need more money to do better they will NEVER do better!
Why don't you ask your questions of the School Board, who control all of those things? Ask them what they spent their money on that was more important than Kalideiscope [sic] and Focus? Ask them why they say they have empty classrooms and room to bring in outside students, while your kids are in classes too large to fit in the rooms they're in? [Note, there is no evidence that class size matters, above the third grade, so long as you can get the kids into the room. None.] Ask them why private, parochial and home schools run rings around them academically, often for half the cost. Ask them why public school districts in Minnesota vary by over 4:1 on cost versus academic performance. Ask them to see their prioritized budget, so you know what the least important things are that will have to be cut if they don't get more money. I guarantee you they don't have one and wouldn't reveal it to you if they did.
As for the personal attacks, save your breath. It won't wash. I've been fighting for better education for many years, against a public school system that just doesn't give a rat's rump about "the children." If they did, they would find a way to actually educate, instead of wasting time and money seeking more money. Twenty years ago, we educated better for about half--including inflation-- what we do now. There is absolutely NO way to explain that except that schools have learned how to spend more money to educate less. You can actually correlate, mathematically, academic performance of Minnesota public schools with the amount spent per pupil. The correlation is NEGATIVE! The more money spent, the poorer the schools perform. So, go ahead, give your school more money or, more selfishly, make ME give your school more money, and watch as your children lose out to international competition. Is that what you want?
I don't know whether you are simply denying the facts, or if you don't even bother to read them. FACT: The district continues to increase spending yet does not perform one bit better than it did. With or without the money, American students continue to score poorly in tests versus foreign competition. In fact, the longer our kids attend school, the worse they do. Our fourth graders score about average, our 8th-graders fall into the middle of the bottom half, and our 12th-graders are next to last! In a recent competition, the best public school in New Jersey-- high school seniors-- tested 30 points BELOW a "typical" school in Belgium. What's worse? BOTH schools took the test in ENGLISH!
The problem with our education system is that we continue to measure how well we are educating by how much money we throw at it, rather than by how well we are educating. That's what you are doing now. You'll never believe it, but I want just as much for your kids as you do, it's just that /I/ want the school system to actually TEACH and create REAL academic and life success, not just continue to pour more money into what is obviously an inefficient system at best.
Everyone wants to believe that the people we elect to protect and develop our most precious resource are doing the very best they know how. I do. The problem is that they ought to know better. Until that excuse of "needing more money" is taken away, they will NEVER find a way to improve the quality of education with the money they already have. We are crippling an entire generation of children in service to this monumentally wasteful process. Not all of the kids, to be sure, but far too many of them. It can't be fixed by appeals to common sense and facts, as witnessed by your response. It can only be forced, it seems, by denying the District the means to live beyond its means.
That belief leads to two things. First is the crime of "the soft bigotry of low expectation," which at its most extreme says "let's not even send poor (read: black) kids to school, they can't learn anything anyway." The second is a state aid formula that supposedly compensates fully for the higher cost of educating children in poverty.
There are likewise two problems with this formulation. First, poor kids taken out of public schools, even at random, and given charter school, voucher, parochial, or any other form of schooling, generally do better, and in some cases MUCH better, than children in the public schools. Improvements of 3 grade levels in a year are not unheard of. Second, the schools with the highest levels of "compensatory aid" (that is, more money) for children in poverty, still perform the poorest in academic performance. If money bought academic achievement, Minneapolis schools would be the best in the state. Instead, they are only about half as good.
A few years ago, I bought into that "just give them the $200 they need for now" idea, on the promise that they would be doing a thorough financial analysis. It never happened. It never WILL happen until the easy way out-- continually asking for more money-- is taken from them. Why should they? It's like not being concerned about how much gas your car uses when it's 50 cents a gallon, but trading it in when gas hits $4. There's no magic to a school district doing better financial management of their huge revenue streams. It can be explained in an hour or less, and implemented in a week or two. A rare few have done it. The results are that education actually gets better, for less money. Do you really want to object to that?
One last thing: Yes, your school district does better than many, and Minnesota does better than many other states. Almost everyone involved is doing the best they know how. But I've learned over many years that good people in a bad system produce bad results, every time. We have a terrible system for financing public schools. We micromanage the nickels while casually throwing $1000 bills down the rathole. Our schools could be much, much better, and all this talk of money does is keep us from making them so.