Monday's Hearings in the Unicam:
2-4-6-8! Don't Make Us Consolidate
Thoughts on some key legislative
bills that will be up for public hearing at 1:30 p.m. Monday in the State Capitol's
Room 1525. You can read more about each one by surfing to its number on www.unicam.state.ne.us:
LB 1017 (Kopplin)
This bill
would establish a new transportation spending category for districts in the
Omaha area. It's an attempt to bring about better racial and income-bracket
balance among the seven area school districts. If a child's family income is
low enough to qualify for a free or subsidized lunch, he or she can have free
transportation to the public school of the family's choice, even if it's 20
miles away out in the western hinterlands of Douglas County. This may be the
least expensive of the plans up for hearing on this basic issue.
It'd be a
good idea if there were something miraculous about the seats in school
classrooms out in the 'burbs. But transplanting a child into yet another
situation where he or she is bound to be 'way behind the norm may not be best.
The
research shows that children do best when their classmates are doing about the
same as they are, or just a little better or just a little worse. Educators
ignore this by refusing to group students by ability because they're afraid it
will make the struggling students have low self-esteem. They ignore the fact
that a child who reads below grade level and gets 5 out of 20 right on his
spelling tests and so forth is going to feel bad and sad every minute of every
school day, rubbing shoulders with those who can read several grade levels
above and get 20 out of 20 on those tests and so forth. That's what'll happen
to the vast majority of these transported kids. They'll also have far fewer
teachers and staff members who share their skin color, and that's a concern,
since positive role modeling is so crucial for disadvantaged kids.
Simply
moving the kids physically isn't the answer. Well-intentioned, but won't work.
Fixing OPS management and curriculum, and giving parents real options, is the
way to go.
And anyway,
low-income parents say overwhelmingly that they want good schools in their own
neighborhoods. Don't they deserve that? They don't want their kids bused across
town any more than rich suburban parents do, or parents out in the sticks with
their Class I country schools. Why should they have to? Remember that little
kid who walked something like 3 ½ miles on a frigid day in Omaha recently
because he missed the bus in his inner-city neighborhood and was trying to get
to his school in OPS that was clear out west? He could have died of exposure.
Think about
it. Children are people, too. Let's keep the calves closer to their home corral
. . . and cut the bull in the areas of bad curriculum and instructional
practices.
LB 1024 (Raikes)
Sen. Raikes' plan is to
consolidate all school districts within a county into one district. Each
district would draw funding from the combined property taxes from the entire county,
and the levy would be the same county-wide. Although there would be a number of
years for planning and preparation, this bill would apparently erase seven
elected school boards and replace them, presumably, with one mega-board. It
would be mandatory in Douglas County and apparently optional in the rest of the
state. Kids could go to the local neighborhood school if they wanted, but could
enroll anywhere in the county, too.
It'd be a good idea, if
consolidation were a way to save money and improve quality. But it's not. I've
reported several times over the past few months that hard evidence from around
the country shows that school consolidation does the opposite of what we want.
Since most costs accrue at the school level, consolidating business operations
and other nonclassroom functions saves very little money and is not worth the
enormous legal bills and fuss. And the bigger the bureaucracy, the more busy
little minds there are thinking up new ways to spend money, quite often without
an honest shot at an educational payback for kids.
There's also the problem that
this doesn't get rid of costly, ineffective school decision-makers; this gives
them MORE money and power! This rewards the system that has already failed
disadvantaged kids for decades and decades. Nobody's blaming the people of OPS
or other districts with low-income kids who can't read, write or do math
despite $7,000 or $8,000 a year or more that we spend for them. It's not that
they're not trying their best. We need to shine the spotlight on the SYSTEM
that has perpetuated that disaster . . . and change the way the money flows and
enrollment decisions are made. Parental control and choice is really the only
answer.
We're just asking for it, otherwise,
with this plan. Consolidation made sense a couple of decades ago in greater
Nebraska where economies of scale dictated it, by common sense. But there are
great dangers in overconsolidating ourselves, when it comes to the goals of
schooling. Except for the military and a few other functions of governance, the
bigger the unit of government and the more isolated it is from the individual
citizen, the worse the job it does and the more overspending takes place.
Government that governs least, governs best. Case in point: private schools do
better across the board than public schools for far less than half the cost and
with far, far fewer nonclassroom employees. There's a reason why: the teachers
and the parents are in charge of private schools, not the educrats.
Here's something even scarier: consolidation
gives more power to the bureaucracy and the unions, since they'd have a bigger
playing field for spending money and a bigger stick in collective bargaining.
Last, but certainly not least,
and I'm sure it wasn't intended, this plan aligns more with socialism than with
capitalism. Remember the communist credo: "From each according to his ability,
to each according to his need"? That's what this plan would do. If you only
have one choice - a mega-district - then what's the incentive for working two
jobs and saving your money so that you can buy a better house with higher taxes
where they have better schools and provide better for your kids? There are far,
far better ways to improve educational productivity for our disadvantaged
citizens, and achieve racial and social justice at the same time.
LB 1167 (Redfield)
This plan is far and away the
best idea. It would make smaller school districts, which is smart: driving
management closer to parents and taxpayers is the No. 1 way to improve public-school
quality, if you can't create a truly competitive school marketplace with school
choice and privatization.
Since no one has introduced the
idea I've been proposing for years - making state aid the same amount of money
per pupil and letting each family decide whether it will go to their local
public school, or some other school, public or private, so that we'd achieve
racial and income balance more naturally - then the Redfield plan is the leader
in the clubhouse.
It would downsize OPS and Millard
because it would transform mega-districts in the Omaha metropolitan area into
Class III districts, with just one high school. The middle school or schools,
and grade school or schools, that feed into that high school would be grouped
in the new district, too. Each one would have a six-member school board and
could use interlocal agreements to share administrative functions and costs
with other districts.
Employees of existing districts
would get a one-year job security pledge and salary freeze, and their contracts
would be in force for one to three years. Retirement plans would be exactly the
same for existing employees as of the date of this changeover in 2010.
There would be a massive school
fair every year where parents could "shop" for the school in which they want to
enroll their child. It is anticipated that each school would have a magnet, or
featured theme, designed to draw kids from all over and meet varying needs and
interests. Each district would be able to get a transportation reimbursement to
pay for this cross-town travel, which is, of course, a down side to this plan,
but necessary if it is to achieve better racial balance. State subsidies for
bond issues would be available on a sliding scale based on local taxing power
gauged by property wealth per pupil.
This plan kills the private
Educational Service Unit that OPS has, and combines all districts' ESU
functions into ESU #3. Good idea. It made no sense to have two ESU's in the
metro area, and in this case, consolidation makes ample sense.
The only reason this would not be
a good idea is that it is questionable whether our educational leaders, who are
so used to doing things in a particular way, would be able or willing to make
it work. Imagine the Clash of the Titans conflicts there might be just in setting
the boundaries of these new districts. Educators don't seem to be able to
resist featherbedding, so this plan could increase nonclassroom spending like
the Cat in the Hat's pink dots that spread throughout the house. And again, we
could get better results for kids immediately if we could just let the
marketplace compete to serve them and give their parents freedom of educational
choice.
Despite these concerns, this bill
is the best of the bunch so far.
LB 1262 (Brashear)
This is a 28-page bill, and I
read it, but I'm not real clear on how it would shake down. It sounds
intriguing: there would be an inter-district "academy of excellence" set up
with a goal of drawing kids from all over the city. It'd be sort of a "We Are
the World" school. But according to the bill, the grounds for admission can't
be based on your academic record. I guess they don't want it to be based on
who's already doing well in school, so that they can help kids who aren't doing
well do better. O . . . K. So we're going to get racial balance and academic
improvement, and THAT will be the cause of the "excellence." Oh, well: that's a
good goal, nonetheless.
While I am all for finding ways
to offer all kids a shot at a better education and wider opportunities, I smell
money! Probably an ultra-cool building with all the bells and whistles would be
built, under this plan. But the funny thing is, disadvantaged kids don't NEED
ultra-cool buildings and tens of millions spent on them.
What they NEED is what they can
get only in the private sector marketplace in the Omaha metropolitan area right
now and in the foreseeable future, except for the two good public-school
options, the Millard Core Academy and the Arlington Public Schools. Only the
private schools are teaching with traditional, phonics-only reading
instruction, quality literature, old-fashioned math emphasis on computation,
and so on. That's the path to excellence for all races, demographic groups,
colors and creeds. And it's tons, tons, tons less costly and disruptive.
FRIDAY: Analyses of three more bills that will be up for
public hearing next Tuesday.
1/26/06 • www.GoBigEd.com
is a public-service website on K-12 education issues by Susan Darst Williams, a
writer who lives at the base of Mount Laundry, Nebraska.
