Are Four Day School Weeks Inevitable?

The rising cost of fuel and food are forcing many communities across the country to consider and adopt four day school weeks to save money and resources.

In this Reuters article entitled Schools eye four-day week to cut fuel costs by Rebekah Kebede we get a glimpse of an imminent future.

Facing a crippling increase in fuel costs, some rural U.S. schools are mulling a solution born of the '70s oil crisis: a four-day week.

Cutting out one day of school has been the key to preserving educational programs and staff in parts of Kentucky, New Mexico and Minnesota, outweighing some parents' concerns about finding day-care for the day off.

"For rural school districts where buses may travel 100 miles round-trip each day, there certainly are transportation savings worth considering," said Marc Egan, the director of federal affairs at the National School Boards Association.

Egan said about 100 schools in as many as 16 states have already moved to a four-day school week, many to save money on transportation, heating and cooling.

Something Krugman Forgot to Mention

Paul Krugman explains children's health issues to opponents in A Socialist Plot.

And conservative opposition to giving every child in this country access to health care is, in a fundamental sense, un-American.

Here's what I mean: The great majority of Americans believe that everyone is entitled to a chance to make the most of his or her life. Even conservatives usually claim to believe that. For example, N. Gregory Mankiw, the former chairman of the Bush Council of Economic Advisers, contrasts the position of liberals, who he says believe in equality of outcomes, with that of conservatives, who he says believe that the goal of policy should be "to give everyone the same shot and not be surprised or concerned when outcomes differ wildly."

But a child who doesn't receive adequate health care, like a child who doesn't receive an adequate education, doesn't have the same shot - he or she doesn't have the same chances in life as children who get both these things.

And insurance is crucial to receiving adequate health care. President Bush may think that lacking insurance is no problem - "I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room" - but the reality is that the nine million children in America who don't have health insurance often have unmet medical or dental needs, don't have a regular place for medical care, and frequently have to delay care because of cost.

Now, the public understands the importance of health insurance, even if Mr. Bush doesn't. According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an amazing 94 percent of the public regards the fact that many children in America lack health insurance as either a "serious" or a "very serious" problem.

So how can conservatives defend the indefensible, and oppose giving children the health care they need? By trying the old welfare queen in her Cadillac strategy (albeit without the racial innuendo that made it so effective when Reagan used it). That is, to divert public sympathy from people who really need help, they're trying to change the subject to the supposedly undeserving recipients of government aid. Hence the emphasis on the evils of "middle-class welfare."

Proponents of an expansion of children's health care have, as they should, responded to this strategy with facts and figures. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that S-chip expansion would, in fact, primarily benefit those who need it most: the great majority of children receiving coverage under an expanded program would otherwise have been uninsured.

But the more fundamental response should be, so what?

A sublime by-product of insuring every child might also be that healthier students cost less to educate. Today schools absorb enormous costs for special needs that are more rightfully health issues and not education issues per se.

The Education Money Spigot

A new report has been released and it's reported here, U.S. spends average $8,701 per pupil on education by Reuters. We spend far more. The gist:

Students in northeastern and northern states tend to perform better on standardized tests than students in southern and southwestern states. But experts say the correlation between spending and testing performance is not strong.

The "No Child Left Behind" education reforms passed during President George W. Bush's first term have placed increased emphasis on performance on national standardized tests. Schools can be penalized if they repeatedly fail to meet targets for improving student scores.

"It's not necessarily so that states with higher spending have higher test scores," said Tom Loveless, an education policy expert at the Brookings Institution think tank.

He said Washington, D.C., has among the highest spending in the country but its students have among the lowest scores on standardized tests, while some states like Montana with relatively low spending have fairly high performance on tests.

Loveless said two areas where education spending might make a difference were in teacher salaries and small class sizes for first graders. But overall, the relationship between spending on education and test performance was not strong, he said.

I will argue in coming investigations on class size that it is small class sizes in k-3 complemented by teachers who can individualize instruction and provide innovative feedback loops that really make a difference.

First grade is not enough.

Rell's Dystopic -cough- "Vision"

The Courant reported today the shocking news that Gov. Rell wants to raise taxes to aid, among other things, education.

I whole-heartedly support increased aid to towns for education but not at the expense of higher State taxes. And these new taxes will violate the spending limits with malice. IMO, this is not a vision nor is it a true relief. This is a stealthy way to raise State taxes without guaranteeing a corresponding reduction in local taxes. Quite frankly we can't afford this bait and switch game.

What this state needs is lower taxes and the elimination of the Department of Education as well as a rollback of numerous inane and regressive education "laws".

Here's where Rell is wrong.

First, considering the negative environmental impact autos have on Connecticut she should not be attempting to eliminate car property taxes. This is regressive for urban dwellers who reap no benefit by using public transportation. Secondly, it's yet another tax break for the rich. We should be creating incentives for public transportation systems not reinforcing big car purchases.

Instead eliminate all taxes on businesses who upgrade high-tech capital equipment and assemble and operate that equipment in Connecticut and who hire local residents of Connecticut first. This creates jobs and growth that lower taxes by introducing prosperity and a larger labor and tax pool. Connecticut needs quality jobs not taxes.

Second, sunset any tax increase the minute that the state education funding is reduced to local entities. Years ago, lottos were legalized because their receipts were ear-marked for education. Soon after, lottery buyers had a better chance of seeing money than schools. Taxpayers are sick of these sneaky deals.

Third, schools cannot afford any more sugar-coated accountability riders to funding. If the governor is interested in accountability then she must address her own campaign activities long before accusing schools of needing more accountability or high-stress tests. This nonsense is killing education nationwide and she needs to get real about improving education by advocating the complete repeal of the NCLB blight.

No more high school graduation requirements. This blovial nonsense is dropping out more students than it saves. The job of schools is to create learners not student widgets. Let's start holding the veracity of employer and CBIA education claims to higher standards of accountability for a change. I recently heard a story about an engineering firm who preached to educators that that couldn't hire engineers fast enough - educational output was failing them. That was when their stock was selling for hundreds per share. Two years later, at four dollars a share they weren't hiring.

The CBIA incessant whining about American education bears examination because it distorts the true quality of the schools and students - defamation using stock market speculative propaganda.

Rearing Children After College, "Adultolescence"

In late December, Money Magazine online published this report called Your adult kids are back. Now what? by Jean Chatzky, Money Magazine editor-at-large. It speaks to the growing phenomenon of College graduates who return home broke and financially dependent. Read on.

But boomerang kids are now so common that social scientists have dubbed the phenomenon "adultolescence," a period following college that can last five or more years.

More than 65% of graduates are moving back home, compared with 53% just five years ago. And while the difficult stages of childhood may have had lasting emotional impact, this one has financial ramifications galore for you - about $5,000 a year, on average, in assistance - and your kid.

How did adultolescence come about? Blame rising college costs and rampant consumerism. Today the average graduate emerges with nearly $20,000 in student loans and $4,000 in credit-card debt. Meanwhile, she faces a world in which rents have skyrocketed over recent decades but starting salaries, adjusted for inflation, have dropped 17%. She can't cut it, so she falls back on the bank of Mom and Dad for support in the form of either cash or an invitation to move back home.

Click on the link for the entire story - a good read.

The "Accountability of Education" Anti-Pattern

Monday evening Ashford held a town hall meeting to discuss whether or not the Ashford school budget should be a separate voting line item or be incorporated into the overall town budget. Eventually, the budgets were merged.

Something that has become increasingly clear to me as we discuss educational funding (and lord knows this is an endlessly painful topic) is that the public has so bought into the idea that voting on school budgets somehow sends messages to the educational establishment that they are blind to the plain reality that it does no such thing.

In fact it is an anti-pattern of accountability. By the time budgets are presented to the public there is very little in the budget that has not already been set in stone. The effect of binding arbitration and contractual commitment leave little to negotiate and what little there is to bicker about is the chickenfeed that most nourishes kids.

The effect on local politics is animus between taxpayers and children's advocates. The true beneficiaries of this process are never disturbed. Comforted by never having to defend their cups running over, they can sit on the sidelines offering platitudes about "do it for the children" and lament that society doesn't care.

In fact, I rarely meet someone who doesn't care. Everyone wants better education but most are delude into thinking testing is a panacea.

If we truly want to affect better education more cost-effectively we need to begin to pass legislation that disallows teacher contract negotiations to exist in a closed and self-serving system. Educators granting educators special interest favors to one another is unfair to taxpayers. And collective bargaining that allows teachers to exclusively point to fun house mirror contracts of other school districts while ignoring the economic pains of the citizens bearing the burden of their windfall raises and benefits will eventually destroy the profession.

Connecticut teachers can no longer claim to be underpaid. The incomes of working families not in government or teaching has dropped well below the -4.2% reported. Teachers and school personnel are out-earning these people by upwards of a whopping 10% a year in Connecticut. This is likely true of most government employees.

These are unsustainable trajectories. Teachers need to begin deflating their expectations for more money, benefits, and perks. The piggy bank wallets of parents are empty and filled with credit debt. The current system of contract negotiations is bankrupt.

Teachers need to stop resisting technology, innovation, and the social responsibility to look beyond the paycheck in their union activities. It is time to stop pan-handling for yet another perk and start creating better curriculums, classroom processes, and civic investment. And it is time for teachers to invest in their own self-education just like everybody else not on a government dole does.

A resource toward managing teacher expectations and reforms is available here. Smart taxpayers and teachers will spend the time to read it.

The Cost of Higher Education

The New York Times is running a very funny, biting satire about the realities of education in America today. The name of the fictional university is Laudable. Here is a bittersweet taste of the longer article.

A Little Learning Is an Expensive Thing
by WILLIAM M. CHACE, New York Times

Laudable could be cheaper, but you wouldn’t like it. You and your parents have made it clear that you want the best. That means more spacious and comfortable student residences (“dormitories,” we used to call them), gyms with professional exercise equipment, better food of all kinds, more counselors to attend to your growing emotional needs, more high-tech classrooms and campuses that are spectacularly handsome.

Our competitors provide such things, so we do too. We compete for everything: faculty, students, research dollars and prestige. The more you want us to give to you, the more we will be asking you to give to us. We aim to please, and that will cost you. It’s been a long time since scholarship and teaching were carried on in monastic surroundings.

Laudable’s surroundings, by the way, will remind you of where you came from. That’s because your financial circumstances are pretty much the same as those of your classmates. More expensive schools have students from wealthier parents; less expensive schools draw students from families with fewer financial resources. More than half of the freshmen at selective colleges, public and private, come from the highest-earning quarter of households. Tell me the ZIP code and I’ll tell you what kind of college a high-school graduate most likely attends.

After paying (and receiving) all this money, please finish up and get out. Colleges like Laudable are escalators; even if you stand still, they will move you upward toward greater economic opportunity. Once you leave us, you’ll have a better chance for a good job and a way to pay off your debt and to give us more money when we call on you as alumni.

So don’t flunk out; you’ve got too much invested in us, and we have too much invested in you.

Economic Disparities

Depending on which set of numbers you choose (see the above link or this) , I want to simply compare teacher raises to the general population as an exercise in fiscal reality.

In Region 19, teachers are (and have been) receiving increases on the order of 4.5%. So I used this calculator to figure out a componded interest figure that spans 4 yrs, a sample income of $50K calculated against a 4.5 rate.

The result is that over four years $50K grows as an income to $59,860.20. That's for teachers and staff in Region 19. And that rate continues for a long time.

Using the 1.6 figure from the Washington Post article, $50K grows to $53,304.55. That's for the average family in America. If we use, the conservative Wall St Juornal estimate of -(minus).5%, a family earning $50K four years ago, now earns $49009.93.

The benefits likewise increased for teachers, janitors, and so on in Region 19.

For families who are not on a government payroll, if they haven't lost most benefits their deductables have grown significantly.

When I mention this at Board meetings I'm told CEOs make a killing as well.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The bill to have the State pay its fair share of special education expenses drew little or no interest.

Wooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooo!

A rumor circulating through Ashford at this evening's Board of Finance meeting was that two CT State Senators will be introducing a Bill on Monday that legislates that the State of CT will reimburse school districts 100% of the cost of special education expenses!

Every man, woman, and child needs to show up in Hartford on Monday to support these brave souls. There is no single piece of legislation that would more relieve taxpayers than this.

I'll update this post as soon as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Here's the skinny:

HB No. 5842, entitled "AN ACT LOWERING PROPERTY TAXES THROUGH STATE
ASSUMPTION OF MUNICIPAL LIABILITIES," was recently introduced by the
Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee. In essence, it requires the state
to cover 100 percent of the special education costs in the state as well as
cover most health insurance costs for municipal employees. A hearing on the
bill is scheduled for Monday. To access information on the bill, go to
http://www.cga.ct.gov/ and enter 5842 in the "Quick Search" option at the
top of the page.

Thanks to Dave Polsky

Why Mom and Pop can't afford Education

As I look at "fixed" raises built into teacher's and non-certified personnel's contracts, I can't help but think the guaranteed raises are a thing of the past. This may be the last generation of teachers to ever see such generous increases in their lifetimes.

Here's what the rest of America is suffering from already (from the Washington Post);

Will Your Job Survive?

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; Page A21

The threat of globalization and the reality of de-unionization have combined to make the raise, for most Americans, a thing of the past. Between 2001 and 2004, median household income inched up by a meager 1.6 percent, even as productivity was expanding at a robust 11.7 percent. The broadly shared prosperity that characterized our economy in the three decades following World War II is now dead as a dodo.

Also dying, if not yet also kaput, is the comforting notion that a good education is the best defense against the ravages of globalization -- or, as Bill Clinton famously put it: What you earn is the result of what you learn. A study last year by economists J. Bradford Jensen of the Institute for International Economics and Lori Kletzer of the University of California at Santa Cruz demonstrates that it's the more highly skilled service-sector workers who are likely to have tradable jobs. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of jobs in the United States that require a college degree will rise by a measly one percentage point -- from 26.9 percent in 2002 to 27.9 percent in 2012 -- during this decade.

Since education as such won't save us, Blinder recommends a kind of particularized vocational ed. We will have to specialize more, he writes, "in the delivery of services where personal presence is either imperative or highly beneficial. Thus, the U.S. workforce of the future will likely have more divorce lawyers and fewer attorneys who write routine contracts." Now, there's a prospect to galvanize a nation.

My own sense (which I develop at greater length in the April issue of the American Prospect) is that nothing short of a radical reordering of our economy will suffice if we're to save our beleaguered middle-class majority. Every other advanced economy -- certainly, those of the Europeans and the Japanese -- has a conscious strategy to keep its most highly skilled jobs at home. We have none; American capitalism, dominated by our financial sector, is uniquely wedded to disaggregating companies, thwarting unionization campaigns and offshoring work in a ceaseless campaign to impress investors that it has found the cheapest labor imaginable.

Cato Institute on Republican School Policy

At Conservative Forum on Bush, Everybody's a Critic
By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, March 8, 2006; A02

He [David Boez] blamed Bush for "a 48 percent increase in spending in just six years," a "federalization of public schools" and "the biggest entitlement since LBJ."

My, my - who knew? Could it be the fact that every State Department of Education recites chapter and verse NCLB Talking Points?

Um, let's see...

Is there a State Education administrator who has not said, "We have to raise expectations!" No they aren't talking about themselves thinking independently or freeing themselves of their Orwellian doublespeak, they're talking about the object of their disappointment, the students.

Cato's speakers goes on to say,

He began by predicting a big tax increase "to finance the inevitable growth of government that is in the pipeline that President Bush is largely responsible for." He also said many fellow conservatives don't know about the "quite dreadful" traits of the administration, such as the absence of "anybody who does any serious analysis" on policy issues.

Boaz assured the audience that he told the White House that "if there's a rebuttal to what Bruce has said, please come and provide it."

Instead, Sullivan was on hand to second the critique. "This is a big-government agenda," he said. "It is fueled by a new ideology, the ideology of Christian fundamentalism." The bearded pundit offered his own indictment of Bush: "complete contempt" for democratic processes, torture of detainees, ignoring habeas corpus and a "vast expansion of the federal government." The notion, he said, that the "Thatcher-Reagan legacy that many of us grew up to love and support would end this way is an astonishing paradox and a great tragedy."

The question period gave the two a chance to come up with new insults.

"If Bush were running today against Bill Clinton, I'd vote for Clinton," Bartlett served.

"You have to understand the people in this administration have no principles," Sullivan volleyed. "Any principles that get in the way of the electoral map have to be dispensed with."

Vote to get federal and State Departments of Education abolished. They are out-of-control and are wasting our time, money, patience, and good will. School policy has been federalized and for the worse. At least the blame is being accurately pin-pointed.

BOE meeting topics

Last Tuesday was the first BOE meeting I attended since election to the Board. Despite the election of new officers and a fairly clean slate, we addressed many issues.

1. Dianne Kaplan deVries, Ed. D represented the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding and outlined who the organization was (a 501(c)3 nonprofit) and their goal of reforming educational funding in Connecticut. The Board chose to continue the dialogue rather than take an immediate position on aligning with this group.
   
   While her presentation was certainly spirited, my primary concern with the concept is that the State's richest communities already receive the lowest state education funding and our perennially poorest communities get the greatest funding. Given this already 'unequal' funding the schools academically perform in inverse proportion to state funding (the big city schools routinely struggle and southwest Connecticut schools do well).
   
   The paradox is inescapable. If fairness is re-legislated as averaging out funding across the state, wealthy communities will get more funding despite no crying need for it and cities who have the crying need will likely lose funds. That is, unless educational funding is suddenly increased dramatically, small town Connecticut will still not receive any relief - (let's not kid ourselves here - in New York such 'reform' resulted in massive cuts in educational funding - see; here).
   
   Personally, I also didn't like the obfuscation of the word 'Justice' - tax reform is tax reform but this is a minor thing compared to an issue such as segregated schools.
   
   

   Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States. Hypersegregated inner-city schools--in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000--are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.
   - Jonathan Kozol

   (We'll come back to this issue soon.)
   
   
2. We also discussed improving reading comprehension and aptitude. I had been thinking about an idea for some time that was warming received as a suggestion that should be tried. That is, the development and digital warehousing of podcasts of reading material and study guides used here in Region 19. Advanced students with good voices can read aloud and record MP3 study guides that students can use to help them read their assigned work. This will help those needing help without looking like they're studying and the digital tutor volunteers can get community service credits for their goodwill efforts.
   
   
3. EO Smith's Principal, Mr. DeLoreto presented a number of topics, one of which was the fact that the school library was reducing its dependence on hardbound material and increasingly leveraging online digital resources - a great idea that broadens the pool of resources while reduces the cost of purchase and storage of temporal materials. [After the meeting, Mr. Silva noted that many school librarians are already [in]formally meeting to proliferate this idea across the district.]
   
   
4. Mr. DeLoreto also took some pride in the fact that our class sizes are reasonable.
   I happen to think this is important information for parents for two reasons; 1. smaller class sizes are usually a metric indicating a better learning environment and 2. it means our teaching staff is not overwhelmed (and there's still way too much paperwork and nonsense coming from the outside for my taste).
   
   
5. The cost of busing jumped out as quite an expense. [We'll revisit this as well].
   

An issue that I'll return to soon will be the rethinking of compulsory education, the re-invention of the high school curriculum as a stream of consciousness rather than a series of inoculations, and the integration of educational activity into our communities.

Is Spending on Education Worth It?

From a recent article on Education from the New York Times, new studies suggest both the individual being educated is better off (the more disadvanaged reaping the biggest relative gains)AND each of us benefit as well.

This sounds like the kind of trend analysis that citizen's who vote on education budgets need to hear more about. But the article is really about the cost of education - is the benefit worth the investment?

Here are two snippets worth noting:

Economic View
What's the Return on Education?
By ANNA BERNASEK
Published: December 11, 2005

Start with what economists are confident about: the payoff to individuals. By measuring the relationship between the number of years of schooling and income earned in the job market, economists think that they have a good idea of what it's worth.

Alan B. Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton, says the evidence suggests that, up to a point, an additional year of schooling is likely to raise an individual's earnings about 10 percent.

For someone earning the national median household income of $42,000, an extra year of training could provide an additional $4,200 a year. Over the span of a career, that could easily add up to $30,000 or $40,000 of present value. If the year's education costs less than that, there is a net gain.

The payoff, of course, varies by individual. Another year of education will not have the same benefit for everyone. And school resources matter as well. According to studies by Professor Krueger and others, class size, teacher quality and school size can make a difference in the outcome. They have found that the effect of better schools is most pronounced for disadvantaged students.

And...

Today, more Americans attend college than ever before, but the rest of the world is catching up. The once-large educational gap between the United States and other countries is closing - making it increasingly important to understand what education is really worth to a nation.

If economists are right, it is not just part of the cost of maintaining a functioning democracy, but a source of wealth creation for all. That means that investing in the education of every American is in everyone's self-interest.

Still, we're a long way from being able to judge the right level of spending on education - and how to achieve it. With a college degree more important than ever, the cost of higher education is rising steeply, creating growing stress for many American families. With more study, researchers may be able to identify ways of reducing costs while increasing the payoff from education.

Taking our cue from Socrates, the first step may be to recognize what we don't know.