Funding as Fuel

Recently I re-read Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, in which he outlines the alarming disparities present in our schools. I have read other books by Kozol-- Shame of a Nation and Letters to A Young Teacher—and readily nod my head in agreement as he details the particular challenges of advancing student achievement in historically under-funded school districts.

This week I discussed the book with fellow teachers and once again rehashed the tragedies of many urban school districts. As we rehearsed familiar lines, I began to really think about the factors that led to this mess in the first place. Is it an issue of teacher quality? Funding? Parenting? Community? Year after year passes with parents, politicians, and principals passing the buck when all the while our students are entering the world without the requisite knowledge and skills to succeed.

One of the recurring points in Kozol’s book, and what I discussed with other Baltimore City teachers, was the base issue of school funding. Per pupil allocation varies dramatically across states, with low-performing schools receiving the least funds, in many cases, per student. Other factors aside—and there are many of them—this puts those students at a stark disadvantage straight out of the gate. Where a community itself is resource-poor, its schools will reflect that. To pretend that all students have an equal shot at success is to deny the reality that we do not provide the same starting point.

Yet, I find it fascinating that so many tenets of school reform continue to operate under the guise of a meritocracy. Indeed, it seems to be how we define ourselves as a nation. From Horatio Alger on up, we insist that the American Dream is within reach if you simply work hard enough. Pull up your bootstraps, pull out the books, and one day you too will be privy to all the benefits of our nation.

This sort of philosophy manifests itself in school incentives, standards-based testing, and pay for performance. We insist that if schools work hard enough they will meet with success, and when they meet with success there will be rewards. On the flip side, if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, there will be consequences. We seem to collectively buy into this philosophy of prizes and punishments (and I fully own up to loving the ideas of standards and accountability…who could argue with those things?) Yet, the underlying fact remains: these standards are pressed upon communities who have never, from day 1, been operating with the same resources.

If we insist on funding our schools based on lop-sided tax brackets, if we continue to insist that it’s every man for himself up until the day of Judgment—test day—then we will never reconcile the competing philosophies that have fueled the current system of inequalities.

Time on Task

In the world of education, it seems as though the phrase "time on task" makes its way into nearly every conversation on school reform. "Well, if we could just increase our students' time in the classroom working on material, then we could make up the deficits." Funny, then, that when inclement weather overwhelms districts as it has recently across much of the mid-Atlantic, the conversation turns to how many days we can afford to add to the end of the school year, how we can avoid cancelling Spring Break, how we aren't moving test dates despite the drastic drop in time on task.

And yet we have evidence to support the idea that a longer school day or school year would increase learning in much the same ways as increasing teacher quality or reduction of class sizes (Time for School). Quite a conundrum...

So in the event that a district suffers from substantial weather irregularities or severe weather events, what do we do? Forget increasing time on task--how do we maintain it? Do we hold after school meetings or study sessions on the weekends, assign more homework or become more drill sergeant like in the classroom? Or do we chalk it up to circumstances outside of our control and hunker down though we have on the inside already admitted defeat?

In the larger context of longer school years, the data showing the positives of more time on task are countered by the vocal opponents--tourism industries, some politicians, the expense, and most interestingly many teachers. It would seem that in the face of evidence and real experience regarding the benefits of longer school years, teachers, those dedicated to the success of students, would be among the strongest supporters of change. But we can't cut in to our summer vacation too drastically...