Spitzer's Education Agenda Promises Aid Increase
1) Spitzer's plan that he announced yesterday for reforming schools in NY state is AWESOME -- in large part because it closely mirrors the bold, revolutionary plan Bloomberg and Klein laid out recently for NYC schools.
Like Bloomberg and Klein, Spitzer clearly understands that more money without fundamental change to the broken system is unlikely to improve matters ("New York spends more on education per capita than all but one state in America, yet offers our children an education that is nowhere near the top...to be effective, new funding must be tied to a comprehensive agenda of reform and accountability."). To bring about this change, he calls for "performance accountability, because unless we have meaningful consequences for good and bad performance, we will never be able to change the status quo that is failing too many of our children," and then outlined real consequences for failure (including closing "as many as five percent of all the schools in the state if we have to")!
Here's my summary of Spitzer's speech, with a few comments thrown in (you can read Spitzer's entire speech at http://www.state.ny.us/governor/keydocs/0129071_speech.html and see the NY Times coverage of it below):
- Lifting the charter cap to 250: "I will propose to raise the charter school cap from 100 to 250. Charter schools help demonstrate educational innovations that work, many of which can be adapted to other parts of the public school system. Charter schools make other public schools compete, which is why many strong school administrators welcome their presence." -- AWESOME!
FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY -- all great
- A new, simplified funding formula: "our upcoming budget will replace this flawed system with a straightforward and transparent mechanism [that] will distribute educational funding based on the needs of our children, not the needs of our politicians."
- Greater accountability for how the new money is spent: "Those districts receiving significant increases in funding under our Investment Plan must be able to show how that money is allocated, school by school, and show how they are using their money to produce the outcomes we expect."
PROGRAMMATIC ACCOUNTABILITY
- Smaller class sizes (this is one area in which I'm a bit skeptical of the value added, as discussed in previous emails; see my slides and the article, both below)
- More time in the classroom (great idea)
- Improve teacher quality (very best idea), specifically:
-- "encourage new models for teacher preparation, including expanding our alternative certification programs" (great)-- Meaningful tenure decisions for teachers, driven in part by student test scores: "we must ensure that tenure comes to be recognized as something we as a society honor and respect, and that means it should be granted the way other professional decisions are made – based on the review of the supervisor, an evaluation by professional colleagues, and an examination of data as well as qualitative information about how a teacher’s students perform over multiple years." -- glad to see he doesn't agree with Randi that this is "immoral"!-- introducing differential pay: "increasing compensation for qualified teachers moving to hard-to-staff schools or hard-to-staff subjects such as math and science or special education. It could also include supporting other teachers in a new “Master Teacher” role, and rewarding the whole faculty in schools that show real performance improvements." -- this is REALLY bold, great stuff, if he follows through on it!
- Introduce universal pre-K (a fine idea, IF done correctly)
PERFORMANCE ACCOUNTABILITY
- "if children fail, adults must be held accountable. And accountability means consequences, both good and bad, for the performance of schools and school districts."
- Careful tracking of individual students and schools: "It will be up to each district to establish real measures of improved performance. That means telling parents, as well as the State, how many more children will read and do math at grade level, how many more students will graduate from high school with Regents diplomas, and how many of them will go on to college in each of the years of the Contract. Without these goals, it will be impossible to measure success. These reform plans should sunset every three or four years, requiring zero-based re-assessment to see if districts are making the progress they promised." -- love it!
- Reward success: "Schools and school districts that are meeting their targets should see positive consequences, the kind that matter to professionals, including school-based performance incentives and statewide recognition. "
- Punish failure: "If after this intervention and substantial new State investment, some districts are still failing their students, will demand an overhaul in their leadership. That means new management. We will seek to have every district in the state sign contracts with their superintendents that will require dismissal after substantial failure over multiple years. And for school boards that fail their communities year after year, we will seek their removal by the Commissioner of Education...And we should be ready to close more schools that fail – perhaps as many as five percent of all the schools in the state if we have to..." -- this is really bold as well, if he can pull it off.
One last thing, which I didn't see mentioned in the news articles: is Spitzer really talking vouchers here?! ("Many private and parochial schools do an excellent job of educating many of our kids and they deserve our thanks and support. Our first priority must be funding public schools, but to the extent the law and our fiscal resources allow, we should support parents who choose to send their kids to private and parochial schools.")
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Spitzer’s Education Agenda Promises Aid Increase
ALBANY, Jan. 29 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer declared on Monday that he would propose a major increase in state aid for New York’s public schools in his first budget and would seek vastly expanded oversight of local school districts, including wide powers to remove school boards or force the dismissal of superintendents for repeated failures.
Laying out an expansive agenda in a speech at the State Education Department, Mr. Spitzer said he was proposing “the largest infusion of resources in our state’s history” but left a specific number for Wednesday, when he is to unveil his budget. Officials who have been briefed on the governor’s plans said he would propose $1.4 billion in added education spending statewide for the coming fiscal year, increasing to $7 billion in added annual spending after four years.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 11:17 AM
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