KOMO’s John Carlson and I were doing a show with other alleged journalists on the Seattle Channel yesterday and talking about, among other issues on the ballot, renewing the Families and Education Levy. It would raise $232 million over seven years for projects including early learning and student health care, but it wouldn’t be formally part of the Seattle School District budget. I’m for it; he’s against it. Carlson says we’re spending more per student each year and that past levies haven’t closed the achievement gaps they were supposed to close. On the other hand, I contend that the state has failed to meet its constitutional obligation to fund basic education (a judge agrees on this point) and that the city needs to supplement schools with local levies.
I said that it’s hard to close the achievement gap when the legislature is “systematically cutting back on funding for K-12… every year.” Carlson shot back that “they added to the K-12 budget every year, even during the recession.” He went on to claim, apparently switching to a city school district figure, that we’re spending “more than $12,000 per student.”
But Carlson is playing a numbers game, and those numbers are just wrong. State funding for basic education has remained fairly steady from the 2008 to the 2011 biennial funding cycles, dropping slightly from $5.1 billion to $5 billion, according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. That’s not quite as dramatic a decline as I phrased it, admittedly, but the K-12 budget hasn’t gone up every year of the recession as Carlson insists. However—and this is what I’m getting at—the demands on that lean budget have gone up: The state now reports 11,000 more students, from 980,000 in the state to 991,000 in the state. So while the state isn’t significantly slashing the dollar amounts (and conservatives love to cite dollar amounts instead of the demands on that money), the state now has less money per student. For another metric of diminishing resources, consider that the state also lost 1,150 teachers in that time frame. So we are cutting funding by failing to keep up with growing enrollment.
Why else are costs up? In short, inflation. But the cost of paying for certain services also outpaces the consumer price index. Chris Barron, a spokesman for OSPI, explains, “Maintenance levels have continued to increase (outpacing revenue). … You can see the budget has basically been the same, but costs have risen.”
Even if Carlson were referring to the Seattle School District (which enjoys several levy supplements), he would also be wrong to claim the district added to the K-12 budget every year, even during the recession. In Seattle, the Seattle School District’s general fund cost per student has declined for the last three school years (’08, ’09, ’10), from $12,127 to $11,761, says district spokeswoman Teresa Wippel. Meanwhile, the percentage of funding is coming less and less from the state (down 3 percent) and more and more from other sources including levies (up 3 percent). This helps prove my point: We rely more and more on local levies, while the state contribution to students declines.
Carlson also said that other school districts are spending 20 percent less per student than Seattle. While I couldn’t compare the cost per student of every district, one fact is clear: Seattle collects an average of $5,542 per general education student annually from the state. That’s only seven percent more than the state average of $5,168 per general education students.
Lots of other issues come into play when comparing an urban school district to suburban or rural districts (socio-economic challenges for urban populations that can affect achievement). Put another way: Rich kids do better in school because they live a privileged life; kids from poorer families urban public schools don’t have that advantage. So it’s not apples to apples, as Herman Cain would say. But it’s obvious the state is sending us less money than they did before. And we’re relying on levies more and more. So now is a great time to pass the Families and Education Levy.
I’m not saying some social services aren’t the role of government. I’m saying that the mission of an education system should be limited to education. Ever heard of specialization? Economies of scale?
We don’t ask the fire department to do the policing. We don’t ask the water bureau to handle the electricity. Why do we insist on schools doing the feeding and transports, when we have other agencies charged with those? And if they don’t do it well as part of their PRIMARY mission, why would schools (failing at their primary mission) be expected to take-on more. But no: It’s more convenient for you to deposition others as un-caring.
As for the “disruptive, disinterested kids” – at least by putting them in a group you could concentrate resources on them, and not interrupt the kids that want to learn. (Jesus, do you really not understand something so simple?)
Instead of arm-waving to dismiss my facts as wrong, I’ll invite you to directly challenge them. Which facts are wrong?
And no, I don’t blame kids for anything. I blame parents who aren’t involved in their lives, and an education oligarchy disinterested in anything but resource hoarding. The kids are simply a by-product of these dysfunctions.
And yes, many of the world’s school systems have a geographic component. Because of their underlying choice alternatives, it gives parents a reason and a mechanism to drive quality into their LOCAL school. Try to keep up.
You keep insisting that school choice failed in Seattle – and yet it lives today. Families flee in droves to the Eastside, to freely choose (through home purchase), what schools they want to attend. Over 40% of North Seattle families have school choice, by choosing private education and foregoing other things in life. Families are flocking to a cluster of public schools in the Northeast part of the city, where political connections and private money give them greater control of their local schools, and as such drive up their property values (to make the wealthy wealthier).
Your see Dear Charlie, school choice is happening all around you. It’s just not given to the poor and minorities, that can be used as human shields by the unions and bureaucrats demanding more money and less accountability. But the improvements in public education are happening despite — not because of — The Sacred SPD.
Unfortunately, the policies of utopian collectivists are leaving Seattle with generations of kids that will be left behind educationally, only to offer our community and economy an outcome commensurate with your fantastically failed public education scheme.
We didn’t even try it. Before IDEA students with disabilities simply were not served in the public education system. That’s what I mean by “We didn’t even try it.” Thank you for asking.
Likewise with poor children, immigrant children, and non-English speaking children. Either they were not served at all or there was no attempt to serve them beyond elementary or middle school.
I watched the video. There wasn’t any who said that they had a kid with autism. There was a woman who said that she thought private schools were better because the parents were move involved and there was another woman who said that her kids’ behavior improved after they attended private school. Also, this was in New Orleans, a city in which every school is a charter school. I’m not sure what lesson I was supposed to take from this, but it looked like people who were looking for something better, not people who found the public schools intolerable.
Don’t you have any videos of people in Seattle who want a choice that they aren’t getting?
I’m not suggesting that public schools all across the country or all of Seattle’s public schools are absolute jewels. I wouldn’t say that. Of course they could be better. But voting against the Families and Education Levy isn’t going to improve them and vouchers aren’t going to improve them.
I don’t know or care what other voucher opponents say. Here is what I am saying: “Where are you going to take this voucher? How will school choice under a voucher system work? How many students can enroll at Garfield and where will the others go when Garfield is full?”
I’m not anti-choice. Go ahead an choose a school. Don’t like Rainier Beach – choose Cleveland, or Franklin, or West Seattle. Go ahead. There’s plenty of room at lots of our schools. Don’t like the traditional education format? Choose Center School the NOVA Project. What choice do you want that you don’t have?
Just because the schools are fine doesn’t make me an apologist for them it makes me someone who can read the data. They’re fine. They aren’t wonderful, but they aren’t terrible either. They’re fine. What measure of performance do you find inadequate and what benchmark do you want them to reach? 100% passage on state tests? 100% graduation? Would that be realistic?
Let’s remember that the primary determinants of academic achievement are home-based, not school-based. So without making some pretty significant changes in the students’ homes, how are we going to make significant changes in the student outcomes?
LJM, you wrote:
“it’s rather obvious, that, despite the obvious fact that all schools offer an education, the schools aren’t “just fine.”
Tell us, LJM, which schools are not just fine? Name names. And tell us what, exactly, isn’t just fine about them.
If there is someone who lives in the reference area for the school and who doesn’t believe that their child is well-served by that school, that family is free to choose to enroll their child in any Seattle public school that has space available. Are you telling me that NONE of the public schools meet these families’ needs? How many families are there like that?
@Zok 52,
Ohhhh, I see. The schools should just focus on education and not pay any attention to anything going on in the children’s lives. The schools shouldn’t care if the students have food or not. The schools shouldn’t care if the students have clothing or not. The schools shouldn’t care if the students have diseases or if they are beaten, on drugs, or in gangs. None of that matters to the educational purpose of the school.
Except that it does. Undernourishment, like all of those other factors and more, impairs students’ ability to learn. It is part of the educational mission. Plus, schools have always had missions beyond the educational mission. They have always served a public health mission. Schools in this country have also served to introduce children from a variety of cultures to the norms of mainstream American society.
I didn’t write that you were un-caring (you put such words in my mouth), but if a teacher ignored the fact that a child in their care was starving or abused and took no action because they chose to stick to their primary mission of education, I would think that teacher was un-caring. What would you think?
And, by the way, fire departments do police. The Fire Marshall, for example, enforces the occupancy limit of public rooms. And here in Seattle the Public Utility deals with water, sewer, and garbage. There are not separate entities for each.
Zok wrote:
“As for the “disruptive, disinterested kids” – at least by putting them in a group you could concentrate resources on them, and not interrupt the kids that want to learn. (Jesus, do you really not understand something so simple?)”
Actually, I do understand it. Do you understand it? What resources would you concentrate on them? Gee, maybe the resources that would come from the Family and Education Levy.
You do realize that concentrating these students together is anti-choice, don’t you? You do realize that telling some family that their child must attend school B instead of school A because their child is disruptive is anti-choice? I thought you were all about choice. Help me reconcile that, will you? That’s something simple that I can’t understand.
It’s good that you don’t blame the kids, but they are the ones that you’re punishing. Do you see that? By refusing them the opportunities they need – the opportunities that their families aren’t providing – you’re punishing them.
I’m glad that you’ve backed off that geographic assignment claim. That was wacky. I’m trying to keep up, but you keep changing. Now you write that geographic assignment encourages families to invest in the local schools. Is that what you wrote before?
Gee, you say that Seattle doesn’t have choice. I say it does, just not the kind of choice it used to have. Now you say that it has lots of choice. I am having trouble keeping up. You say that some families are flocking to the good schools in the north, and you’re also saying that 40% of the families in the north are choosing private schools. Instead, I suppose, of those good schools that other families are flocking to. I’m sorry, I can’t keep up.
Ohhh. I see. You acknowledge a lot of school choice, just not for the poor and minorities. They are the folks that you’re really concerned about. Gee, aren’t these the same poor and minorities that you would leave in the schools for the disruptive and disinterested? Aren’t these the same poor and minority kids that you don’t want to support with social services? Aren’t these the same poor and minority kids that you think shouldn’t get food or health care at school? Aren’t these the same poor and minority kids who would get the additional benefits and opportunities provided by the Family and Education Levy? Tell me again how deeply concerned you are about these kids.
There is nothing magical about schools. We have come to think in terms of successful schools and failing schools, but there are almost no such things. There are schools with a lot of struggling students and there are schools with a lot of successful students, but what makes those students struggle or successful is primarily things outside of school. The schools, for the most part, shouldn’t take credit and shouldn’t be blamed. There are, of course, some exceptions.
On the whole, if the school is safe and provides the students with an appropriate academic opportunity, that’s just about all you can demand. Anything beyond that and we’re into doing something more to get something more. One of the things that we do is take some steps to close the opportunity gap. The Families and Education Levy is a small step in that direction. Vouchers and choice just shift the problems around; they don’t fix them.
We’re spending too much on schools, the problem is how little of what’s spent gets to the schools it’s suppose to.
To be clear now: You’re the one that correlated poor & minority with disruptive and disinterested. And of course that’s wrong.
And indeed I didnt back-off my geography claim. I clarified after you widely missed the point. You’re clearly in over your head if you don’t understand that school choice (economic power in the hands of parents) compels local schools to improve through direct accountability. Local schools only get better when there is an immediate and proximate mechanism to leave if you don’t get what you want. Which is why there is such a high level of satisfaction among private elementary school parents who generally go to the school nearest them.
You conveniently list schools as evidence of choice that are routinely the worst HS’s in the district. But no mention of Ballard or Roosevelt, which are over-subscribed. So in fact the parents at Cleveland do have “choice” — for an equally shitty school further away, and no direct mechanism (vouchers) to congregate with other parents and create a “Lakeside of the Southside.”
The type of “choice” between Cleveland and West Seattle is like the choice between getting kicked in the nuts or punched in the ear. Hardly.
If not even Obama and Clinton could bring themselves to enroll their children in public schools (where I agree that there are many good students, but being compromised by others), why do you insist that other less economically advantaged students have NO chance at a “Sidwell Friends” education, and instead get relegated to the level of their neighborhood’s collective academic ambition? Should me make social security recipients shop ONLY in the Safeway on their street? What is the danger of choice — other than the challenge it puts to a bureaucratic monolith?
Do you really need a video of a Seattle parent asking for school vouchers? Wouldnt you think the paucity of people moving to Seattle for the schools; the flight to the Eastside; the horrific self-assessments given by our own SPS Administration; the families from the shittier schools begging to enroll in NE schools; the alarms being sounded by employers; the vast numbers who simply walk-away to private schools; the sweeping failures to perform against other nations in assessments…. would give you some sense of interest in choice through vouchers?
No: Like the substitute teacher that keys kids watch a movie — you wanna see a fucking video.
Here’s the only thing you need to ask: If you walked-in to Rainier Beach or Cleveland and asked any student and parents “Would you like to go to University Prep instead? Or Holy Names? Or Seattle Prep? Or Seattle A&S — for free or close to it — Do you think people wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity?
So why are you trying to keep kids away from opportunity?
The only thing that would change would be somewhat fewer district schools, for kids who have different needs or priorities — and no worse-off than they are today under the current model.
Is this what you tell a poor parent whose kid goes to a school with violence? Is this what you tell a poor parent whose kid has special needs?
Tell me what school in Seattle has violence in an on-going basis? Waiting.
By law, children with special needs have to have programs for them. Are they perfect? Nope. Is there always work to be done? Yup. But compare what public schools do to charters that don’t have to meet the needs of all students. Nope, charters don’t do better.
So if you think having vouchers will suddenly unleash vast amounts of good choices, you are dreaming. Just dreaming. Vast numbers of charters – over 20 years and 41 states – and yet, overall, do NO better (or worse) than traditional public schools. And you think the profit motive is going to make for better schools?
How’s that profitable health system working out?
Seattle is on the cusp of either going big and going great or continuing mired in some great, some good and a lotta in-between. Charters and vouchers will not change that. What great things are you hearing from states that do use vouchers? What oversight do taxpayers get from voucher use? None.
On the cusp of something? Isn’t that what the schools always say when they’re lining-up for the next Levy payday?
This “there’s no evidence in vouchers” is bunch of crap. Most school voucher programs are new and limited in scope. And the student assessments (typically ending in 10th grade), don’t include significant measures like significantly higher graduation rates
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424…
Harvard University’s study (Wolf, Peterson, West: “Results of a School Voucher Experiment”) showed the difference between voucher students in private schools, versus those that applied, but weren’t awarded (control group):
• Eighty-one percent of private-school voucher parents gave their child’s school a grade of “A” or “B,” as compared to 60 percent of public-school parents in the control. None of the private school parents graded their child’s school “D” or “F,” whereas 11 percent of public school parents assigned their child’s school such low ratings. The higher satisfaction of private-school parents than public school parents was most pronounced regarding the following school characteristics: amount of information from teachers, freedom to observe religious traditions, class size, safety, student respect for teachers, and the teaching of moral values.
• Private schools assign more homework than public schools, according to parent and student surveys. Private school students report an additional 24 minutes of homework assigned per day compared with their public school peers.
• Fighting appears to be a more significant problem in public schools, as 50 percent of the public-school parents describe fighting as a serious problem at their child’s school compared with 26 percent of the private-school parents.
• Private-school parents were just as likely as the members of the control group to report that their child has a learning disability, a physical disability, or difficulty understanding English. Based on parental responses, the private schools in the study perform as well, or better, at meeting the special needs of these students.
• Nearly 75 percent of those offered a scholarship reported success in finding a school they preferred. By comparison, 57 percent of the parents in the control group said
their children went to a desired school.
Jesus — if your standard of acceptability for Seattle schools is essentially: “The violence isn’t constant” then game-over… on to alternatives, and vouchers.
@ #23
Exactly!
50 years ago you could spend less on schools because PARENTS did their jobs.
These days look at the high performing schools and you’ll find parents pushing their kids.
Schools don’t need exceptionally qualified teachers (it always seems to be the teachers being blamed), they need engaged parents.
My husband is a brilliant mathematician, an excellent teacher with multiple qualifications and a strong desire to help the kids learn – but it mostly goes for naught because the parents don’t get involved in their kids’ education. The kids know it and slack off, they don’t care – NOBODY get failed anymore.
Put the blame where it belongs – the Parents.
Schools need to start failing students, that’ll get the attention of the parents quick and although they’ll try to blame the school/teacher/system (anything but their precious offspring) if the schools are consistent in their standards it’ll fix itself. The parents will have to get involved or risk having their kids in high school until their 21.
@59 … well, they need to fail the students who don’t learn. Effort or not, that was the problem when I was in school, even if the student learned nothing, they still got good grades. Copy the answers for the homework assignment, and you got a good grade. Got many of the answers wrong but learned a thing or two because of it, you failed. There needs to be a push for actual learning, not just memorize and recite.
The main reason nobody fails anymore is because all the answers can be found too easily, now school is nothing more than a contest of who can cheat the best, which is still bad but not that much worse than it use to be. I can agree that parents bear a huge amount of blame here, but so do the teachers. Memorization only works for history lessons, everything else should be “use your brain”.
Please, before you try to talk about the growth of the cost of schooling, google “baumol’s cost disease”. Thanks in advance!
tl;dr: GOOGLE BAUMOLS COST DISEASE
@58
You aren’t listening to the actual educators commenting here. Of course private schools have less violence- they expel violent students. Also, higher loads of homework doesn’t correlate with higher achievement. It just makes parents happy.
Most of us public school teachers believe that education is a human right. We take every child who walks in the door. Private and charter schools do not. I was following along with most of the study you cited until it got to this part:
“Based on parental responses, the private schools in the study perform as well, or better, at meeting the special needs of these students.”
What other claims can we base on parental responses? Little Johnny is a child prodigy who can’t do his homework because the material is beneath his intellectual capabilities? You know, there’s actual information and data on supports available for high-needs students in public and private schools that doesn’t depend on some housewife’s opinion. For example: Private schools do not admit high-needs students. In the rare cases when they end up with a high-needs student (and don’t expel them), they outsource LD or ELL education to the neighboring public school. (Could there be a connection here with how public schools started spending more money per student after the feds said we had to educate everyone, including high-needs students? Because they don’t have that rule for private schools.) I saw a lot of uniformed children in the high poverty school elementary school I taught at looking for our speech therapist’s office.
In 2006 the Bush Administration commissioned and then promptly buried a huge study comparing public, private and charter schools. Their goal was to undermine public education and use the results to push for corporate school reform. Instead, the results showed that public schools perform on par or better than private and charter schools. The narrative that public schools are swallowing money and failing our children is an intricately constructed fallacy that preys on parent’s fears and pushes for a privatized system that will line the pockets of a few at the expense of many. You don’t seem to understand what you’re advocating for here, Zok. At least, I hope you don’t.
Privatizing the public schools system is the most anti-democratic idea currently floating around. It can’t work in rural areas. It means that unmotivated parents are going to be able to fuck up their kids life even more because they can save money that way.
Current private, voucher and charter programs cripple the public schools. Of course the average public school kid does worse if all the cream is skimmed into other systems.
In the meantime my daughter is in an alternative public school in north Seattle and I am EXTREMELY HAPPY with the education she’s getting. You don’t need to privatize to run a different kind of school.