Improve Education & Cut Costs-It Can Be Done
I’m on “vacation” for the next couple weeks. The following is a guest column by Kevin Teasley, The President of the Indianapolis-based GEO Foundation.
The state’s call for savings in education combined with the public’s on-going need to improve schools can appear to be quite a challenge and indeed it is. However, this challenge isn’t anything new to the state’s public charter schools. Most charter schools already operate on funds equal to half the total funding traditional schools receive. Public charter schools don’t receive funds for their buildings—yet they have them—and they don’t receive funds for transportation—yet many provide bus transportation to their students. They also don’t receive extra dollars for debt retirement (like traditional schools), either, yet they certainly have debt. On top of this, some charter schools actually go beyond a traditional K-12 school and pay for their students to earn college credits while they are still in high school. How do they do this?
Check the administration costs at charter schools and compare them to traditional schools. You won’t see many people not in the classroom. Check the transportation expenses, too. You will see many schools have contracted out for this service and/or they are using used buses. And the bus drivers don’t just drive a bus and call it quits for the day. Some drivers actually spend their days in the schools they serve helping out with other school needs. Some schools share their buses with other schools to save even more money. Check the health insurance plans, too. Some schools saved money by not using a broker. Most don’t offer a gold plated package. I don’t know of any charter school superintendent (they don’t exist) or principal getting a car allowance, or professional memberships paid for by the school, either.
Charter schools don’t have empty buildings on their expense sheet, either. They don’t have to maintain empty buildings—that saves money. In fact, many are trying to obtain existing empty public school buildings (without much success). And when they do get buildings, they do everything they can to keep the interest rates low. Many have gone the New Market Tax Credit route saving thousands of dollars in lower interest rates. Traditional schools pass bonds and these expenses onto the taxpayer, charters don’t.
Several charter schools don’t even have a gym. Herron and Fountain Square Academy don’t have gyms. Both made AYP last year and both were among the city’s top schools in PL221 improvement last year. Both are located in buildings that served different purposes prior to being converted to their current school purpose. Fountain Square Academy has one of the highest levels of at risk student populations in the city, too (the school is located just blocks away from Manual High School).
Fall Creek Academy and Charles A. Tindley Accelerated school are among several charter high schools that provide college access to their students. Fall Creek Academy has more high school students taking college level classes at Ivy Tech than any other charter school in Indianapolis. Tindley students can earn college credits from Anderson University free of charge on the Tindley campus. Both schools have seniors graduating with more than 30 college credits in 2010.
The state’s schools can cut costs AND improve education outcomes—public charter schools already are.
December 22nd, 2009 at 5:19 am
Well-written and interesting.
My kids at North Central could take college courses, too…but it was far from free.
And sharing transportation costs is brilliant. Ditto the maintenance costs. It can be done.
But not one dime of my taxpayer money to the charters.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 am
“But not one dime of my taxpayer money to the charters.”
Yeah, good luck with that.
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:27 am
What's not to like other than to nurse old prejudices? Remember, readers, “”She got out because every damned one of those ethical complaints had teeth.”-TA declaring a fact that wasn't a fact but a falsehood.” What falsehoods has TA to peddle about charter schools? Sending tax dollars to private schools would be even better, e.g. charter schools are still government schools. Let's play a game called education is a race. Eugene gets a handicap of having to carry all the government rules that affect IPS. Reduced to paper, those would fill a small library and are quite heavy. Charter schools have a paperwork burden the size of a large hiking knapsack, heavy, but it has straps. Private schools are free market capitalism with light regulatory burdens, few of which are needed. Which business model succeeds? Which model is propped up with taxpayer blood and cannot ever succeed? The better view would be to say that Indiana desires the fruits of instruction, e.g. an educated polity, but isn't tied into a delivery system erected by a bunch of dunderheads over on Capitol Avenue (over the years).
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:11 am
The single thing that makes me hestitate about charter schools is “track record”.
Sure, buy into all of the pluses mentioned above, but, is it because of some kind of superior management or because they simply haven't had the amount of time to become hidebound, entrenched and bloated?
Frankly, it is hard to project the long term viability of charter schools with any chance of accuracy. Too many unknowns.
Still, something has to bestir the behemoth that has become public education.
I just worry about wholesale shifting of assets from one “single option” system to another, on what appears to be faith.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:26 am
Thanks for beating this drum, Abdul. Do you happen to know if there is a waiting of list of kids wanting to get into a Charter School, but find there are no slots open?
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:45 am
Crack pot. Charter schools exist for one and only one reason. To give taxpayer money to for-profit management companies…
http://tinyurl.com/ybkxusg
For profit companies cannot run schools more efficiently…
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 am
AYP is not necessarily an indicator of a successful school, and it is also a very small piece of the entire picture. You have to look at the subgroups represented and the total achievement of the population. A school with an outstanding reputation and ISTEP scores consistently above the state average can fail to make AYP. A school with scores consistently below the state average can make AYP (adequate yearly progress) but not do a good job of educating the school population. You can see all of this if you look into all the available bits of information on the state “snapshot” website. This AYP is what gets schools labeled and failing or succeeding, but most people, apparently even some of our top politicians, do not understand how to read the information offered on the website. Maybe they never even look at it. AYP is also the determining factor in whether or not school systems receive $$. So it is very important in that respect.
Handing out accolades and awards for AYP can be completely misleading. Some schools with a history of low achievement can win awards, while others with much more to offer students can be repeatedly slapped down for failing in one of multiple subgroup categories. If you'd look closely you might find that their population obtains higher achievement scores compared to the state average than the AYP “winners”.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:52 am
Pascal, if only you knew whereof you spoke re: Mrs. Palin. Obviously, you don't. But we digress:
AYP and other random numbers, are sorry-ass yardsticks for public or private schools. It is a calculation devised by public school administrators, so right there you know it's Pentagon-esque in character.
Nonetheless, I don't want my taxpayer money going to charters because their governance is scattered, at best, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
As much as I liked Bart Peterson, please tell me why the Mayor of Indianapolis has or had the power to establish charter schools. It makes about as much sense as allowing GM to run the Office of Management and budget, Mitch's old haunt.
That said, I'm curious about the successes charters have–not all are successful, of course–just like most institutions in our lives. But where any school succeeds, be it Manual HS or a charter, I want to dissect its success and duplicate it where possible.
Our future depends on that.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
If I could choose to have faith in the trends of public>private in education, OR private>public in “reformed” health care….
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Three guesses and two don't count.
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Granted, it's a sales job, but at least they bring competition. I wouldn't mind if they were folded wholly into the public schools, BUT, then they'd just part of the Moonies, Stepford Wives, whatever you call the glazed-over, protective, educratese answers you get sometimes when asking tough questions.
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Completely private makes them expensive. If they could be something in-between…but how do fund them when every taxpayer's kid doesn't have a shot at enrollment? We fund partially and take our chances with a lottery- that's what we've arrived at now?
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It's a shame to spend money on charter schools. If we demanded responsible parenting, frugal economics, complete data, mandatory participation, and “proofs” through need and means-testing- we'd be much, much closer.
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But, it's easier to load another DVD in the player…..
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Taxpayer, it's all about the raw material.
As long as we have large numbers of parents who “phone it in,” their progeny will be batting against long odds.
If you're over 40, think back–aren't you, and most of your buds, successful? If so, didn't your parents (mostly) insist on that? With their active participation in your school?
I know an IPS assistant principal who's won all kinds of awards for being young and aggressive, wanting to make a difference, etc. He's 34, taught for five years, got his Admin license, and has spent 90% of the last 5 years trying to chase down reluctant (absent) parents. At their apartments, homes, places of work, bars, Marion County Jail, you name it.
He's quitting after this year. Going to sell pharmaceuticals. Almost double the money, half the grief. None of the parental baby-sitting.
He is exactly the kind of young administrator who should stay in the system and work for change. But he didnt get his license to become, in effect, a repo man.
“It damages my soul,” he once told me. Powerful words, those.
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
You're beginning to get the idea, though I wonder if it will catch on. What if IPS went back to the idea it had (and bungled) for small schools and took the impossible to manage high schools out of the old, inefficient oversized buildings and put the high schools into the closed middle school buildings? (Like the newly refurbed Forest Manor.) What if the explored online education in place of all the alternative schools and homeschooling? What if the state mandated a proportion of district level administrators to students? What if early retirement packages were offered to people at the top of the pay scale?
Cutting teachers' raises is easy and unintelligent. We can do better than that. Students need gyms. They need to be encouraged and allowed to exercise.
When we think of schools, we tend to think of IPS and the townships but we have to remember that many of students in IN go to school in areas where there is still dial up Internet! Schools alone, not computers at home,are going to prepare these students (and this state) for the 21st century. Much of what is in these schools comes out of the teachers' pockets. Cutting teachers' pay will cut what goes into the classroom in more ways than one.
Thanks for giving intelligent alternatives to a serious issue
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I know for sure that Irvington Community has a long waiting list because I've been on it for 2 years! :)
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Blaming parents for poor-performing schools seems like a copout to me unless the parents don't make them go. All of the other influences and distractions that compete with education for the attention of children focus their marketing on the kids, not the parents. Education needs to do the same. Parents aren't what changed from 30 years ago. The schools used to be relevant to community and to the lives of the children they taught. They aren't now. Teachers used to be some of the most educated and informed members of the population. Those teachers are the minority now. If we want to reform education, we need to reform the education system. Period. (And if you really believe we can't teach kids whose parents don't believe in education, then why do make education mandatory?)
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
inncercitymom, go to one of those IPS highy-middle schools and stop any administrator, secretary, police officer, or teacher in the hall. Pick the high school, pick the staff person, and ask them one question:
“What's your biggest obstacle to making this building succeed at the level of the townships?” (except, perhaps, Wayne and Warren, who are only marginally more successful with students than IPS).
The uniform answer you'll get from those staff people, I'm betting, is:
“Our kids aren't expected to do well, so they don't.” Or some derivation thereof.
It's a sick, cylical game of lowering expectations of students. If you get them low enough, hey, guess what? They'll meet them.
And in the process, an overwhelming majority will become burdens to all of us for decades.
There is one entity in this equation that has the unmistakable power to shuffle the deck: families. Teachers cna try til they cry. Admins can, too.
But if the home situation doesn't expect a kid to do well, then the battle's over. They're marking-time until they turn 16 and can leave school.
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Here's a question for you, mom: How many single-parent homes are there today versus 30 years ago? Anyone who believes that doesn't make a difference has his/her head in the sand.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I'm a single parent. I'm just as good of a parent as any married parent. I'm just broke. So I live in a crappy district. My kids are excellent students. But I had to move them schools twice to get them into a decent one (not the best, but decent). The others wanted to dumb-down the classes and then when my kids acted bored, they wanted to ask me how their home life was and if they had a relationship with their father. I got a note sent home once because my daughter raced another boy to lunch. The boy didn't get a note. He came from a wealthy two-parent family. People find examples to “prove” their preconceived notions.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Hey, TA, why ask state employees but not students and parents? What do you think they would say the biggest obstacle is? Do you think they think they have the same opportunities at IPS as the “good schools.” Do you think they feel they are treated with half as much respect as the suburban parents? Isn't that who public education is meant to serve? Parents and students?
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
uh, mom…you need to read and pay attention: I purposely said you should ask any of the IPS employees, who interact with students all day. I said nothing about state employees.
Public education, by statute and by form, is meant to serve us all. By educating our young people so they can become productive members of society. Theoretically, that means they'll be less of a burden to us later in life (if a burden at all).
That is almost impossible in a district that is so disengaged with its parents, as IPS is…it's hopelessly broken, cannot be fixed, and should probably be busted up into smaller parts. It really is sad.
There are situations in life, sadly, where the solution is so hopelessly expensive that it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. IPS began to fall apart in the late 1960s and early 70s…and now we're raising grandchildren of those failed years. Once you jump to another generation, without fixing a problem, it becomes that much more difficult to fix permanently.
I don't doubt that you're a good parent, except for that huge chip on your shoulder…but I don't walk in your IPS shoes, either. I wouldn't do it. If your kids are still in IPS, move. Now. Get out while you can.
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
If the home situation is so dire in many homes across America, why do we tolerate it? In part because we don't like being accused of being racist, intolerant, or lacking in compassion.
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When we get past this societal phobia and lethargy, when we do what basically the rest of the genuinely civilized world does and expect real parenting, then that's the big start.
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Our affluence, slavery from years ago, the “women's movement”, birth control, the demise of the church as a societal influence, and who knows what else brought us to this point. But, based on correlated levels of child abuse, neglect, obesity, graduation rates, and incarceration- this “point” makes no sense. Look at our global competitors in India and China and see if they subsidize childbirth. Look at the Islamic world. Thank goodness we differ on their treatment of women and terrorism as a means of spiritual ascension, but they believe being a single mom is no way to raise children. American statistics bear that out.
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I'm not mandating all women return to being housewives and we must all be in church on Sunday. I'm not saying there aren't single mother and extended family success stories. But, basically, a check in lieu of parenting without sufficient means testing isn't working. It's a moral, statistical, and fiscal failure. The pseudo-industry of lawyers, counselors, hospitals, and associated parties promoting semi-endless biological reunifications of dysfunctional parents with children is not “moral high ground”. Kids do not survive month after month, year after year, of abysmal parenting with the same shot at life as children growing up with functional parents. Not great parents, just functional. Not the one(s) who are there because it was a lifestyle choice- where the police or CPS are hauling the kids away to protective foster care cyclically. It happens- ask long time foster parents.
Societal expectations of parenting doesn't fix all our problems with education. But, it sure tackles the most upstream problem that semi-endlessly, for multiple generations, introduces the result of wretched, enabled choices into an already corrupt and soon to be genuinely underfunded education system.
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Let's take the real moral, statistical, and fiscal high ground and make protecting children be the mandate- not childbirth.
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
It wasn't a misunderstanding. I was referring to IPS employees as state employees because they are employees paid by the state. And I don't have a “huge chip on my shoulder.” I am understandably and rightfully angry that you don't think people who live in my neighborhood are entitled to good schools. I either need to move (great time to sell a house in IPS!!) or accept a system that is “hopelessly broken, cannot, be fixed..” I am taking the opposite position. I think charter schools (and vouchers for that matter) provide families like mine (which are the majority, not the minority of IPS families) with real education options. The ironic thing is that your position robs urban families of decent education options, perpetuating the cycle that you're tsk-tsking.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Our education system is broken because there is not enough money for the kids! It is time that we understand that the government must remove failing kids from their parent's home and start a campus and put the kids on a strict program to force them to learn and understand the value of hard work and deny them from watching television or computer games unless the programs emphasize the importance of doing everything your government says. If parents bring one child into the system that fails, then the parents should be sterilized and prevented from ever having kids again. We need to raise all taxes to offset the costs because we all know that kids are the future and they must be trained to be little producer and consumer soldiers for the economy. It is time that we declare martial law and use the full extent of police powers to usher in our managed utopia.
Sincerely,
Adolf Lucifer
President of the Uniform Evil Socialist Dictatorship Administration (UESDA)
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Yes, I am joking.
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Yeah, what is that? Educrats tactically vacate “obsolete” buildings (the kind in which parochial schools achieve superior results) in favor of the latest bond issue & real estate development.
Ever see the buildings that IPS leaves behind & irresponsibly refuse to sell? Somebody made a buck producing those “drug free zone” signs that hang on the fences of poorly maintained, abandoned schools which are magnets for crime; the educrats' contribution to urban blight. Those assets belong to THE PEOPLE, not professionally insecure bureaucrats. Mr. Bennett should immediately place those assets up for sale.
December 23rd, 2009 at 1:48 am
A cynic might suggest it is similar to why it was so important that Market Square Arena or the old RCA Dome be torn down. To avoid somebody snatching up the facility and providing an alternative venue (for conventions, concerts or various sporting events) at a competitive price. Essentially, to ensure rental price supports for the newer facilities (among other reasons – like space for the expanded convention center).
Perhaps, if vacant school buildings were sold off somebody with some ambition and a desire to provide competing educational options might snatch one of them up, provide some jobs for teachers and actually teach students stuff?
Government bureaucrats hate competition even more than private sector businesses do … even though it (competition) always produces higher quality products at/and/or lower costs.
Anyway… that was just one potential reason that came to mind.
BTW – I had an opportunity to visit the old abandoned Central State property that currently has a section allocated for housing the downtown mounted patrol. That place would make a great college campus if somebody had the money to take it on and start a new one. It currently just sits and rots.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:14 am
The Mayor has the power and the accountability for those schools, e.g. no one else to blame. Mayor Peterson, to his credit, began a high class operation. Charters get closed and staffs are fired. Major difference from the IPS style government schools.
The 150 member school board of Indiana is large enough to diffuse accountability and responsibility as they squander half the State's budget. If Diogenes were looking for an educated person over there he'd need a whale's worth of oil to find the third one.
“”She got out because every damned one of those ethical complaints had teeth.”-TA declaring a fact that wasn't a fact but a falsehood. I see Palin on Oprah yesterday (a repeat) addressing the question again. Is anyone so stupid as to maintain that X hundred ethical complaints and lawsuits were valid? I can't believe that any rational person could hold such stupidity in mind. Wouldn't it just be easier to retract and move yourself closer to the truth?
Educators have the pretensions of knowledge also but it works to their disadvantage as in their hubris they overpromise what they can produce and as most monopoly enterprises they lie, cheat, steal from their victims. Even their jargon is designed to conceal. I cannot generally stand Oprah but I can recommend her interview.
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:21 am
Considering the history, that person would be more observer than cynic.
The old CS location would make a fine site for a private run boarding school for parent-less kids. Joe Gibbs (Redskins coach) operates such a school in VA.
Talk is cheap. Too many adult politicians claim to be doing “for the children” while turning in the failed results of self service.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I'm sure you're a responsible parent, mom. And I certainly realize that a a single parent can instill values and principles in his/her children. But a parent's first responsibility to that child is to provide him with food and shelter. Divorce is the number one cause of poverty among American children. When a single parent is forced to spend time away from home, trying to keep that home, she can't spend valuable time teaching that child to be a good person.
Obviously, money isn't the only factor. But, for two parents who want to be actively involved in their children's lives, not being forced to work sure makes it a whole lot easier.
December 24th, 2009 at 9:03 am
“Pascal, if only you knew whereof you spoke re: Mrs. Palin. Obviously, you don't.” My feelings are now injured as the subject of Mrs. Palin is the only subject on which I know not whereof I speak. “”She got out because every damned one of those ethical complaints had teeth.” Maybe you don't know what teeth are? Did no one ever instruct you about incorrect generalizations? Are you without the knowledge of “The Chicago Way”? When you step in it it's best to fess up and move on. The Clinton method, “Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations” while typically liberal and good enough for MSM IQ won't cut it on this forum. Squirt all the ink into the water about Senator Kennedy's NCLB (to point out another of your many miscues on matters factual) and squirt some more ink about Palin but inks aren't facts and you keep getting the facts wrong. A purpose for having a comment section is that kicking the can down the road can bring a thread closer to the truth either by adding new facts or discarding facts that weren't. Inky water is a dis service to all.
December 24th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I am tired of having my taxes raised higher and higher so that we can throw money at public education when anyone with half a brain can see that money isn't the problem. Why do we keep throwing money at the problem? Because we won't do anything to solve the real issues.
Want better education? Let teachers actually discipline children (yes – I am talking about spanking kids). Throw out trouble-makers instead of letting them disrupt the education of everyone around them. Go after parents that don't make their children attend school and do homework.
December 25th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Ditto to Dobie!
Who would've thought that this simple passage would have ballooned into the fiscal monster it has become…
“Knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement; and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.” Article 8 Section 1
Certainly, those who drafted this, and those who ratified it, didn't believe that this would consume most of the public budget.
December 25th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I agree with your conclusion about money not being the problem, because that is supported by facts and statistics. I also agree with throwing out the troublemakers (or at the very least sending them to alternative schools.) However, your post about spanking in schools improving education is baffling to me because it's one of those made-up correlations (back in my day, they used to paddle, and in my memory, kids respected education more than kids today, so the difference must be the kids were spanked then did really well and those same kids are doing poorly because they are not spanked.) Not only is that line of reasoning illogical, but it goes against everything we know about the teachers and schools that DO succeed with at-risk populations. These teachers and schools are not MORE hostile, they are less hostile. They are firm but respectful, engaging and relevant with high expectations. Schools run like prisons is a significant source of the problem, not a solution for it.
December 28th, 2009 at 12:33 am
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Alena
http://grantfoundation.net
December 28th, 2009 at 6:33 am
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Alena
http://grantfoundation.net