January 2010

Better Schools, in a Bad Budget

Seven Resolutions for the New Decade

The end of a decade provides a crucial opportunity to “stop and think,” in the immortal words of one school anti-bullying program. Every year at this time, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Jerry Weast asks for half of the county budget for our schools. This year, huge shortfalls are predicted in the wake of the recession, and Weast has, as he does each year, threatened painful cuts designed to stimulate parent demands for full funding of his proposed schools budget.

But some of us have lost patience with what appears to be emotional manipulation in order to fund a budget heavy on central office expenses. In addition to the new decade, we have substantive reasons to step back now and take a look at where our schools are heading. First of all, Weast plans to retire in 2011, and the opportunity to choose a new direction inspires reflection. Worrisome recent indicators (our high schools have dropped off a prestigious “best” list, and the achievement gap is stubbornly persistent) cast doubt on the greatness of MCPS. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is overdue to begin scrutinizing No Child Left Behind, and presumably listening to parents who decry the pernicious side effects of federally-mandated high-stakes testing.

Here are some of the cuts Weast has proposed if his budget is not fully funded:

• Increase class size by one student per class, reduce the number of counselors, psychologists, and social workers, reduce the extra staff in high-poverty schools and for academic strugglers, and reduce afterschool programs.

• Reduce staff for language immersion, magnet, International Baccalaureate (IB), signature, and other special programs. Also, eliminate buses to these programs for out-of-zone students, and for high school and middle school consortia programs.

The immediate result of this list of cuts is panic in the “red zone”: the denser, lower-income, immigrant-rich area of the county, including Takoma Park and downtown Silver Spring. Cutting academic support, social services, and afterschool programs all reduce the system’s capacity to support struggling students. At the same time, many teachers in the red zone, under increasing pressure to meet the NCLB benchmarks, no longer feel they have time to pay attention to the students who come to them already literate and functional in math.

For decades, red zone schools have added signature programs—an extra emphasis on science or arts in certain elementary schools, centers and magnets for the gifted, language immersion programs, and consortia “choice” schools—in order to reassure parents that the system will challenge students who are academically able, even in an era when NCLB forces a relentless focus on basic reading and math. As social studies, science, arts integration, creative writing, field trips, and creativity have been forced into a corner of the classroom by NCLB, “boutique programs” (as Weast sneeringly called them) have kept parents in red zone schools who would otherwise struggle to move to the green zone, homeschool, or scrape together money for private schools.

So as the new decade dawns, I am rolling out my seven suggested resolutions for our school system. Honoring most of these resolutions would not require big bucks. What is required: political will, and the will to truly listen to teachers, parents and students.

1. Think Playtime. Bring back imaginative and outdoor play in kindergarten, and outdoor field trips for every grade level. Little bodies and growing brains need the exercise and immersion in nature, to counteract the constant testing.

2 Think Content. Bring back all the academic subjects squeezed out by the blunt instrument that is NCLB: arts, social studies, science, creative writing. Otherwise, children across the academic spectrum risk losing all taste for learning.

3. Think Basics. Bring back the nuts and bolts that will help all children: multiplication tables, long division, spelling, grammar, vocabulary including Latin and Greek roots. Use audio and video and kinesthetic learning to teach these--the drill does not have to kill. Then, require a set number of essays and research papers starting in sixth grade: these essentials are tragically missing.

4. Think Green. Overturn the mysterious “policy” (no one has been able to show it to me) that forbids vegetable gardens. Allow Piney Branch Elementary to conduct their dishwasher pilot, and get rid of styrofoam trays. Commit to purchase local produce from local farmers (not just one week out of the year). Bring back functional school kitchens to cook healthier meals.

5. Think Substance. Spend the budget on the kids. Stop putting millions into deluxe technology (Promethean boards), public relations, and hiring deep ranks of administrators so they can all fly around to conferences. The rabble-rousing Parents Coalition does an outstanding job tracking these expenses, and their findings are shocking.

6. Think Support. The idea (perpetuated by consultants hired by MCPS) that the entire achievement gap can be explained by racism is patently absurd in a county where many kids come to school hungry, homeless, not speaking English. Socioeconomics must be addressed, and cutting school psychologists, afterschool activities, and academic support teachers is not the way to do this.

7. Think Individuals. “Equity” does not mean one size fits all, or a guarantee of equal outcomes. Most teachers cannot do justice to the full academic spectrum of kids in a red zone classroom. Stop dismantling special education programs—not all families want mainstreaming. Stop dismantling the programs for students who need more challenge (immersion, magnets) unless and until you make these programs available in local schools. Deliver “highly gifted” reading and writing content in every local elementary school through regrouped reading classes so that all “rigor” is not concentrated in math: there are students in every school, students of every color and class and from every country of the world, ready to read great books and write essays. In the new decade, give them a chance.