Education thoughts

Education has been on my radar screen, certainly at least since mid-November, when the Red for Ed movement was able to mount a "day of action" in numbers sufficient to get a lot of Indiana school districts closed for the day:

More than 100 school districts will be closed Tuesday as teachers and public education supporters are expected to flood the Indiana Statehouse on the day lawmakers return to ceremonially begin the 2020 legislative session. 

More than 13,000 people – the majority of them teachers – have registered to attend the Indiana State Teachers Association’s Red for Ed Action Day. The state’s largest teachers union called on its members to take a personal day to lobby state lawmakers for better pay, among other things. 

So many teachers requested the day off that districts across the state decided to close or call for an “e-learning day,” when students stay home and get school assignments online. So far, 117 districts have opted to close. Others are to make a decision in the coming days.

More than half a million kids will be out of school, about 45% of the state's public school students.  

It's not like education funding hasn't been going up for years. But teachers feel their pay is still still increasing at an unsatisfactory rate:

ISTA has three goals for the upcoming legislative session. It wants to see the state make significant progress toward raising teacher pay. Indiana lags neighboring states in average pay and has some of the slowest wage growth of all teachers nationwide.

Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, said last year’s budget showed lawmakers’ commitment to public schools and the educators who work in them. The budget included an annual increase in education spending of 2.5%, but many teachers were disappointed that lawmakers didn’t do anything to specifically address pay.

That frustration bubbled up over the summer at public hearings hosted by Gov. Eric Holcomb’s commission on teacher pay. That group is supposed to deliver policy recommendations to the governor and lawmakers next year before the 2021 budget session.

Smith-Margraf said the state can’t wait that long.

“Teachers are leaving the profession,” she said. “Every year we wait, this problem is going to get worse.”

A general flow of money to education is not the problem. This article, dated January 1, 2017, makes clear that education is overwhelmingly - and perennially - the biggest item in Indiana's budget:

Indiana annually spends more money on elementary and high school education than any other budget component, a trend likely to continue when the General Assembly convenes in January to determine how to spend anticipated revenue for the next two years.

Almost half of every tax dollar collected by the state, totaling nearly $7 billion, will be distributed during the 2016-17 academic year to a public school corporation, public charter school or through a private-school voucher to pay for the education of some 1.06 million Hoosier students.

Despite leading the nation in school choice options, the bulk of Indiana's kindergarten-through-12th grade education funding still ends up at traditional public schools, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.

 That's continued over the years:

The legislative session could come to a close on Wednesday night with the passage of a final budget.

About 30 minutes after the two-year budget was published, Republican leadership spoke about its key points, most noticeably the education spending.

The budget would direct $700 million in new funding to public schools. It would increase current spending 2.5 percent next year and 2.5 percent in 2022.

Some Democrats are unhappy with the budget because it did not specifically guarantee that teacher’s pay will increase.

Democratic Party chairman John Zody released a statement saying:

“Governor Holcomb and Statehouse Republicans continue to disrespect hardworking Indiana teachers by delaying significant pay hikes for teachers with the slowest-growing salaries in the country. Hoosier teachers have accepted an ‘I owe u’ from Statehouse Republicans for the better part of a decade and that didn’t change this session. Empty promises don’t pay the bills. Today’s event reinforced the simple fact that Indiana Republicans don’t value teachers’ dedication enough to even give them a seat at the table.”

The governor says teachers will see an increase in their checks because of increases made to the “Teacher Appreciation Grant.” The House and Senate voted to increase the total from $30 million to $37.5 Million.

Holcomb also says they are working on a long term plan that would systematically increase pay.

After publishing the budget he released a statement saying:

“From the very beginning, my administration, the House and the Senate shared our top two priorities – passing a balanced budget and protecting our reserves that in turn protects our AAA credit rating and increasing K-12 funding as much as we possibly could. This budget proposal does both. I appreciate the hard work of all of our colleagues as we near the end of this legislative session.”

The budget now goes to the floor of the House where it is expected to be approved.

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Governor Holcomb wants to undertake a deep dive to see why more of these ever-increasing education dollars aren't going directly to teacher pay. It's a process that will take a while, but that time frame is unsatisfactory to the Red for Ed folks:

Gov. Eric Holcomb is defending his timeline to hold off on taking significant statewide action on teacher pay raises until 2021, despite calls from teachers to send more funding support to schools in 2020 when lawmakers aren’t likely to open the state budget.

Holcomb has said he wants Indiana among the top three states in the region for teacher salaries, and points to school funding measures passed by lawmakers in 2019 as a reason the state can wait to press forward with budget items until 2021. That includes a $150 million boost to help schools pay off teacher pension debt, and a slight bump in tuition support. 

“This is a massive step forward, but we have more steps to take,” he says.

Teachers unions and Democratic lawmakers have called for more statewide action on teacher pay during the next legislative session since Holcomb unveiled his 2020 agenda in early December. Sen. Tim Lanane (D-Anderson) called Holcomb’s plans “disappointing” in a statement shortly after the governor’s 2020 agenda announcement.

But Holcomb says he wants to know more about the ways school money gets to teachers’ salaries before adding even more dollars to the mix.

“And then now going into this next year we’re going to see where all those - where the gap remains,” he says.

Holcomb and other Republican leaders have called school funding levels through the latest state budget “historic,” though some schools under the state’s formula will receive less funding than the previous budget, or receive increases that fail to keep up with inflation rates. Lawmakers have also started looking at revising the complexity index that provides more funding to schools serving populations of at-risk students. 

Some schools have already been able to offer significant pay raises with the help of local tax referendum measures, including Indianapolis Public Schools.

The governor’s Teacher Compensation Commission has hosted three meetings to receive public input about how the state can raise teachers pay, and will make recommendations to lawmakers and the governor ahead of the 2021 session.

Strikes me as the responsible way to proceed. There's lots of gravy flowing to the districts. Directing it properly is the next order of business, isn't it? Do these unionized teachers want the legislature to just pass a teacher pay increase isolated from all other factors? As Holcomb says, the state has to protect its credit rating to ensure that it can continue to be so generous regarding education.

Some districts are looking into property tax referendums to address the situation:

Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation (BCSC) Superintendent Dr. Jim Roberts gave a presentation to the board on Monday evening regarding the $9.3 million per year referendum he wants the board to approve at the January 13 meeting. The property tax referendum would go on the May 5 election ballot. About two-thirds of the money garnered from the proposed tax increase each year would go to raises for teachers.

Roberts said that state funding to BCSC has been reduced by $46 million since 2009. Property tax cap losses the corporation has experienced hampers the ability to purchase buses each year in line with the goal of having a fleet no more than 12 years old. He noted the rise in health insurance and the fact BCSC is hiring 76 new teachers per year, a sign of a retention challenge, as reasons more funds are needed.

The referendum calls for a property tax rate increase of $0.1950 per $100 of assessed value. This would amount to an increased property-tax increase of $9.74 per month for the average homeowner.

I understand that graduation rates are not the final word on the quality of the education product, but in 2019, only one state - New Jersey - cracked the 90 percent threshold, with the national average being 84.6% for the 2016-17 school year. 

Maybe there are some useful metrics of a cultural-and-civic-literacy nature worth examining.

This number is not encouraging:

A new survey reveals just 37 percent of Americans can name their congressional representative, and just over half know their congressman’s party affiliation.

On April 24, Haven Insights surveyed 575 American adults about their civic literacy.

Haven Insights discovered only 37 percent of those polled could name their congressional district's representative, while 63 could not. Out of all Americans polled, a little more than half (56 percent) could name their representative's party affiliation.

Broken down by political ideology, conservatives fared better than liberals: 46 percent knew their representative’s name, and 62 percent knew their representative’s party affiliation.

By contrast, only 33 percent of liberals knew their representative’s name, and 57 percent knew their representative’s political party affiliation.

It seems that post-America has been shooting quite a few of its citizens through the education pipeline without substantive results in at least a few key areas:

Many people who live in the United States are “alarmingly ignorant of America’s history and heritage,” according to a new poll.

The poll found, for example, that 10 percent of American college graduates incorrectly think celebrity television judge Judith Sheindlin, known as “Judge Judy,” is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The poll, which was conducted in August of 2015, surveyed both college graduates and the general public and found many were lacking some basic knowledge about the U.S.

For example, only 20.6 percent of Americans were able to identify James Madison as the father of the Constitution, with more than 60 percent naming Thomas Jefferson, who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

College graduates only scored marginally better.

The survey also found that roughly 60 percent of college graduates couldn’t correctly name a requirement for the ratification of a constitutional amendment, and 40 percent didn’t know Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war.

Not even half know that the Senate oversees presidential impeachments.

“These were not isolated findings,” said the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, which conducted the survey.

“A 2012 ACTA survey found that less than 20 [percent] of American college graduates could accurately identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, less than half could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown ((Virginia)), and only 42 [percent] knew that the Battle of the Bulge occurred during World War II.”

ACTA found in another recent survey that of over 1,100 liberal arts colleges and universities, only 18 percent require a course in American history or government.

“When surveys repeatedly show that college graduates do not understand the fundamental processes of our government and the historical forces that shaped it, the problem is much greater than a simple lack of factual knowledge,” said ACTA. “It is a dangerous sign of civic disempowerment.”

ACTA describes itself as an “independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America's colleges and universities.”

In light of all this, I found the way this recent piece by Jennifer C. Berkshire at The Nation framed  the nature of the factions interested in particular approaches to education telling:

 For the last three decades, charter schools have attracted bipartisan love, amassing an unlikely—and unwieldy—amalgam of supporters along the way: GOP free marketeers, civil rights advocates, ‘third way’ Democrats, and hedge fund billionaires. But in an era of fierce political partisanship, that coalition is now unraveling.

I'm amused by the way "GOP free-marketeers" is slipped in there as if it were some kind of niche group, like it was some little bunch of people preoccupied with some kinky and elusive vision, much like those overthinking third-way Democrats.

The thrust of the piece is that, gosh darn it, those who want to strengthen the stranglehold the teachers' unions and advocates of what are conventionally thought of as "public schools"  have on the whole apparatus are up against some obstacles that strike them as very strange - such as inner-city blacks who like the idea of school choice:

“Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools,” was the headline of a recent New York Times story, prominently displayed on the front page. The reporters cite long charter waitlists in cities and recent polling showing a widening racial divide over charter schools—white voters’ approval of charters has plummeted in the age of DeVos, while Black and Latino approval of the schools has held steady. 

Berkshire goes on to point up where this is heading: arguments over using tax dollars to fund religion-based education, or other deviations from the standard that purely public education advocates have established in their own minds and would love to impost on the entire populace.

Of course, Trump's selection of Betsy DeVos as education secretary - a great move, the greatness of which the Very Stable Genius surely has no comprehension of, as is characteristic of the laudable policy and personnel moves in his administration - has inflamed the public-and-unionized education lobby in this country. The outrage centers on her focus on school choice and charter schools.

And that side of the debate cannot provide a compelling argument for why we should find Mrs. DeVos's focus objectionable.

What's wrong with the idea of charter schools and competition? Charter schools, at least in states in which they are subject to quick closure if they are underperforming, are compelled to offer a top-quality product. 

If the goal is really to send yearly swaths of citizens out into the world equipped with truly essential knowledge as well as some tools for exercising discernment, reflection and inspired civic and economic engagement, then why not unflinchingly look at what's working best around the country?

You know where this is going. Why not throw education completely open to free-market conditions?

Seriously, why not?

An answer one is starting to get these days is that education is a "public good," like roads.

Oh, no, it's not. The education of an individual human being is foremost among the ways in which that human being's parents can ensure the transmission of their values and their worldview. A parent has one shot - about an eighteen-year-window - in which to instill an understanding of the world that the parent feels responsible for ensuring the flourishing thereof. The alternative is a government-imposed lens for viewing human existence that, in the case of public-school education, has come to embody all manner of silly and destructive features. Here in my own Indiana city, the local Human Rights Commission is working aggressively to get the New York Times's 1619 Project, as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance program, into local classrooms. This is not universally embraced in our community.

The argument is made that taxpayers should not have to finance education that, for example, includes immersion in a particular religion.

Fair enough. How about we dismantle the whole public-education apparatus, and save those taxpayers a whole lot of money which they can then use to educate their kids in a competitive market?

I know, it sounds outlandish by 2020 standards. So we will continue with these vague measures like sort-of-public-but-not-really schools and rancorous debates over proper use of state funds and nothing will really get resolved.

And meanwhile the post-American public's understanding of the civilizational underpinnings that have made its life so unprecedentedly great will recede ever further into the mists of a time when people understood how to determine if something was worthwhile.