If you haven’t kept up with the debate over my “rat hole” comment last week, head over here for the latest, and make sure to read the comments below the editorial, including one from CASE’s Bruce Caughey.
Meanwhile, I received the following letter yesterday from the superintendent of Holyoke schools:
Dear Mr. Gottlieb,
I returned from San Francisco yesterday following three days at the AASA convention. John Hefty and Bruce Caughey attended along with about 24 central office administrators from Colorado. I did not talk to Bruce, but did see his email about your article while at the convention.
I wholeheartedly agree with your admonition to spend the stimulus funds wisely rather than “down a rat hole if it does little more than perpetuate the status quo.” As you can see in the quote below my name, the US Dept. of Education has (had) a budget of $69B until passage of the stimulus package that gave ED an additional $146B (the latest figures shown at the convention), mostly allocated through existing formulas (primarily Title I and IDEA (special education)). If the regulators do not relax the rules for spending in those two programs the money will increase personnel and programs for students served by those programs, but the funds will do nearly nothing to offset the losses we are going to experience in Colorado due to cuts by the CO Legislature and the impact on many districts, like mine, that are experiencing declining enrollment.
The main question asked at the session about the stimulus package was what about after two years when the money is gone and we have all these new personnel. The reply was generally one of, “don’t worry, the increases will become permanent.”
How will we ever pay for all of this? I want you to know that we are not all drunken sailors spending like there is no tomorrow. Moreover, I do not mean to besmirch a drunken sailor; this stimulus package is beyond the pale of comparison to anything else any of us have ever experienced.
Stephen Bohrer, Ph.D. Superintendent
Holyoke School District Re-1J 4
ED currently administers a budget of $68.6 billion per year-$59.2 billion in discretionary appropriations and $9.4 billion in mandatory appropriations-and operates programs that touch on every area and level of education. The Department’s elementary and secondary programs annually serve more than 14,000 school districts and approximately 56 million students attending some 97,000 public schools and 28,000 private schools. Department programs also provide grant, loan, and work-study assistance to about 11 million postsecondary students. (downloaded 2-24-09, http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/index.html)
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I used to keep an old “Potshots” cartoon on my desk: “By accepting you as you are, I do not necessarily abandon all hope of your improving.”
It is very difficult to propose change without the existing forces feeling defensive and offended. The suggestion is that they should have done better or are at fault for existing conditions. This is not necessarily true: the fact they are working “in a rat hole” does not make them rats. Rather, they are laboring in an environment that makes them less effective overall and does not acknowledge their optimal contributions, which themselves fall right along into that bottomless pit.
In attempting to philosophically view the essential pieces as a whole so as to consider whether they might be put together in different configurations, we necessarily depersonalize those pieces. This is not to say that any of them individually are or should be capable of effecting “reform” on their own or that they are “at fault” for general failures in the system. To the contrary, part of what I would hope true “Reform” would include is not only better childhood educations, but more productive and rewarding experiences for teachers and other professionals providing services in our educational institutions.
The very fact a few words could create such an uproar is to me as the casual observer, an apt reflection of how stressed-out both ends of this spectrum are at present, and how urgently Reform is needed.