Fellow blogger Ben DeGrow wrote an op-ed piece on August 17th in the Denver Post regarding the education jobs bailout recently passed by Congress. DeGrow argues that the bailout is “excessive, short-sided, and fiscally irresponsible.”
Justification for this statement is based on at least two premises: funding for education was/is out of control, and the claims of how many teacher jobs were lost were not accurate.
DeGrow argues that the estimate of job losses was grossly overestimated. He’s right. The reason for the over-estimation was because schools made decisions to save as many teacher jobs as possible, at the expense of support staff. Ben addresses this, but misses the point when it comes to the impact that this will have on schools.
Take the high school where I teach for example.
We reduced our deans by 50 percent, reduced campus security by 50 percent, and reduced support staff to those areas by 20 percent. This means a reduction in prevention, limited access by parents to deans (they now need an appointment), and an increase in teachers to supervise hallways, lunchrooms, and to communicate with parents for “smaller” discipline infractions.
We reduced our counseling department by 20 percent (we have four counselors for over 2,000 students). The entire department has been reorganized. Students will no longer be assigned to counselors for four years by alpha. Instead, counselors will be responsible for various resources and students will need to see those specific counselors for assistance. There will be one counselor available, every period, for students who have walk-in needs. Parents need to preset appointments to see counselors—no more drop-ins.
Our main office clerical staff was reduced by 25 percent. Custodial staff was reduced by 33 percent. Janitors will no longer clean rooms on a daily basis. They might get to them twice a week. Library resources were reduced by 33 percent. This will impact teacher and student support and the hours of operation for the library.
And finally, and to my response to DeGrow about loss of teacher jobs, we reduced our teaching staff by 3 percent. Yes, not as many teachers lost their jobs. But I think it is obvious as to the cost that the school has paid to protect as many teacher positions as possible.
DeGrow argues that over the past few decades teaching staffs have increased at a higher rate than did student enrollment. No argument here on that point. But the question has to be why? DeGrow argues, among other points, that this was due to a jobs grab by unions. But what he fails to mention is that over the past two decades the purpose of schooling changed. We no longer rank and sort students based on a curve. We expect and instruct all students to be successful. This shift takes resources that were not needed decades ago.
Finally, because of the economy, many of our community’s families are struggling. Research shows us that financial hard times impact schools negatively. Schools are looked upon for social services. Students come to school less prepared because of the severe economic downturn. Because of this schools need more resources, including teachers, to help students who come to school less prepared.
I think this justifies a “bailout.”
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Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Mark. It sure beats most of what goes on in the DP comment section.
I don’t doubt there is some pain felt at the local level, at some districts, at some school buildings, as a result of the decision to lay off employees. And I appreciate your sense of hopeful relief at the news. However, the federal government is a big, blunt instrument , and what’s left of the $10 billion after siphoning off administrative costs is just as likely to end up funding positions that aren’t needed as it is to restore the genuinely needed positions in your school.
We also have far too little information to have any sense of how extensive or unevenly distributed the cuts are. If the feds were spending our money strictly on job positions that we were assured were effectively needed, it would still be at the rate of more than $100,000 / job. Really? But instead of the pain providing incentive for local leadership to innovate now, we have merely delayed and possibly intensified future pains after new obligations are secured, federal funding drops off and the next cliff (a steeper one) is hit.
Rick Hess expounds more eloquently: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2010/08/my_final_word_on_edujobs_harmful_not_just_wasteful.html
Don’t get me wrong. There’s no easy target to blame here. School funding, regulation and administration is a complex and tangled mess. Yet we get no leadership from Congress that would begin to untangle the problem in a responsible and prudent manner. At the very least they could have distributed funds rationally to states and tied them to some sort of modest reforms rather than prop up the status quo again.
But in the end, Congress took the easy way out (to make it easy for state and local officials, too) to please the big interest group constituency looking over their shoulders (i.e., NEA), and stuck it to the taxpayers again. People are more and more sick of the ineffective, wasteful stimulus spending. Edujobs only piles on the angst, and actually harms any attempts to make our education system more effective and productive in the long run. We can do much better than this approach.
[...] at Education News Colorado, local teacher Mark Sass takes exception to Ben’s piece with “a view from the ground” (and Ben already has responded with a [...]
Ben you are right, we need to be much more efficient on how we spend our money. So why does social spending fall under a greater microscope than military spending? Who at the Institute is blogging about wasteful military spending? Just asking.
Thanks, Mark. If the military were under state jurisdiction rather than federal jurisdiction, it probably would merit our attention.