I confess my interest and knowledge on Race to the Top is at some small distance: I did not follow the nuances closely, believing (correctly) that the Colorado bid was in good hands, and (incorrectly) that the hard work of many skilled people would prevail. And in the wake of disappointment, while I understand the temptation to either complain about the judging, or — far worse — celebrate the defeat as some sort of divine personal vindication, neither make much sense. For I think the R2T decision is a harsh but helpful reminder of two very important, and often overlooked, truths:
1. Outcomes matter most. For all the rhetoric over the ample list of reforms both instituted (ProComp, the Colorado Growth Model) and pending (CAP4K, SB 191), the hard truth is that overall outcomes in Colorado have not improved. To paraphrase Auden, reform – in and of itself – makes nothing happen. Waiting for a single reform panacea (or cocktail) remains the dream of a weary Godot. Reforms — by themselves — mean little. Outcomes, and the changes in the trajectory of individual lives, are everything. In the wake of this disappointment we should redouble our efforts to examine the places where outcomes are changing, and give these our continued attention and support.
2. Money matters less. Always eclipsed by the lure of a big payday, the hard truth is that since 1970, per-pupil spending in the US has doubled while there has been no improvement in academic results. Money may help a success already in place, but it is never the catalyst for substantive change. Colorado is simply not dependent on largesse of any kind to improve. There is a lot of money already in the public education system, and in many ways adding additional funds postpones some of the difficult conversations and choices that are necessary. Scarcity usually reveals more than abundance, and tends to sharpen one’s focus: we need to choose between strategies, not continue to add layers of them on top of each other.
So what now? I suggest: Think local, act local. Education reform was here before R2T, and it will be here long after the winners have exhausted their checks. Examples of state-wide successful reform are few and far between, and when the last dime of R2T rolls down the register, there will likely be one or two more — but far less than the number of grantees (12). And I am pretty confident that there will be an equivalent success somewhere among the nine finalist states that were disappointed, so it might as well be here. There are instances of real, meaningful, and inchoate reform happening across Colorado (and even scored high on some rewardless lists). Look locally, focus on outcomes, and remember that in education (as in most things) expense rarely correlates to quality.
After all, as anyone bearing the scars of education reform in Colorado can tell you, it is not now — and never was — a race.
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Hey Alex,
I pretty much agree with you here. So I have a question. Would you argue that DSST, just to pick an example of success, could do what it does without the support of its donors? I haven’t seen their books but I understand the do some pretty effective fund raising. Does WDP get by on per pupil funding or do they have foundation or other support?
We can of course do great things without a lot of money, particularly when freed from the rigors of bureaucratic constraints, but my sense is that most of the schools that are knocking it out of the park are rolling pretty deep. Is that an incorrect perception?
I also agree that outcomes matter most. It is equally clear to me that the steady state of the system we have produces the outcomes we’ve been getting. Mostly complex systems will strive until destruction to maintain their steady state despite the efforts of the constituents of that system and in the face of the changes in the system’s environment. I see most breakout schools as exceptions that prove the rule.
Given that view of the system, it should come as no surprise that if I could figure out how to comprehensively and fairly eliminate the barrier posed by family income, I’d open an independent school in a heartbeat. If anyone has that formula, let’s talk.
Hi Jeff,
All good questions, and I should say that while I’m pretty familiar with DSST, I certainly don’t speak for them (and I don’t really speak for WDP either, but I can claim a more direct connection). Incidentally, I’d love to both take a tour of Green and offer one of WDP.
For the easy questions: WDP does operate on PPOR once our schools are at capacity, with the exceptions of funding our teacher bonus plan (since we are excluded from ProComp) and an 8th grade class trip. We do have support from philanthropic sources to open and grow new schools — however we also have facility and other costs that are very different, so it’s not a smooth comparison. It is very much part of the WDP model and mission to operate on a similar budget to traditional public schools.
I frankly think DSST would be successful operating in my basement, and I’ve seen several highly successful independent schools who operate under conditions that are pretty appalling (my favorite was the leaking sewage) and low per-pupil spending. Money helps success scale, but it does not cause success. DSST’s appraoch is (imo) very much about highlighting an ideal model for public education partly as a challenge for other schools, districts, and civic organizations to rise to the same level. They have made decisions (including their initial facility) that have included higher fundraising goals, but I think that is augmenting their success, not causing it.
Lastly, I think most measurements, and they way we evaluate school spending, is all wrong. If we were ever to agree on the right educational outcome (let’s just say a school’s graduates should be CSAP proficient as a placeholder), we should look at comparative spending in that light. For example, if you were to look at DSST’s spending per proficient graduate, I bet they would match up as well as any school in the city. I did a quick calculation some years ago, and there were middle schools who, when you look at PPOR cost to proficiency, were more expensive annually than sending a kid to Harvard. It is not just what a school is spending, it is what they are achieving, and I think all school financing needs to be illuminated under that light.
Alex: I appreciate your points. However, I disagree strongly that we don’t need the money. If we didn’t need it, I wonder why the state would have invested the time and effort (at least a few million dollars of monetized time, from my fairly close observation) in trying to win this “Race.” I don’t think we were only looking for federal affirmation of our reform efforts, or Arne Duncan’s pat on our collective heads, but some real resources to move reforms forward.
I wouldn’t press the argument for more funding, if we lived in a state that funded education reasonably. Ed Week’s 2009 data shows Colorado more than $1,100 below the national average, per pupil, adjusted for cost of living. Further, of the states that outran Colorado in this recent Race, Ohio and Maryland spend $1,500 more per pupil, DC and Massachusetts spend about $2,000 more per pupil, and New York and Rhode Island spend more than $3,000 more than Colorado, per pupil. (And, these figures are 20-40% higher per pupil than in CO, where our average is about $8,500 per pupil). If I lived in one of those other states (and I did live in NY for 20 years), I would not complain about average funding levels. There are threshold levels that matter and Colorado’s funding problems can’t just be waved away with the “money doesn’t matter” mythology.
In the last few years, as CO passed the reform legislation that we all thought made the case for Race victory, nearly all task forces, reports, convening groups, technical studies, etc are unfunded by the state budget and left to “gifts, donations, and private philanthropy.” We can’t afford to pay for these relatively cheap initial efforts (in the hundreds of thousands of dollars), even though they are quite necessary to get the ball rolling, but they are usually only the first step in a wider (and more expensive) implementation processes that must take place in 178 districts.
Fortunately, we have had some great foundations step up in most of these cases. But, isn’t it telling that our state can’t find hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund these critical reform efforts in a credible way. And, does anyone really think the SB 191 process can be implemented with 3 FTE in CDE, for $240,000 ??
And, while the foundation support is great, it has limits. The campaign to defeat the “big 3″ fiscal ballot initiatives this fall, will cost about $6 million. A reform coalition will struggle to raise that kind of money. How can we expect them to dedicate something close to the $175 million that winning R2T might have brought to Colorado, to actually implement some of our reforms?
In the longer run, there is no doubt that more money could be found in the system to support more of these efforts, in ways that Marguerite Roza, CRPE, and others have assessed. But, there is a lot less of this available in a system as lean as Colorado’s and, ironically, many of these money saving ideas require some of the reforms to be implemented first (like to figure out which teachers are most effective).
I have great respect for Paul, and cannot match his expertise, but I will disagree — some only by degree, some in kind.
“Needing” the money is an odd thing — we did not “need” R2T before it came into existence. And one might believe the state invested the time and effort because the return potential was enormous (at $175M) not because a sudden need arose subsequent to the July 2009 announcement of R2T. Paul and I would both make some effort to pick up $20 in the street, and it’s not because we need it, it’s because we can. $175M is a lot of “need” to discover in a fairly short time.
I am sympathetic to the arguments that CO is underfunded respective to other states. I am less sympathetic to the argument that CO is underfunded. The K-12 budget in Colorado is 40% of the General Fund, or somewhere in the ballpark of $7 billion, right? Do we really believe that 40% of the General Fund means education is underfunded? Yes, it is telling if the State claims it cannot find “hundreds of thousands” for cheap initial efforts — it tells me it is a failure not of money, but of will.
And the flip side is that even R2T’s grant of $175M, spread over the roughly 820,000 colorado K-12 public students, is all of roughly… $215 each. So if one wants parity with the national average, we “need” an additional $900M. That is one heck of a big hole. Do we really need an additional $900M on top of the $7 billion to get as efficient an educational system as they have in, um, Washington DC and New York, both of whom spend more per pupil?
My primary point is that we often layer reforms on top of an existing structure without addressing the foundation. And we often layer more reforms on top of these reforms. A continual rising tide of funds allows us to postpone hard choices between different programs. Those choices might provide a faster path to reform than the ability to add without subtracting. Additional money allows us to do additional things, which is not always as productive as making us choose the right things. It’s a hell of a lot easier to take as much money as one can. I’m not convinced it’s always better.
Now before I look in the mirror and see Doug Bruce, let me be clear that I supported the R2T efforts and would gladly have accepted the largesse. I think it would have been far better to win the $175M than not. But I don’t believe for a second that Colorado’s education reform will suffer unbearably as a result. If R2T had never existed, we would still all believe Colorado was fertile ground for reform. Others may weep at the loss of R2T funds; I think reformers should party like it’s June, 2009.
Excellent post, Alex. Your take on Colorado’s finish in Race to the Top and where to go from here is the best one I’ve seen so far. We do need to find a way to make schooling more productive with the resources available, nor should we overly romanticize what RTTT could have made possible.
Your point on the importance of outcomes is critical. The disappointing difference I see is not necessarily in outcomes per se, but in that some states winning RTTT have shown less willingness to make some of the promising changes needed to improve outcomes than Colorado has.