Good intentions

I'm reading a great book called The Logic of Failure, as recommended (some time ago) by Catherine Johnson of Kitchen Table Math. This excerpt struck me as being particularly appropriate to education:

Thought is also always rooted in values and motivations. We ordinarily think not for the sake of thinking but to achieve certain goals based on our system of values. Here possibilities for confusion arise: the conflict between treasured values and measures that are regarded as necessary can produce some curious contortions of thought - "Bombs for peace!" The original value is twisted into its opposite. Motivations provide equally ambiguous guidelines. There are those who would say that what counts are the intentions behind our thinking, that thought plays only a serving role, helping us achieve our goals but failing to go to the root of the evils in our world. In our political environment, it would seem, we are surrounded on all sides with good intentions. But the nurturing of good intentions is an utterly undemanding mental exercise, while drafting plans to realize those worthy goals is another matter. Moreover, it is far from clear whether "good intentions plus stupidity" or "evil intentions plus intelligence" have wrought more harm in the world. People with good intentions usually have few qualms about pursuing their goals. As a result, incompetence that would otherwise have remained harmless often becomes dangerous, especially as incompetent people with good intentions rarely suffer the qualms of conscience that sometimes inhibit the doings of competent people with bad intentions. The conviction that our intentions are unquestionably good may sanctify the most questionable means.

More on property taxes

Remember that, on average, property taxes make up approximately 30% of K-12 funding. Then consider the following from analysists at JP Morgan Chase:

“Currently, we have national home prices bottoming in 2011,” they said. “However, prices for more expensive homes may not bottom out until 2012, and ultimately result in peak-to- trough declines in excess of 60 percent (compared to 40 percent nationally).”

“California is probably worse than other states, but higher-priced homes in general are going to be a problem,” [John] Sim said in a telephone interview today.

I can understand people being skeptical of anything JP Morgan Chase has to say at the moment, but the demographics make sense: as empty-nesting Boomers look for smaller homes with less cost and less maintenance required, there's going to be an oversupply of large, and consequently more expensive, homes on the market. More supply and less demand are going to affect the values of these larger and more expensive properties disproportionately...

The perils of avoiding short-term pain

Education Week has been reviewing state applications for education stimulus funds, and what they found is disheartening:

According to an Education Week review of the 31 applications approved as of late last week for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund—the largest piece of the education stimulus pie—nearly 90 percent of that money seems destined to backfill state cuts to education funding, with little left over.

More from the article:

The stabilization-fund applications that have already been approved confirm what school districts had feared: Much of this large infusion of money will be soaked up by states’ continued budget problems.

Overall, states on average are using about 87 percent of the stabilization funds to fill in K-12 and higher education cuts they already made in fiscal 2009, or cuts they would have had to make in 2010.

“We’re all disappointed,” Mr. Musso [Executive Director, Association of School Business Officials] said. “How are we supposed to make systemic change if the dollars are just buying the same thing we’ve been buying in the past?”

State and local government revenues have dropped markedly, and given the severity and causes of the current recession, it's clear that it will be a long time before they return to recent levels. (As an example, remember that much of of the revenue for local governments - and for schools - comes from property taxes, which still have a long way to fall, and will stay depressed for some time.) The $100 billion stimulus package for education was intended to give schools and districts a two-year reprieve so they could retool and be ready to operate in this very different funding landscape. And that doesn't seem to be happening.

Of course change is painful, and no one wants to let employees go; I understand that completely. But the reality is that by using all available funds to maintain the status quo, nothing is being done to prepare for a new funding reality that will inexorably hit in two years. The pain will be far worse then, since we weren't willing to feel a little pain now as we prepared.

New DHA white paper

I've just posted a new white paper - Unlocking the Full Spectrum of Community Support. This briefing highlights the trends that will determine the K-12 environment for the forseeable future (aka 'the new normal'), how community support can improve inputs and outcomes, and a few suggestions on getting started. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Tom Vander Ark is right

Interviewed in Scholastic Administrator, Tom Vander Ark, former head of the Gates Foundation's education efforts, and currently a partner in Revolution Learning, had this to say:

Q: Do you think that the federal stimulus is going to promote innovation and change?
A: I was hoping that we would see this financial crisis used more creatively to have fundamental conversations, but it's not really happening, not that I see. The downside to the federal bailout is that it puts a big Band-Aid on a system that's really obsolete.

Q: What happens if our schools don't make those dramatic changes?
A: The alternative will be a slow decline. We'll play this game for another 10 years while the world continues to pass us by.

Hat Tip: This Week in Education

Why aren't they talking about community support?

Looking back over the past year or so of my blog posts (infrequent as they may have been), I'm struck by the fact that so much of my writing has focused on finance and school funding, much more so than on partnerships or on education.

There are two reasons for this. The first is practical: much of what I'm writing on partnerships is now earmarked for publication in the K-12 Partnership Report, so not as much ends up here. (Though I do need to post more - there's a lot to be said and discussed.) The second is that economics is a fundamental driver of education policy and practice, and we have to understand changes in the economic environment - particularly those that directly affect school funding - if we want to understand the potential for advancing community/school engagement.

Note that I use the word "potential": despite what one might expect, there doesn't seem to be an automatic link between reduced funding and an interest in soliciting community support. While ARRA funding has partially blunted the likelihood of financial pain for the time being, the real issue seems to be that substantive public engagement is so far off the radar of many administrators that it just doesn't even come up as an option.

To that point: I participated in EdWeek's Powering through the Recession conference in Jersey City a few weeks ago, sitting on a panel at the end of the day to discuss finding new sources of support for schools. As I listened to other speakers and talked with audience members throughout the day, I was struck by the fact that no one was talking about how to respond to the recession.

No one discussed layoffs, operational efficiencies, or alternate sources of support: instead, they were all focused on how they could spend the stimulus money so that they could make a case for ongoing funding. (The two leading contenders, by the way, were teacher training and new data systems.) To be clear, I haven't heard anyone outside that event suggest even a possibility of continued funding; the USDOE has been pretty clear that it's a one-time event. But the people in that room were convinced that it would keep flowing, so long as they could show some kind of progress.

My impression was that the administrators in that room were so used to receiving all their support from the government that it framed their entire thought process. No one broke out of the box to consider other sources of support; the entire discussion was on where is the government money, what do I need to do to get it, and how can I keep it coming.

Thanks to the stimulus funds, administrators have two years to change their mindset before government funding truly does fall off a cliff. If the ARRA is truly a one-time source of funds, then its absence will expose schools and districts to a funding environment that will have eroded substantially even from the bleak landscape we see today. And at that point, they'll either look to their communities (though the smart ones will start now, to build the needed groundwork) or face some very hard decisions.

New website launched

It's past due, but DeHavilland Associates has just launched a dedicated website for our new K-12 Partnership Report newsletter: www.kprnewsletter.com. The site offers a sample issue and selected reprints from past issues.

Powering through the recession

I should have mentioned this sooner - but if anyone is planning to attend EdWeek's "Powering Through the Recession" conference in Jersey City on Monday, let me know. I'll be there as a panelist discussing alternate sources of support for schools.

Can we do it?

I'm thinking more about the USA Today article highlighting the downside of the stimulus - namely, that a lack of progress over the next two years is going to be a very bad thing for funding efforts in the future.

I recently heard Lynn Fielding speak on improvement in the early grades, and there are lessons to be learned from his work. He is chair of the school board in Kennewick, WA, and in his time on the board (20+ years) he oversaw a remarkable improvement in reading proficiency rates. Take a look at the chart below:



As you can see, they went from 57% of kids proficient in reading by 3rd grade to around 90% - an incredible improvement.

But the story behind the story is particularly interesting in light of the need for improvement within stimulus timeframes. You can see that this move from 57% to 90% took 10 years, and it came in two distinct waves: an immediate bump from 57% to 73%, then some real drift until a second wave pushed them to 90%.

Lynn's presentation at an event called Prepared To Learn, and his recent book Annual Growth, Catch-Up Growth, explain these two waves.

When they decided to take on "every child at grade level" as a mission, they did some research to see where they were starting from. And they found that kids are entering kindergarten within a span of six years of preparedness. (Conventional wisdom is that they're all fairly close together and will even out within a year or two.)

The first bump - from 57% to 73% proficiency in 3rd grade reading - came from a community engagement effort designed to promote reading behaviors in the home, such as reading to children, working with them on letter/sound recognition and the like. They had good community support and good buy-in, so the kids who were closer to grade level cleared the bar.

They were pleased with their progress and thought they were essentially done - that this big boost would continue until they hit their mark. But instead they drifted around that level for the next several years. It wasn't until they found the second key - adoption of a proven reading instruction model called Direct Instruction - that they hit their second wave and reached the goal.

Two lessons from this that I can see:

• Community engagement works. If we need to see improvements in a brief time frame, community engagement (not just parents, but all stakeholders) is a powerful and proven approach. It should be part of any district's toolkit for leveraging the stimulus funding.
• Community engagement, by itself, is not enough. It's going to take a commitment to doing what works, and not what's easy or conventionally accepted, within the school walls in order to make it the rest of the way. Community engagement can get you partway there, but the way that a school operates instructionally has got to be on target in order to create a substantive and lasting difference in outcomes.

The K-12 death spiral

Great commentary in Education Week titled "Death Spirals or Virtuous Circles?" While the writer is talking about universities and K-12 systems working together, it applies equally to any stakeholder.

An excerpt:

In many ways, the problems of K-12 and higher education institutions are more similar than ever. Both face accreditation pressures, money problems, enrollment issues, and rising health-care and pension costs. On some days, it seems as if both public education and public higher education are legacy-carrier airlines—high-cost, low-profit, maybe even dinosaurs.

The two share similar dynamics as well. The situation most dreaded by school systems and universities alike is a “death spiral.” Under such a scenario, student enrollment declines, leading to budget cuts, program cancellations, and further enrollment declines as a result. This cycle is hard to escape from, as the funding to develop new programs might simply not be there, prompting the school or university to offer less and less to fewer and fewer students.

School districts or universities in a cycle of decline are often extremely isolated. They find it difficult to trust outsiders and are loath to accept help from institutions that try to aid them. A kind of “groupthink” often develops, in which wishful thinking replaces real planning for the future. Without intervention from the outside, these situations do not turn around on their own.

Will budget problems lead K-12 education into a death spiral? I don't know. But what I do know is that many systems are isolated, without strong ties to their communities, and maintaining a wariness of working with community partners despite clear evidence of the benefits and the need to do so.

The author talks about the alternative: "virtuous circles," where small successes lead to larger ones and result in a vibrant institution. Let's hope that's the path we choose to take.

A new angle on the stimulus

An article in today's edition of USA Today highlights an interesting and under-reported (and under-discusssed) aspect of the stimulus funds flowing into education: what happens if we spend $100 billion and nothing happens? What if we see no real change in terms of student performance, school/district operations, or enterprise sustainability?

A few observers say they're concerned that a two-year span is not — and has never been — enough time to generate big gains. By 2011, they say, critics of greater education spending will undoubtedly cite the dearth of results to push for less education spending — perhaps even an end to federal funding.

"If you were trying to set the system up to look bad, one good way to do it is to throw an awful lot of money at it — money it can't possibly absorb in two years — and then expect that you're going to see changes in student achievement," says David Shreve of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Could the very thing that Duncan hopes will push public education into the 21st century set it back decades?

I think this is a valid point - even though most of the money is oriented towards stabilization (ie, saving teacher jobs), systems will be responsible for having made a significant impact on student performance in order to justify future funding - and two years isn't much time at all to make that happen.

Of course, I'll still argue that at least some portion of those funds should be invested in building a sustainable model - cutting costs, finding efficiencies, and building new sources of revenue. Let's hope that some superintendents agree - we'll find out at this event...

Nonprofits look for ways to generate more income

A great piece in last week's Wall Street Journal for nonprofits facing a changing environment: see Helping Themselves by Shelly Banjo.

The folly of the stimulus strategy

Struggling with the early impacts of the economic downturn, educators across the country were thrilled to learn that they would receive more than $100 billion over the next two years through the federal government’s stimulus plan. And rightly so: given that funding is going to continue to tighten for the foreseeable future, perhaps substantially, these stimulus funds give educators breathing space to figure out how to operate in this changed environment. As Jack O’Connell, state superintendent of public instruction in California told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s going to mean a softer landing for us.”

But as more information has become available on the desired uses of that money, it has become clear that none of the desired uses of those funds will result in a softer landing at all.

Without going into detail on the many pathways that money is taking into schools (see here for volumes of information on that front), states are being asked to use this money to make progress in four key reform areas (as listed here):

• Increase teacher effectiveness and address inequities in the distribution of highly qualified teachers
• Establish and use pre-K through college and career data systems to track progress and foster continuous improvement
• Make progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high-quality assessments
• Support targeted, intensive support and effective interventions to turn around schools identified for corrective action and restructuring

These are all worthy goals, of course – we might even see some kind of uptick in student achievement. And the feds are asking schools not to pursue programs that involve financial commitments beyond the life of the stimulus funds.

But how will pursuing any of these objectives result in a softer landing when the federal money runs out, and when state and local funds for education are likely far lower than they are today?

More effective and better-distributed teachers may in fact result in higher student achievement (assuming we know how to make teachers more effective – the evidence is thin on that front). But how will that help when the money runs dry and we have to let a lot of those teachers go? I hope some of that professional development includes management of larger classes, because they’re going to need it.

Standards and assessments are also worthwhile, but they won’t reduce operating expenses. Similarly, spending the next two years turning around failing schools will do nothing to ease the impact of significantly lower funding in 2011.

Data systems, on the other hand, could in fact reduce operating expenses, if they’re focused on replacing personnel by automating routine tasks. But there’s no evidence that this is the focus.

You would think that the two-year hiatus made possible by the stimulus bill would involve a mandate for finding cost efficiencies, reducing manpower through improved operations, and otherwise preparing for the inevitable. But there’s nothing anywhere in this bill, or in the buzz surrounding it, pointing to the need for systems reengineering, finding alternate sources of support, or anything else.

So after $100 billion in extra federal dollars washes through the system, and we’re left looking at a steep drop in available funds in 2011, how prepared will we be to deal with it? We’ve been given a two-year reprieve to start preparing; I hope educators are taking advantage of that time, whether or not the feds are asking them to.

"We had no choice"

It's unpopular for politicians to cut education budgets - and when they have to, they'll do a great deal of public hand-wringing about it, as seen in "Cuts mark education policy shift," which ran in the 4/13 Charlotte Observer:

The changes approved last week [ed: specifically, much larger education cuts in the Senate budget than those proposed by the governor] represent a significant shift away from policies to which legislative leaders and Democratic governors have been linked closely over the past 15 years.

“Nobody can deny that,” said Sen. Vernon Malone, D-Wake, co-chairman of the education budget subcommittee.

“We had no choice. We agonized over this, but we had no choice. We had to find the money somewhere.”

Agony aside, it's going to happen more and more. When Malone says that they have to find the money somewhere, he's talking about money for other spending obligations, some discretionary but many mandated. And since states are required to balance their budgets, they have no choice but to cut spending in areas like education.

And in fact, education is about to face two hits at the state level. Not only are states starting to reduce funding for K-12 education, but they are playing a shell game with the federal stimulus money earmarked for schools, as noted in "Schools' money is 'falling off the truck'," which ran in the 4/13 Washington Post:

Educators across the country are counting on a federal stimulus windfall to prevent teacher layoffs and improve schools. But while Washington is giving, some state and local governments are taking away.

After hearing that an initial batch of $11.8 million in federal funds would soon arrive in Loudoun County, supervisors slashed $7.3 million from the schools budget. They also made clear that if more federal recovery money flows to schools, schools might be asked to give back an equal amount of county dollars.

"The money is falling off the truck between Washington and the local schoolhouse," said Robley S. Jones, director of government affairs for the Virginia Education Association, which represents teachers.

This is the new reality - the job ahead of us now is to accept a future of reduced government funding and develop strategies for dealing with it. Since expectations for outcomes are only going to increase, that means finding alternate sources of support, getting better results with fewer resources (i.e., improving ROI), or more likely, both.

Quicker than expected...

In an article I wrote for the K-12 Partnership Report, I argued that government funding for education would continue to contract due to some major fundamental trends in our existing spending obligations. One of those trends is the gradual change from surplus to deficit in Social Security revenues, a change expected to occur in 2017.

Guess what? According to AEI, it's actually starting to happen now, eight years ahead of schedule. Yikes.