Tuesdays are education days in the Washington Post. There is usually a major story on educational issues in the A section, and Jay Mathews' online column "Class Struggles" comes on line in late morning. Today's print story can be found n page A19, and is entitled
Grants for Gifted Children Face Major Threat From Budget Ax. This posting will examine that article, as well as an accompanying chart of additional educational programs being slashed. I believe that this is an important issue - it is an example of how the budget straightjacket we are in - created by a combination of the Bush tax cuts limiting federal revenue on the incredibly wasteful expenditures of the Iraq adventure are having potentially serious impact on programs of importance elsewhere in the government.
The cause of the crisis in educational funding can be found in 6th graf:
Scores of federal programs must be cut back or eliminated this year, under the strict budget guidelines that Congress put in place to restrain spending growth. The administration's budget proposed more than 150 reductions and eliminations in non-defense discretionary programs in a bid to save about $20 billion in 2006.
But to catch our attention, the author, Shailagh Murray, begins with a tale of 6th graders from a very poor neighborhood in the Bronx:
In special sessions carved out of their lunch period, 27 sixth-graders at Mott Hall School in Harlem learned all they could this year about spina bifida, a severe birth defect that can be prevented if women take folic acid, a B vitamin, before and during pregnancy.
To spread the word, they conceived a "Folic Acid Awareness Week," spoke with relatives and neighbors, and taped a public service announcement with a jingle that goes, "Before you have a baby, you must take Vitamin B . . . "
The nine-week project was funded by the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program, which serves bright kids from low-income families. Because of its narrow reach and relatively small size -- it received $11 million in funding this year -- the program is a perennial target for the budget ax. President Bush proposed terminating the program in his fiscal 2006 budget, and the House provided no new funding for Javits grants in an education spending bill it passed in June.
It is not that this program does not have its supporters. The article talks about bi-partisan support, including Clinton, Grassley and Specter, the last of whom used his subcommittee chairmanship to find the money to cover this program as well as others. And in the case of this program, even the administration has acknowledged its value. Note the following:
C. Todd Jones, the Education Department's associate deputy secretary for budget, said there are no particular complaints about the Javits program. "The administration can't support continued funding for everything that's gone before," he said. "At a time of war, at a time of increased needs in homeland security . . . not all programs can continue, and this is one of those programs."
While I will return to this point later, I want to emphasize the last sentence above -- we re failing to fund programs that are acknowledged to be of value because of the costs of war and homeland security. In the latter category, we know how much of that money is being wasted. In the former, we know that billions cannot be properly accounted for, and that far too much money has gone to enrich certain corporations with long standing relationships with the administration and the Republican party. By contrast, these educational programs offer little opportunities for corporate profiteering.
The administration claims that the 10 programs in the list further down are not meeting their goals. That may depend on how one defines goals. of greater importance, at a time when our educational mission is to leave no child behind and to close the gaps between those who are better off economically and those that are not. it is worth noting that
Advocates say Javits grants are the only source of federal education aid for a small but important group of students -- disadvantaged children who show exceptional proficiency in academics or the arts. The federal government has supported gifted education on and off over the decades. The first surge came after the Soviets' successful launch in 1957 of Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite, signaling the dawn of the space age.
Here's more examples of where the Javits money
The program has funded about 125 demonstration projects over the years. One grant is helping to identify and cultivate bright children in the 23 poorest school districts in Mississippi. Another, in El Paso, provides bilingual Spanish and English high school honors courses. In Baton Rouge, La., Javits money is funding a statewide Web site for teachers of gifted students.
While I won't go through the entire description of the spina bifida project (you can read the article), as a demonstration project one of its goals is to provide a model that can be used by other schools, and that may have additional benefits. Thus it is worth noting the final paragraph:
The point of the project was for kids to learn how public policy is made. It is being replicated, with different subjects, at eight schools in Central Harlem, involving 32 teachers and about 600 kids. And it is not just the students who benefit, says Melanie Calvert, the project coordinator. She taught one teacher how to use the Internet. Her school had the right equipment, Calvert says, "but she didn't know how to use it."
The gifted program described in the article is but one of 19 on the chopping block. As a sidebar to the article, there is a chart of all the programs the Administration wishes to cut on the grounds that they have "no demonstrated results." I could not find the chart online, but here is the substance, with amounts of 2005 budget authority in millions of dollars
- Parental info and Resource Centers 41.9
- Arts in Education 35.6
- Elementary & secondary school counseling 34.7
- Alcohol abuse reduction 32.7
- Civic Education 29.4
- Star Schools 20.8
- National Writing Project 20.3
- Foreign-language assistance 18.0
- School leadership 14.9
- Ready to Teach 14.3
- Javits Gifted & Talented Education 11.0
- Exchanges for Historic Whaling & Trading Partners 8.6
- Community Technology Centers 5.0
- Mental Health Integration in Schools 5.0
- Dropout Prevention 4.9
- Women's Educational Equity 3.0
- Close-Up Fellowships 1.5
- Excellence in Economics Education 1.5
- Foundations for Learning 1.0
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Some comments on the above list. Most of these are what are called demonstration projects. They are intended to provide an opportunity to model a particular approach in one or more environments to see what impact if any they can have. I would note that much of the earmarking in the Highway Bill is for "demonstration projects" whose value is never otherwise assessed, which usually cost far more than almost all of these educational items, and which get through because they represent real pork to the districts of certain influential House members, who even if they are Conservative small-government Republicans have no trouble funding "demonstration projects" that despoil the land and add to environmental pollution . Too bad they are not willing to make equivalent investment in our children and our future. Of course, most of these programs do not provide the opportunity for corporations such as McGraw-Hill and Harcourt and the like to make profits, as they have been able to do from testing mandates and the accompanying curricular materials.
Let's look at a couple of examples from the above list.
The administration proposes eliminating the grants for Civic Education at the same time a new law requiring instruction on the Constitution on Constitution Day (Sept 17) goes into effect, a law passed at the insistence of Sen Byrd because he felt understanding and knowledge of the Constitution is so week - you can read an article about that from today's Washington Post entitled Law Requires Lessons on Constitution. As much as I admire Bob Byrd on other things, this is something that seems a bit silly, and on the edge of being an unfunded mandate; note following from the article:
Spokesmen for various federal agencies said yesterday that they were not sure how the law would be implemented.
Educators have received guidance from the Department of Education about how to implement the law and have been directed to various Web sites with lessons and information about the Constitution from which they can craft programs. The law offers no money to help with the lessons.
Another program being cut is the National Writing Project, this at a time when Colleges and employers have complained about the poor writing skills of students and employees, and when we have place a renewed emphasis on writing in the SAT (although those portions of the test really do not address writing in meaningful ways).
It's hard to believe given our shortage of people other than immigrants and their children fluent in any language other than English that we would cut any support of instruction in foreign languages. That would seem to be a critical need.
Those of you who are C-Span addicts will know about Close-Up, a project that brings students to the Nation's Capital to meet with governmental leaders, people in the press, and the like. This will cut the opportunity to participate for those who have less financial means.
We are a society that is quite economically illiterate -- perhaps that is why people vote against their own (and the nation's) economic interests, perhaps not. I teach in Maryland, which has had an increasing emphasis on economic learning as a part of it's testable content of eh high school Government test (passing of which is required for those students entering as freshmen this year). While there are materials for free from things like the Federal Reserve Banks they do not cover all of what students need to know. Other materials such as the Virtual Economics program are not fully accessible to all schools and all students as of yet (although they should be). Economics education should cover both governmental economic policy and individual economic decisions. Cutting this program seems foolhardy.
Please note -- this administration has made clear that it basically wants scientifically provable educational research, and has made clear that fully randomized tests are its gold standard. Not all of these programs are subject to that kind of evaluation,even though it is quite possible to demonstrate their effectiveness by qualitative assessment. That this administration refuses to recognize such evaluation is to me an indication of its a priori biases on educational matters weighing far more heavily than any real concern for costs of programs. One could also interpret it as a hostility towards anything that could make public schools more attractive and hence worthy of more public support. After all, many of these programs do not fit the model of NCLB which, given the requirement for 100% proficiency in all subgroups by 2014, and a pattern of Annual Yearly Progress towards that goal each year, is a model guaranteed to find almost all schools (except perhaps those in the wealthiest suburbs or that admit only by competitive processes) as "failing."
I hope this posting will prompt some discussion. I will acknowledge that not all of the listed programs need to be retained. I have no trouble having a process for evaluating continuation beyond which can generate the most influential group of backers.
I do not think this can be done as it is currently being done. Methinks we are still missing the necessary underlying debate -- what should be the purpose of our public schools. We do not have consensus on that. Call it if you will (and I do not like the particularly terminology) a "mission statement." For what it is worth, most schools have to create something similar when they undergo evaluation by the regional agencies for reaccreditation. I chaired our Philosophy and Goals subcommittee that wrote the statement the last we underwent such a process. A statement provides a template against which individual decisions can be measured -- how do they fit with our professed goals? We largely do not have that in public education, whether at a national or in most cases a state-wide level. People have been afraid to embark on such a discussion because they know that it will be a very heated dispute. Yet absent that discussion, no matter how heated, we instead fight piecemeal over smaller educational issues, with neither side of any conflict necessary displaying any consistency in their positions over the wider span of issues.
And yet usually people have a philosophical basis for how they argue on education, even if unstated. In school we talk about the "hidden curriculum." An example would be that we insist upon order because we require passes to go to the bathroom, we have all kinds of rules abut gum and clothing and language and headings on papers. Usually little of this is stated as the purpose of our schools, which in theory are supposedly preparing our students for democracy, even although these are very undemocratic things.
I think we need to make what is currently unstated the basis of an open discussion.
What do you think?