Yes I Am Listening, A Dialog Between Educators in Their Home

This came to me from my spouse. I' was going to respond but it is just not necessary.We are beginning a series of pieces sharing our views. His role is a small schools Superintendent. I believe this was written as a letter to the editor.

What do Schools Need: Better Spending, Less Spending or More Spending?

The CA Governor's recently proposed, across-the-board, 10% budget cuts have a variety of complex meanings for public schools. There are also some simple meanings that these they bring to mind in terms of the state and condition of Californian public schools. During my twenty-plus years in California's public schools, I have witnessed under-budgeted schools getting less and less of the essentials of a world-class education while the demand for results in mandated-testing grows ever more ambitious and perhaps unrealistic. My research suggests that this less funded trend, which began with the passage of Prop 13, has left California schools ranked 47th out of the 50 states in level of money spent on schools. Our results on tests are equally low in the national comparison. Comparing California students and American students to international test results also yields a stark and disheartening analysis.
While much of the last twenty year's public rhetoric about education suggests its not how much we spend but how we spend it, I suggest that many problems cannot be solved by prudent spending alone. Some schools spend their money more wisely than others and achieve marginally better results, but all are suffering from depleted budgets. All are struggling to provide what are considered basic components of schools in other states and nations. Nurses, counselors, small class sizes, reading and art specialists, effective special education programs, smaller administrator to student ratios, even librarians. I am told we once had some of these things in California. We don't now and 10% cuts won't yield them.
These cuts and the generally inadequate funding of Californian schools are the fundamental cause of the very achievement gap that the state and federal government claim to want to shrink. Poor children and children of color are experiencing a greater gap in their relative achievement and educational opportunity even as many in government pat themselves on the back for marginal, aggregate test score gains. Here is a word to the public about testing. Regardless of the test, scores tend to go up after several years, until the deficiencies of that test become apparent. A new test is instituted, and the process repeats. While this gives the appearance of improving schools, little is accomplished in the areas of innovation and transformational change.
The skewering of Californian schools as failing institutions is a smokescreen for interests who'd rather not pay for public education, and if they have to, desire to do so at the lowest possible levels. This rhetoric suggests it’s not what you spend but how you spend. Clearly it’s both.
In my mind, this is the time for schools, communities, and citizens to use their vote and their money to fund public schools at world-class levels. Together, we can determine what our aims are, and we can facilitate and encourage innovation and creative change processes. It is not the time for cuts: it is time for world-class funding and world-class hope. It is time for the average citizen to realize that the quality of public schools is directly related to their own financial, social, and civic well-being. It is also directly related to the quality of their community and the quality of their local and state economy. We need to invest in the future and expect great things rather than cooking stone soup and hoping for a bouillabaisse. Our model ought to conjure the image of a family saving for their children’s future or a business investing in capital equipment and infrastructures. Our children are the bridges and roadways of the future. Instead, we fund education at the level of basic utility, letting the grass turn to weeds and minds turn towards other avenues.

California has likely always produced a large crop of world-class learners and young people. They enter our world class colleges, pay enormous fees, develop enormous debt yet do amazing things in life that foster the economy and the society of the next generation. While it’s a large crop in overall numbers, it’s a small percentage of the total population. Our rhetorical goal so often stated is for every child to have this type of achievement, access, and opportunity. We are running on three cylinders of an eight cylinder V-8. When we feed the engine, already sputtering and backfiring, with less and less fuel, things happen.

When you spend as little as we do on basic needs for children, two sorts of things happen. Families with more resources to draw from seek rich experiences for their children's learning in the private sector. They buy private lessons, libraries, computers, sport team participation, vacations, and private school enrollment. At the same time, the poorest children have fewer resources to deal with basic, more pressing needs like rotting teeth, hunger, and reading help. There are no free Sylvan learning classes and less and less accessible health care. Our goal, an admirable one if sincerely put forth, is to create such a condition that the negative impacts of poverty, racism, segregation, and classism can be overcome in one generation by a majority of American youth. If we succeeded or even began to make headway towards this loft and transformational goal, I would predict a greater development of wealth making and prosperity than has been seen since we rallied to fight defeat Fascism in World War II.

The state of California is on the same track it has been in these many years since the passage of Prop 13. It's a formula for economic disaster. We do not inhabit a trickle-down economy. We live in a creative-class economy measured and valued by patents and inventions. Whatever was left of California’s golden age of education has long since trickled away. We are now in a creative economy where those who are educated and innovative succeed. They can take their dollars, their talent, their technology, and their tolerance and leave when things get too messy. They are not tied to a region or state or even nation. The Creative Class wants public schools that bring the arts and sciences and technology to their children. They want to be involved in the school and community and they want their children to have the best.

What is needed in my mind is a collaborative desire for these same essentials for all kids. Regardless of whether the motivation for funding is altruistic, democratic, or self-interested; all three seek the same results, because good schools beget good communities and good economies.
I suggest we find a level of funding in California that can provide every child, regardless of race, family income level, or geographic location with an education we often develop for the student we label the "Gifted and Talented." It should fund a school day rich with the arts, science, math and technology; full of hands-on, real world experiences, with linkages to career and community. The school day and year should also be highly interactive with universities and the business community. This is the sort of education we are trying to develop in our little District in Ventura County, obviously using the meager resources we have. This is the type of education we believe will develop the creative and innovative skills and knowledge sets necessary for all children to thrive, not just survive in the 21st century.
Just as we need adequate resources, it is also time to shed generations-old patterns of repetitious, mundane, disconnected, bureaucratic, compartmentalized, and non-responsive, compliance seeking rather than empowerment producing organizational behavior that has come to be associated with schools and government-run institutions in general. It is time to do as the nation of Scotland has; declare our children our state and nation's treasure.
Let’s begin by making sure our children's teeth don't rot, that they are well fed, feel safe, can read and solve problems well by the end of the third grade. This will cost more money than we currently spend. It will also require dramatic change in some places that have continued to repeat the same ineffective processes for decades.
I believe these changes can come when we as schools, communities, and citizens realize that we are all directly, financially, civicly, and socially linked to the success of our state's children. How well they do is the most important factor in how well we will all do in the long run. One can use the image of thinking of other people’s children and a future where they will be your daily care-taker. Together with our students we can build schools that will graduate students who can care for us personally as well as stewarding the democracy, the economy, and the very survival of the species and planet.
Let us all make a commitment to move onward and upward towards a world-class education for every child, the same education that we all want for our own kids.


My unwanted wife comments might include a laptop for every child both at home and at school. With access to the learning taken for granted for the children entering our Harvards, MIT's, CalTechs, Stanfords.