Joe Lacey, in his interview with DaytonOS, projects himself as a Dayton Board of Education member who is well meaning, sincere and deeply concerned about Dayton Public Schools (DPS). Lacey says he is currently outnumbered on the DPS School Board by a margin of six to one. Because of his frustration at his minority status on the Board, Lacey, in this Nov. 6 Board election, is actively supporting three Board candidates. The three Board candidates that Lacey is supporting are Sheila Taylor, Nancy Nerny and Shirley Crisp.
If Lacey’s candidates win, it looks like DPS will move to save some historic buildings now due for destruction. The buildings Lacey mentioned in his interview, for possible renovation rather than destruction, are Roosevelt, Wilber Wright, and Julienne. And, if Lacey’s candidates win, according to Lacey’s interview, it also appears that the DPS Board will begin to assert more control over the DPS budget and will become more reserved and reasonable in the magnitude of its requests for new money from the public.
One of Lacey’s goals is to get DPS to focus on hiring, supporting and retaining high quality teachers. Lacey’s goal — to focus on teachers — is certainly a good goal. But, stating a good goal is the easy part. Articulating a workable plan, by which goals have some chance to succeed, is the tough part and this is the part that is missing. Board candidates often say that their goal is for all students to achieve their potential. But again, the hard part is articulating a plan that has a reasonable chance to bring goals into reality. To talk about empowering quality teachers or to talk about helping students achieve their potential simply amounts to wasting time in wishful thinking — if there is no plan to back up such talk.
The problem is, the organizational structure of schools is fatally flawed. It is the organizational structure of schools that doom schools to failure. Any plan that must fit into the current organizational structure of schools is, therefore, also doomed to fail. What is obvious is that, for any plan to have a chance at long term success, the current organizational structure of DPS must become transformed. Supplying DPS with more money, of course, would help DPS. But voters seem to be sending the message that they don’t believe that the solution to the problems at DPS can be solved via greater funding. Voters, I feel, want to see a plan for profound system change.
School organizational structure is so ingrained in the tradition and practices of schools that, regardless of inherent and obvious weaknesses, the organizational structure of schools is difficult to challenge. The embedded theory of school system organization, in almost all public schools, says that quality comes from heavy regulation, bureaucratic processes, uniform contracts, equal compensation via a master contract, and rewards and punishments meted out via hierarchical control. It is a fallacy to think that this fatally flawed school organizational structure somehow produces quality in any schools. Quality in schools happens in spite of the flawed organizational structures, not as a benefit of these structures. All citizens — including those whose local schools are rated “excellent” — should wake up to the reality that public school systems, because of the way they are currently organized, are failing even those students deemed high achievers. (See my recent comment.)
Americans generally say that systems are best organized to achieve quality through free markets, through fair competition designed to inspire individual initiative and through the opportunity for individuals to be rewarded according to their ambition and according to market forces. Schools are organized in a way that is quite opposite of what Americans say they believe in.
And so here is the big question: what would a school system look like that would align with American beliefs about how to organize a system for quality? And if such a system could be designed, then what would be the steps to progressively transform the currently fatally flawed system into a better system?
Lay leaders of a board cannot be expected to be experts in organizational or educational theory. But elected board members can and should be expected to be experts in telling the truth, and experts in creating meaningful opportunities/venues where truth can be explored and recognized. A good and positive suggestion that I hope Joe Lacey and other Dayton Board members will consider, is that he and the rest of the DPS board begin a process to explore this central question: How should the DPS system be organized to produce quality efficiently? To make such an exploration, one idea is that the DPS create a Request for Proposal (RFP) process designed to create opportunity for individuals or foundations to present their best thinking. The idea would be that an RFP would create a process that would invite thinkers from the area and, in fact, thinkers from the whole country to contribute ideas as to what organizational transformation should look like and the processes by which organizational transformation could be attained.
Joe Lacey’s thoughts concerning the DPS seem sound and reasonable. But Lacey and the entire DPS Board need to be challenge to bolder thinking. They need to be challenged to tackle this central problem of organizational structure — a challenging problem that demands authentic leadership not just for Dayton Schools but all public schools. Joe Lacey and the new DPS school board can provide a great service not just to DPS but to public education in general by taking the risk of leadership and dealing authentically with this central educational system problem.
Market forces will not help public schools much because there is really no profit to be made in public schools (as opposed to prep schools for wealthier people). Public schools work reasonably well in affluent suburban districts. They work badly in urban schools because cities are populated by people fo the lower social classes where education is not valued that much and skills are not passed on. Instead you have the social legacy of poverty and, for African Americans, slavery and its modifications. Dayton has much more class segregation than other cities (Dayton would be more normal of Kettering were part of Dayton) so it is worse here than elsewhere but most cities suffer from the same issues.
There is no financial incentive for a market system to design better schools, or a means for markets to weed out bad ones. Everyone needs to go to a school and in our economy it needs to be a good one. Our system of colleges is something of a market system, although public colleges have modified it a lot. Quality and perhaps as importantly, elite prestige vary greatly between colleges. However we don’t try to send everyone to college, as we do to elementary and high school, so it is not as bad.
In order to bring up kids who come to school behind, we need to invest more resources not less. Unfortunately the political system is not set up to do that, particularly since urban people are a political minority. The majority represents suburbs and smaller communities, for whom the fact that they are not part fo the Dayton Schools is a selling point.
Of course schools are also financed by property tax levies, which creates and instant group of “no” votes among people with fixed incomes who can not afford to pay property tax increases. The Ohio Supreme court recognized this but the legislature refused to fix it. In Dayton, racial divisions also paid a part so it was also clear that whites voted no in large numbers. Presumably they view the Dayton schools as a black institution, and perhaps DPS could do a better job in white neighborhoods. In addition voters are only given choices about schools and social services, while wars and subsidies for business are not the subject of levies. For what ever reasons many voters do not want to pay these taxes, and the levy failure in Dayton is a big loss for kids, with fewer people to help, larger class sizes, less books and equipment, and fewer options. Only rarely can you actually do “more with less.” Usually, you get less with less, and that is what is happening here in Dayton.
Public schools are also subject to a cauldron of political and values agendas. Social conservatives want to push prayer, abstinence and patriotism. Business groups want to defeat unions. Unions want to protect workers. Economic conservatives want free markets. Various minorities want to be valued. This makes it difficult for public schools to be organized any way other than you decribe.
Bush’s No Child Left Behind law has aggravated the problem. It elevates proficiency tests into an end-all, beats up on ill performing districts (where the hard to educate kids are, and which are not where his political supporters live) but has no resources to do anything about it. Without resources even if you have motivation you have no means to improve. This just produces chaos. The real incentive is, in fact to leave kids behind by getting them out of your system, into someone else’s system (say Dayton), the streets, or prison.
Underlying all of this, I suspecty people realize that there is only so much space in the middle class, and don’t want to create too many competitors for their kids.
It may be fine with them if most Dayton kids have to end up working in low paid jobs in fast food and service industries.
Money of course is not enough. It is the starting point but it needs to be used wisely. I therefor think that we need something of Marshall Plan for urban schools, where we both invest large sums of money in them and we make sure they run properly. This may mean taking control from present administrators, reorganizing things etc. Your idea for soliciting the best thinking is a good one but probably needs to happen at a higher level than a local district. Since all urban schools ahve the same problems, we should have a national campaign to generate these ideas which can be brought to life locally. However they need resources to implement them and right now DPS doesn’t have resources to implement anything.
It is also hard to discuss local needs and the difficulties of financing them by local taxes without pointing out the billions of dollars our national government are spending on the wars in the middle east.
Thanks for the extended comments You’ve obviously given a lot of thought to this whole education question. I would like to converse with you about some of the points you raise.
You write:
Market forces will not help public schools much because there is really no profit to be made in public schools (as opposed to prep schools for wealthier people).
My response:
I disagree. There is a huge amount of money spent in public education. Dayton Public Schools, for example, will spend about $160 million this school year — about $10,000 per child. This $160 million does not include any calculation of the yearly share that should be apportioned for the huge capital outlays in buildings, equipment, etc.,
You write:
Public schools work reasonably well in affluent suburban districts.
My response:
I disagree. In my judgment, all public schools are operating at a level of quality that far below where they should be operating. In my judgment that I expressed in my last article — “How can we tell if a school is excellent?” — many districts who are praised as being “excellent,” in fact, are very mediocre.
You write:
In order to bring up kids who come to school behind, we need to invest more resources not less.
My response:
The key issue is not how much money is spent in schools, the issue is how the money is spent. Schools must be good stewards of their resources. In the case of DPS, it seems logical that the public eventually would say, enough is enough. If schools cannot produce quality by spending over $10,000 per child per year, is it reasonable to suppose that the school will produce quality if it spends, say, $11,000 per child per year?
You write:
Underlying all of this, I suspect people realize that there is only so much space in the middle class, and don’t want to create too many competitors for their kids.
My response:
WOW You are stating a provocative idea — the idea that the real purpose of schools is to validate and strengthen a system of exclusion. That idea would be worthy of a book length research project. But, regardless of the truth of this assertion, the fact still remains that there is a large constituency of voters who are prepared to support schools and who are looking for school leadership.
You write:
Your idea for soliciting the best thinking is a good one but probably needs to happen at a higher level than a local district.
My response:
I’m not sure what that higher level could be. Ohio law gives a local board has a lot of authority and in fact, puts the responsibility of school management at the local board level. There really is no higher level, according to Ohio Law, because the first principal of Ohio school law is the principal of local control. The fact is, local boards have much more authority than they ever choose to use — and amazingly, local board meetings often seem as goofy charades that simply waste everyone’s time. If the board of an urban district, such as DPS, would take steps at initiating authentic leadership, there would be lots of help available through foundations, universities, and state and national government to help that leadership find success.
>Dayton has much more class segregation than other cities …. so it is worse here than elsewhere but most cities suffer from the same issues.Underlying all of this, I suspect people realize that there is only so much space in the middle class, and don’t want to create too many competitors for their kids.
First–if we want students to be eager to learn, then we must reverse America’s cultural value for stupidity and ignorance. The “Aw shucks, I don’t read nothin'” affirmations by some of our national leaders ought to get them hooted from the platform; our publications ought to demand a higher standard of proof and accuracy. We should WANT to have Rhodes scholars and Nobel laureates as president, we should ignore vapid pop culture (and any publication that devotes much time to it), we should return to the intellectual atmosphere of the 1950s when weekly newsmagazines contained lengthy literary essays and the average middle-class citizen was conversant in visual arts, science, and symphonic music.
Second–I believe that school boards, administrators, and teachers can only do so much to solve the problems facing public education. No system will work well when it’s ill controlled, and the control of our public schools rests in our state capitols.
For decades, these state boards, legislators, and executives have said “the schools must do more with less” and, when the budget cuts diminish quality, “you won’t solve this problem by throwing money at it” (disregarding that they way they try to solve all other problems is to throw money–and that their own choices for their childrens’ education are often pricey private academies).
Dayton Public was making some small progress toward desired goals–and then the state’s wasteful system of “do it yourself” government failed again, and many excellent teachers were RIFed.
Generally I find this commentary insightful but a bit thin in some areas. For example–yes, Dayton spends an average of $10,000 per student–but if you factor out the severely disabled students who, in some cases, cost $60K per year, and the costs of free breakfasts and lunches (all Dayton students receive them, since over 90% qualify under poverty guidelines), then Dayton isn’t spending much more per pupil than other nearby districts.
But if we want to look at the big picture, then we need to get more of the education dollars directly to the classroom. Ohio could do so with a few fundamental changes:
1. Expand school districts. If we want to have locally elected school boards, have one per county like they do in Florida and other more successful states. In addition to spending less on school board salaries and expenses, we’d improve the quality of board members generally–does anyone really think that Bradford or Arcanum needs an independent board? Then again, why not just have one school board for the entire state, and have them make curricular decisions and superintendent appointments?
2. Change tax laws and funding procedures to guarantee a predictable revenue stream for the schools. Our current system does not keep pace with inflation, so every few years the schools must go for a tax “increase” (I’ve argued that it should be called an “inflation adjustment” rather than an increase)–and if the school levy fails, then not only do students suffer, but the levy must be pursued again and again–and EVERY time the levy goes on the ballot, it costs citizens thousands of dollars in election costs (not to mention advertising and diminished productivity by teachers and administrators)–John Husted and Jeff Jacobson and the others who have been leading Ohio for years now should stop this nonsense.
3. Eliminate football. I’m not anti-athletics, but football costs far more in facilities than most other sports, and is not particularly conducive to physical fitness (ref. recent articles about obesity among high school linemen–or look at Mangold’s little sister!). Substitute ultimate frisbee or some other low-cost aerobic activity. And let’s get all of the student body involved in athletics, rather than focusing resources on the few elite performers.
OK, my third suggestion just ain’t gonna fly. But the first two are the essential first steps–you cannot expect the body to work properly if the head is diseased, and so the first step is to clean up matters state-wide.
One other thing–your impressions of suburban school districts are wrong. Students in our suburban and rural school districts perform relatively equally to students in other nations on standardized tests. The U.S. as a whole comes in behind other nations due to the performance of our urban districts.
There are lots of good comments here; I am really glad I came to this website.
I agree with the following statement of Mr. Ruddick: “First–if we want students to be eager to learn, then we must reverse America’s cultural value for stupidity and ignorance.” While it is a monumental task, we need to do what we can. An example, many years ago I regularly attended the DPS school board meetings. Towards the beginning of each meeting they would put on a film clip showcasing some school. One time an elementary school was being showcased and the students were singing and dancing to rap. Boy, I could not think of anything more that would turn off middle class parents. Yet the Board seemed oblivous.
You also state: “Expand school districts. If we want to have locally elected school boards, have one per county like they do in Florida and other more successful states.” I disagree. Dayton got into this mess mostly on its own and it needs to get out of it on its own. You state: “In Dayton, racial divisions also paid a part so it was also clear that whites voted no in large numbers. Presumably they view the Dayton schools as a black institution, and perhaps DPS could do a better job in white neighborhoods.” You are entirely correct. The school system was viewed as being a black institution because of reverse racism in the district for a long time. Black students harassed white students and administrators were hostile or indifferent. Whlle white students did better on tests, for decades they dropped out at a higher rate. Scott Elliot wrote an article on this.
I understand that the graduation rates of whites are improving. If the Board wants white citizens to vote for levys, I suggest they “fess up” for the district’s lack of concern for white students and a pledge (followed by action) to improve discipline so that all students will be safe. The lack of discipline is not something that I blame any district, institution (no not even the Republicans or George Bush), entity, or business. I blame the DPS. We need to make our schools once again attractive to the middle class.
I agree with Mr. Bock’s comments about restructuring the schools. While schools are not businesses, certain organizational principles apply across the board.
Hi Rick. Just to keep things straight, I did state that bit about racial divisions; must have been someone else.
Regarding school safety–it’s a subset of the problem of discipline in the schools in general. Fifty years ago and before, the bias was strongly in favor of strict teacher/principal discipline, often to the point that students were physically abused. Now it’s gone to the other extreme; principals and teachers are unable to enforce effective discipline, in part due to fear of legal action and also that “we must compete for customers (eg students)” mindset.
I don’t believe we should return to the days of untrammelled teacher privilege. But I note that the state has no hesitancy in passing laws that prevent consumers from punishing corporations that manufacture egregiously unsafe products through “tort reform”; when will they pass laws that prohibit lawsuits against public schools when the faculty and administrators are operating within the procedures and standards of their profession?
But one big quibble: Dayton “got into this mess on its own”? That statement presumes that Dayton is not dependent on and at the same time controlled by the state. Moreover, the corollary to that attitude is “this region can prosper if our urban core is neglected”. The presumption is clearly erroneous; the corollary may be debatable but I doubt any regional leaders would give it lip service.
Response to some comments on my previous points.
1. Sure there is money in public education, but there is no way to make a profit at it. (Hiring uncertified or non-union teachers as a cut rate labor force is not an acceptable cost savings. And what else do you cut to make a profit?) The Edison group has tried to run schools at a profit that but their success is mixed, as that of most charter schools. Some Charters are ok and some are not, just like City schools, but none have systematically solved the problems that urban schools face. The market is not going to do that. Charters may market better but they have not yet educated better. Nothing about their existence equips them to overcome the obstacles urban kids face. Politically if you just had a bunch of charter schools as opposed to a centralized system, you wouldn’t have an urban school board or superintendant to be the focus of blame. You also couldn’t combine resources for libraries, computers and similar things. As one person pointed out, there are economies of scale if you had larger districts. Plus in a large dstrict you haven’t separated out the neediest kids, although in practice large districts tend to protect the middle class schools. Politically however suburbs essentially exist to avoid (in theory if not practice) the problems of cities, and it would be political suicide for any suburban leader to want to combine their schools with Dayton’s. Suburbs don’t even want to combine their 911 service with each other. Part of this is that people feel out of control and want their own little communities where they can have an impact. You can tell the difference. Even in Dayton, a City Commission candidate is likely to knock on your door, while a candidate for high office will only appear in controlled environments. Finding the right mix of local initiative and responsiveness while avoiding the limitations of local funding capacity is a major challenge. Still we no longer fight wars by asking local communities to raise their taxes. So it si a question of what we care about.
2. In addition to the expense of disabled children (Dayton Public actually does pretty well with them) Dayton has a lot of fixed costs from an aging physical plant. In addition, having all the charters means they don’t know how many kids they will have or where, so they can’t plan effectively.
3. As Ruddick points out, the funding system is a disaster. Dayton actually was making some progress, but relying on levies results in a mismatch of people on fixed incomes who can’t afford increased property taxes, with kids who get less from home and so need more from school. The places with the least tax capacity need the most. This may only change when people outside of Dayton recognize that they need an educated force of workers and citizens in Dayton or else the suburbs will go down the tubes with the city, even if it means spending more than it is necessary to spend on suburban kids.
4. Sure even the best suburban schools could be a lot more kid and learning friendly than they are. Any school is filled with compromises and less than ideal. Large Columbine type schools can generate their own problems. Some have suggested wholesale changes that might be good. However the suburbs are not where the crisis is. Urban schools are a crisis.
5. Discipline is not a racial issue. Lack of it holds back the better black kids as well as the white ones, whatever the race of the offenders. However people are always more aware of the offenses of the other group and more defensive of their own. Blacks going to school in white areas will have their own stories to tell. I also don’t think we need to beat or abuse students to discipline them. I am also a lawyer who gets annoyed when people blame litigation for the world’s problems, and particualry at the practice of legislatures selling immunity from lawsuits to various institutions, including schools. I also think that expulsion and suspension are deadly for kids, and we need some sort of school for them so they don’t get behind and eventually drop out.
6. I doubt that the Dayton schools have the resources to really engage the intellectual resources of the nation to fix this problem. And Dayton’s problems are similar for other urban districts. So what we need is a larger group to generate some political urgency. Ideally it would be a national government with a commitment to ending poverty like or better than we had in the 1960s. Bush did wrong when he removed the resources he had promised from No Child Left Behind. And as we all seem to agree, once the resources are committed we need to make the best use of them, again some “Marshall Plan” type thing where we get people who know what their doing to go in and set up things that will work. We will need things like smaller classes, more teachers and aids, books in libraries, up to date computers. Another thing is to make these schools positive places for teachers to work in, which few people think they are now. For all the importance we claim to give schools, we have few rewards for those who work in them, financial or otherwise. Some object to teachers’ unions but teachers were paid even a lot less before they came along. Salesmen like mortgage brokers and the like have made vastly more money than teachers. No doubt some of this is because teaching was seen as a profession for women and upwardly mobile people from immigrant or Appalachian groups, who could be paid less. Anyway that needs to change.
7. Similarly the idea that “Dayton got itself into this and Dayton has to get itself out of it” is inaccurate. Lot’s of people got Dayton into this, both inside and outside of Dayton. For instance the Supreme Court that decided that new suburban communities without a segregagtion history were safe haven for people who wanted to flee desegregation, all the people who fled, all the people who could care less about the people who stayed, all the people who designed and preserved the school funding system so that Dayton sould be one of the most impoverished communities with the most needy kids. Furthermore Dayton has little to get itself out of it with. The reality is this is a region and lives or dies as a region attempting to fit into a global economy. In addition we have higher power in the hands of state and federal officials, who are not that politically friendly to cities and their schools. This is not to defend all of the decisions of various DPS administrators and their money management, or the business community that provoked the strike in the early nineties and remains generally hostile to DPS, or to say every teacher and parent and kid in Dayton have done the greatest job they could. It’s that, Dayton didn’t just get itself in, it can’t get itself out, and we can’t affford the consequences.
8. Then there are some values questions raised here. Do we really value stupidity and ignorance? We may think that given President Bush’s public persona and the fact that voters elected him over Gore and by implication Clinton who obviously appeared smarter. This is a complex issue because of the mix of intelligence and values, the fear that intelligent people without values may take advantage of us, and the willingness of people to straddle the fence on issues that have no immediate consequences in their lives. For instance people who don’t believe science about evolution but have no problem with a war for oil which exists where it is for reasons explained by science but incompatible with their disbelief in evolution. That is much more complex than an issue of ignorance or stupidity. Anyway it may be less that we value stupidity and ignorance and more that we ration access to information, intelligence and wisdom.
Wow. I appreciate the fact that there is a lot of thoughtful comments to respond to. — I want to write another education article soon. There is a lot to think about.
I will start with the last comments by Stan Hirtle and go backwards.
Hirtle says, “The suburbs are not where the crisis is. Urban schools are a crisis.”
I disagree. Suburban schools may take comfort from the fact that they are not suffering from the same type of meltdown that inflicts urban schools, but, the fact is, suburban schools are very much in crisis. Our schools that should be our best, in fact, are fatally flawed; these schools deemed “excellent,” in fact, are producing results that are grossly inferior to the results they should be and could be producing. The failure of these best schools should alarm us all because this failure on the part of a key section of society very much imperils our future. (I want to develop a more carefully reasoned rant to show why I feel these conclusions about suburban schools are valid.)
Suburban schools like the idea that, because the government says so, they are excellent. But the criteria that guides the government’s evaluation is simply not adequate to make such a claim. It is OK for Ohio’s State Department of Education to indicate to the public that a local school district has accomplished 28 out of 30 indicators — but it is simply ridiculous for the state to make that next leap and proclaim that, therefore, because of its success in achieving these indicators, the local district who made such scores is “excellent.” The universe of school purpose /school excellence that should and could be the guiding criteria defining excellence for schools — particularly schools funded by citizens in a democracy — is simply very much broader than the narrow list of 30 “indicators” monitored by the state.
The key issue that leaders in suburban schools and urban schools must tackle is the issue of school purpose. If an architect is given an assignment to design a building, among the first questions the architect would want to know is: what is the purpose of this building? It is nonsensical to begin a design process without a clear sense of purpose. Once the question of purpose has been clearly defined, then the design process can begin. If a school is designed to accomplish authentic education, certainly it’s students will accomplish sufficient test scores — but such scores will be indicators, the byproduct of authentic education, not the purpose and end-all of that school’s efforts.
From purpose comes organizational structure. A local school board has the legal authority to make vast changes in its school system, and, I believe, if a local board could find the courage to tackle this difficult and central challenge of redesigning school organizational structure, it would receive a lot of help from many educational foundations.
The possibility that a local board may actually tackle the fundamental question of system organizational structure, I think, is feasible — because, I feel, there is a vision of school transformation that could be articulated that would be very appealing to voters and parents. The idea of combining local boards into one county wide district, on the other hand, I think, could never be translated into a vision of the future that could possibly gain sufficient support of voters and parents needed to make it happen, and, therefore, this idea of combining school boards is not an idea that should be advanced.
DPS spends over $10,000 per child per year; yes, DPS has extraordinary costs for special needs children, so, I’m thinking that for children in the regular program, DPS is spending $8,000, or so, per year per child. This is a lot of money, and a central question of organizational design would be to show how a school system’s financial resources could be used to best accomplish school purpose.
Stan Hirtle writes: “For all the importance we claim to give schools, we have few rewards for those who work in them, financial or otherwise. Some object to teachers’ unions but teachers were paid even a lot less before they came along. Salesmen like mortgage brokers and the like have made vastly more money than teachers.”
My response: I agree that teacher compensation is a key question that organizational redesign must address.
Rick Phillips writes: “I understand that the graduation rates of whites are improving. If the Board wants white citizens to vote for levees, I suggest they “fess up” for the district’s lack of concern for white students and a pledge (followed by action) to improve discipline so that all students will be safe. The lack of discipline is not something that I blame any district, institution (no not even the Republicans or George Bush), entity, or business. I blame the DPS. We need to make our schools once again attractive to the middle class.”
My response: DPS, unfortunately, is in a downward spiral. Solving the discipline problem, solving the learning problem — will require more money be put into the system — unless the system itself changes. It is a losing battle to solicit more money, while at the same time basically defending the status quo. The voters want something different and DPS, therefore, it seems to me, will need to forget about getting more money from the public and instead must find the resources that it needs by dramatically changing the school system organizational structure. This process of change will take years and a lot of pain and tears and continued degradation of DPS — or, alternatively, it seems possible to me, this change can occur through enlightened leadership that determines to lift up a vision of school transformation that will inspire new community support.
T. Ruddick writes: “First–if we want students to be eager to learn, then we must reverse America’s cultural value for stupidity and ignorance.”
My response: We can’t wait for America’s cultural values to change. The power of a school to influence students and a community is immense; the power of effective teachers to serve as learning models for students is immense. Schools cannot wait for America’s culture to change; schools themselves must provide the leadership and incentive for meaningful culture change within the students and parents that they encounter.
T. Ruddick also writes: “Second, I believe that school boards, administrators, and teachers can only do so much to solve the problems facing public education. No system will work well when it’s ill controlled, and the control of our public schools rests in our state capitols.”
My response: Ohio law gives local school boards a lot of authority. The prevailing principle that determines school law in Ohio is the principle of local control via locally elected school boards. A local board has wide latitude to take all kinds of actions but typically they never take advantage of the authority that Ohio law gives to them. For example, a local board has the authority to negotiate unorthodox contracts with its teachers, yet the structure of the master teacher contract is pretty much identical throughout Ohio regardless of the local district. A local board has the authority to initiate and control their own locally board controlled charter schools, yet local boards in Ohio have seldom initiated their own charter schools. Local boards have the authority; they need encouragement and they need public support for new approaches.
I agree with Mssrs Hirtle and Ruddick that outside factors have affected the decline of the DPS. However, I believe that the majority of the problems have come because of problems within the system. For instance, the deplorable lack of discipline. Many white parents and students who left were not racist. Indeed, they were in favor of integration. What they objected to was the abuse their students received and the almost total lack of concern of the administration.
Another failure was the crony system of appointing school principles. We had oodles of incompetent principles because the focus was not on the students but on “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
Another failure was the refusal of the Board to seek ot get rid of the busing order. It took the competition of the charter schools to motivate the Board to do that.
Another problem was the uncaring and sometimes even hostile attitude that the DPS took towards parents. It drove a lot of people away.
So we all agree some of the causes of DPS’ problem came from without and some from within. We disagree as to the imporatance.
And Stan, how can you say “we ration access to information, intelligence and wisdom. ” Even before the internet most schools had libraries and we had the Dayton-Montgomery County library. So there was a lot of information available then and, of course, we have the internet. How can society ration access to wisdom? Wisdom resides in people and there are wise people in every walk of life. You comment seems strange.
Well, Mike, if your estimate of $8000 per year for a typical student is correct–then they’re spending about $22K less than the best private academies. Tuition at CJ is upward of $7K now, and they supplement with endowment funds. So what’s your point?
Ohio law gives school boards a lot of authority–OK, they mainly get to hire a superintendent and a treasurer, and they get to approve budgets and personnel decisions and to administer real estate. Do you honestly think that there will be a lot of creative contracting they can pursue–and if so, how could it help? DPS has in fact sponsored charters–were you not aware of that? I wonder if you understand the restraints under which a local board must operate.
And suburban schools are in crisis? I haven’t seen that data. Do you wish to specify which ones locally? Do they follow economic strata, so that districts that resemble DPS (e.g., Trotwood) are low performers, districts that have high property values and few tax breaks (e.g., Oakwood) are high performers?
Here’s an interesting factoid; if we eliminated all special-interest tax breaks in the city of Dayton, then the property tax rate could be cut and the schools would have a surplus of funds.
How about for step one, we pass a national constitutional amendment that no tax rate may be extended to individual taxpayers or corporations? That simple act would eliminate the silliness of the city of Dayton’s almost automatic 75% property tax cut, and would focus city commissions on trying to support infrastructure to attract industry rather than engaging in tax-break onupsmanship.
That fixes the school funding problem–it also returns the USA to a more pure capitalist system.
The $8K spent per child per year at DPS is not fairly compared to $8K spent per child per year at a private academy, because the $8K per child per year at DPS does not include the large amount of capital outlay that DPS spends yearly on buildings and equipment. A private academy would need to cover capital outlay as part of its tuition. So, yes, it seems to me that $8,000 per year per child, allocated simply to pay for an educational program for a student without special needs, is a lot of money
My point is, if DPS is to gain the support of voters, DPS must convince voters that the per pupil budget is being spent effectively and purposefully. I’m saying that, in my judgment, in order for DPS to convince voters that it deserves voters’ trust, DPS must take dramatic steps that address heart of the problem — the organizational structure of DPS. Unless DPS takes dramatic action centered on this question of system organization, I doubt that voters will support further tax increases.
Ohio Law gives an Ohio school board the authority to set policy for its school district. Of course, a local board may not set a policy that contradicts Ohio laws concerning civil rights, safety, accounting practices, curriculum, teacher licensing, etc. But the overall authority to set policy gives a local board all the authority it needs to assure that local schools are under the control of local citizens chosen via a process of representative democracy. The authority to set policy assures that locally elected citizens are legally in charge of local schools — and that the professional educators, entrenched administrators, and union leaders are not in charge. However, school boards simply do not use the authority that Ohio law gives to them.
Yes, I know that DPS chartered the World of Wonder School (WOW). I knew Dick Penry who was the school’s first principal. But I’m wondering if there were such constraints placed on the master contract made with WOW, that the school was needlessly encumbered. I would like to know more about WOW. My point is that the DPS board, as I said, “needs encouragement and public support for new approaches.” I think that local charters sponsored by the local board should be investigated as a possible valuable component of a reorganization plan.
About suburban schools, you should visit your local “excellent” high school for a few days. In my article, “How can you tell if a school is excellent,” I write, “Common sense is offended by the notion that an excellent school would be one that operates a mediocre, boring program, with most of its students and teachers simply going through the motions — disengaged from meaningful learning and, by all evidence, intellectually dead.” This impression, this data, is anecdotal; schools shy away from producing hard data showing how bad they are, but reliable marketing data could be produced — if anyone cared to produce it — via surveys of teachers and students, via focus discussion groups, etc., that would reveal, I’m sure, the reality I am pointing to. But schools that are labeled “excellent” are not much interested in improving, not much interested in stirring up trouble with the public. Here is a fair guess: In highly rated suburban high schools, at least 40% of students are having a miserable experience; at least another 30% of students find the suburban high school experience an absolute waste of time and money.
Mike, let’s parse your language–taking your latest reply:
“It seems to me…”
“I would like to know more…”
“Here is a fair guess…”
Sounds to me like, somewhere in your subconscious, you acknowledge that your opinions have a shaky foundation.
Is DPS attempting to find ways to re-organize and to maximize efficiency? Yes. Even before the levy failure, the ranks of administration were being trimmed and a greater percentage of revenues was directed at instruction. The district used to spend less than 50 cents on the dollar for teachers, materials, libraries, etc.–now they’re over 60%.
(Note that Charters are excused from over 100 regulations that publics must obey–relax some of those for publics and we might see even more of the money going to instruction.)
Is WOW the only Charter currently sponsored by DPS? Educate yourself and perhaps you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Is 40% a “fair” guess? I’d prefer an expert opinion. We know from recent studies that the majority of high school dropouts cite boredom as their primary motivation, but the dropout rates in suburban schools are rather lower than they are in the inner cities. I can’t claim to have direct experience with more than one suburban school (where two of my sons attended)–certainly not educational paradise, but they both have received a solid education with satisfactory extracurricular opportunities–no boredom that I could discern (thanks in part to some good AP classes).
You write with a tone of certainty (and a delicious sense of righteous umbrage) but the knowledge gaps and misfits with data that I’ve seen cast some doubt on the reliability of your conclusions.
“And Stan, how can you say “we ration access to information, intelligence and wisdom. ” Even before the internet most schools had libraries and we had the Dayton-Montgomery County library. So there was a lot of information available then and, of course, we have the internet. How can society ration access to wisdom? Wisdom resides in people and there are wise people in every walk of life. You comment seems strange.”
This meant the way that only some people get benefit of learning what is going on, mostly from the high quality universities, where people who are going to run businesses or serve them in government go. Of course, intelligence and wisdom are not commodities that can themselves be rationed. Intelligence is a human quality and wisdom is the result of learning how to handle the information is out there. Of course there are libraries and the internet which provide information, but you also have to know how to find and discern things. The internet particularly has a fair measure of garbage, internet urban legends and the like, and anyone can put up a website and say anything. There is also a social component. Only some people go to schools where they learn to think about things, and are encouraged to do so. There are a small number of “self educated” people who take the time to do this on their own. Most people don’t have the time because of the requirements of daily living, work, family and maintenance. The demands on the working poor are incredible. The result is a real imbalance in understanding and sophistication between people who run things and those who don’t. How many people understand the subprime mortgage market and meltdown, for instance? That’s a ways off schools, but shows we don’t have an equal playing field in education needed for a democratic system to work.
It is highly entertaining watching the mental acrobatics needed to defend the Dayton Public School system.
Maybe if we throw even more money at it things will magically get better!
T. Ruddick, when you say that you’d like to hear an expert opinion about the state of education in suburban schools — about whether 40% of suburban high school students have a “miserable experience” in their highly rated schools — I am in complete agreement. The more light on a topic the better. In this friendly DaytonOS setting, I am simply giving one person’s judgment that 40% is a fair estimate — not exaggerated.
DaytonOS could be the focal point of a learning community that works together to illuminate topics of interest. This topic of school excellence / school organizational structure, it seems to me, is a topic that deserves a high priority of attention, and one that I want to pursue.
Everyone who is interested in meeting fellow DaytonOS bloggers is welcome to come to our next DaytonOS Meet-Up on November 20. (See the notice on Home page.)
D. Greene–it seems to me that we’ve heard for decades that you don’t fix education by throwing money at it. So far, none of the other proposals have fixed education. Therefore I politely suggest that throwing money is an alternative whose time has come.
Oh, “Throwing” is the wrong term. Spending, rather. With the time-honored notion that you get what you pay for.
We know, for example, that it takes several years for teachers to really get skilled at their profession. Currently the system is not set up to properly prepare new teachers, and so they wind up having to learn on the job. Moreover, the average length of a teaching career is under five years, and the main reason so few stick with it is financial. So we can perhaps improve education if we spend the money to give new teachers financial security so that they don’t leave the career, and if we spend more money on internship periods for teachers (just like we do for doctors or lawyers) so that they can learn the ropes better before being put in full charge of a classroom.
If this violates your personal political philosophy then I presume you don’t want to pay taxes to support our nation and community for our mutual benefit. If so, then please go live on a mountaintop and wear a hair shirt–I tire of people who think that America will maintain its standard of success if we all cocoon ourselves in ultra-isolationist self-intested defection.
If this violates your personal political philosophy then I presume you don’t want to pay taxes to support our nation and community for our mutual benefit. If so, then please go live on a mountaintop and wear a hair shirt–I tire of people who think that America will maintain its standard of success if we all cocoon ourselves in ultra-isolationist self-intested defection.
Please. Regardless of my opinion of the legitimacy of government funded education, I think it is reasonable for me to be critical of the way that public schools are often managed, and Dayton is a prime candidate for such criticism. For example, Percy Mack gets paid a bunch of money to basically keep the school treading water and then right after the DPS’ state rating falls again, he bolts for a better job as fast as he can. Government waste is endemic simply because the system operates without the normal incentive structures of a private institution. I’m not saying private companies and non-profits don’t waste money, but private schools are generally far more cost efficient and spend less on administrative costs.
I could give a few contracting horror stories that delineate the disgusting way in which DPS wastes money, but I’m sure you could find that yourself in about five minutes.
The fact is, their entire budget should be publicly available in a searchable format on the web, so that people can scrutinize the spending outlays themselves. Wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe if there were people holding the board and the administrators accountable things would change. Same goes for the mayor. The time will come as Dayton Daily News fades into irrelevance and their lack of courage on local issues becomes unimportant. The web will eventually become the primary nexus of opinion making.
For now, the DPS will probably continue to be wasteful and mismanaged, but in a city with such a broken political culture, what can you expect?
Actually, Mike, I already know some of the “horror stories” to which you refer, and they’re not just confined to K-12 public education. Want to have a discussion about how much the Ohio Education Association spent to renovate their office tower in Downtown Columbus?
But when you talk about how the public schools are mismanaged and wasteful, please place the majority of the blame squarely where it belongs. The state has mandated that our schools be run by locally elected boards, and few of them have membership with the requisite range of expertise to run an enterprise of such complexity. Moreover, the state has burdened schools with regulations that mandate waste–were you aware that there are about a dozen administrators in DPS whose jobs exist only because one or another source of public funds requires them? In other words, there are full-time administrators who were hired just to administer funds from one Ohio grant program, or one federal title initiative, etc.
The million+ dollars used for those administrative salaries could be used for other purposes if the legislatures in Columbus and Washington would roll back the clock to the 1950s and simply provide a lump sum to the school districts.
But when you talk about waste and mismanagement and you admit you haven’t even looked at the books, then I conclude that you’re being unfair with your accusations. Time and again, I have heard those blanket assumptions but I have never been presented with a shred of evidence to support them–other than “it must be happening.” District budgets are public record, and there are a lot of accountants out there who should be able to sort through them in a day or two–one such accountant is on the DPS board and has made accusations of waste, but in his two years on the board he has not yet found the numerical evidence to support his accusations. After a while, I start to want to see specifics–got any?
And as to the question of whether public institutions are more wasteful than private–I’ve taught in both public and private institutions, and the private ones have far more often mismanaged their funds (two of the private schools where I taught have closed their doors). I suppose we can recall the many cases where corporate CEOs were found to have lied on their resumes http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20021110/ai_n12479252 and in many of these cases, the corporation either continued to employ the imposters or else released them with a golden parachute–I can’t recall that happening anywhere in the ranks of public education. So I doubt your comparison–do you have any firm numbers to back this one up, or is it, like your general “waste and mismanagement” claim, unsupported?