Right Priorities but…

I have been watching and listening to multiple state and local leaders articulating their priorities for next year. And much of what I hear is music to my ears. I support a longer school day, I support universal pre-K, and I support no increase and, if possible, a decrease in local and state taxes. What is there that anyone could argue with in this ambitious agenda?

If you take a look at much of the K-12 education that we already provide in our local communities, there are often areas where more could be done or more resources are necessary. I live in an excellent school district but we are nevertheless constrained. There are a significant number of excellent districts; and there are unfortunately too many districts that are far from excellent. Dated facilities, limited technology, dated textbooks, and limited support services are just a few of the symptoms of districts that are not able to provide what is needed. And please remember that the end result of not providing the inputs that are necessary is that the children in the schools are at a disadvantage, one that often lasts throughout their careers and their lives. These kids would benefit from universal pre-K and they would benefit from a longer school day but before we do more, with an added cost, we first need to make sure what we are doing is being done as well as possible.

Universal pre-K and a longer school day are very worthwhile objectives but cannot be implemented with the present resources and obviously require added funding. Where will that come from? Vastly greater government or school efficiency? At the margin perhaps there are a few resources that can be reallocated. But the bulk of what is necessary will have to come from added taxes. Either very visible taxes such as income or property taxes or more subtle taxes such as sales taxes or fees. Other than income taxes, much of our tax structure is regressive. Increased taxes can be positioned as impacting only the rich, or millionaires, or the top 1%. But if the tax is only on the top 1%, and if the increase is reasonable, I doubt that sufficient funds will be generated for what needs to be done. Who, then, do you tax next?

Robust growth can of course lead to more employment, higher income, greater purchases and as a consequence, more revenue for government. Our economy is stronger but the growth won’t be sufficient to provide the resources we need. The reality is that at best we will be able to make token progress in these new priorities given the constraints we operate under. And if that is the case, my vote and my priority would be to concentrate on doing better what we are already doing rather than do more but with too little of it done well.

Outcomes Assessment

My car, similar to many recent model domestic and foreign cars, has a stop/start engine capability. If I apply the brakes, the engine stops within a few seconds and once I step on the accelerator, the engine springs back to life almost seamlessly. Initially, I wondered about the reliability of the stop start technology. My painful experience with a Chevrolet Vega has conditioned me to expect that once the engine stops, good luck in getting it started again. But the experience to date, through thousands of miles of driving, has relieved my anxieties and built up my confidence. I know that start/stop works and that it is reliable.

As noted above, the start/stop process is almost seamless but you are nevertheless aware that the engine is stopping and starting. But this is a small price to pay for saving gas and being more economical. But that leads to the following key question: what is the savings involved and in a cost benefit analysis, how does the savings compare to the extra costs involved. In other words, I am looking for outcomes assessment on the car level.

When outcomes assessment first surfaced in higher education and also in K-12 education, I wondered whether these efforts were really necessary. There were many outcomes that were clearly present, so what was the necessity of a comprehensive effort in this area. There were also substantial additional costs involved in undertaking any comprehensive assessment effort. However, working with outcomes assessment over these recent years and seeing how it now leads naturally to continuous improvement has convinced me as to the wisdom of the efforts in this area. Especially the migration of assessment to the individual areas and courses in the curriculum has convinced me that on both the micro level and the macro level, education and our students are the beneficiaries.

On the K-12 level, I am equally convinced about the benefit of comprehensive outcomes assessment but I am also somewhat more concerned. I have this feeling and some supporting data to go with the feeling, that assessment has resulted in an overemphasis on testing. And too much testing too early in a student’s career replaces a love of learning with a sense of apprehension which is clearly counterproductive. We need a balance and we need assessment that is imbedded in the curriculum rather than overemphasizing examinations.

I am a lifetime subscriber to Consumer Reports and a tremendous fan of their highly systematic assessment of the worth of many products and many services. Their testing of cars and their surveys of car owners constitute a model of assessment in the moment and over time that has been unmatched for many years, and still is unmatched by any of the competition.

Teacher Evaluation

At all levels of education in the New York area, the key conversation at this moment in time revolves around the APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) which will beginning now affect New York’s  K- 12 teachers and administrators.  Be it in public schools or in schools of education, the education community is focused on what APPR means and what the impact will be.  Nationwide, the equivalent of an APPR (and a more common curriculum)seems to be in various stages of development . For me, as a long time supporter of  comprehensive on-going evaluation of  faculty at the higher education level, including student course and teacher ratings, peer observations, ongoing support and feedback, I also support K-12 comprehensive evaluation of teaching . 

The major portion of these performance reviews will look a lot like the performance reviews already been taking place continuously in K-12 education.  Classroom observations are and will continue to be an important part of this matrix.  But there are differences between APPR and what has existed before.  An important factor in the new evaluations will be the progress demonstrated by students on standardized state or comparable local examinations. How much this component will actually be is still in dispute, and will depend on the results of litigation as well as collective bargaining negotiations before being fully decided.  What is not in dispute is that after 2 years of being evaluated as ineffective, a teacher’s job could be on the line.

As a school board member, I am more and more involved in discussions on APPR and I also know that our School of Education, Health and Human Services is fully involved in how to prepare our teacher education students for APPR as well as how to prepare local school districts to be as successful as possible with APPR.   I want APPR to work, but I am very worried as to how it will work.

The economics of K-12 public education is not in good shape. A tax cap with too little legislated mandate relief will clearly require we educate our students with less available dollars.  Class size, support services and other enrichment activities will likely suffer. At the same time, with the implementation of higher standards on statewide examinations as well as a transition to a mostly national common core curriculum, we will be expecting our students to do more and do better.  And our teachers will be judged individually on how successful they are in making this happen.

Even if our teaching becomes even more effective, the end result when all the other factors are included could be students doing no better than before or perhaps even worse.  How will that factor into the evaluation of teaching?  And for those of us in higher education, as our future students go through what could be a less robust K-12 education, we may end up with students who are less well prepared (even though the APPR and the common core curriculum was motivated by our wanting to more effectively prepare students for higher education).  And do we have the resources, if in fact that should happen?  I know that as an economist, I have a bias in terms of how important economics is in so much of what we do.  But here is another example of, with the best of intentions but with far from the best of economic times, the results may be in question.

K-12 Education Leads the Technological Way

My kids are in 4th grade and in 7th grade.  Two week ago we had “meet the teacher night” for the 4th grader and last week we had “meet the teacher night” for the 7th grader.  For the 4th grader, her education is centered around one teacher.  For the 7th grader, the day has nine separate periods—one is for lunch; the remaining 8, for 7 subjects since English has a double period of time.  For my middle school daughter, I followed her exact schedule, except each of the classes was substantially abbreviated.  What all the classes had in common (except for physical education), both in elementary school and in middle school, was that the teachers made extensive use of the smartboards in their room.  And this use was not just made to impress the parents; I know from my kids that the smartboard is utilized throughout their time in school.

My kids are both good athletes.  But when they are not involved in sports and when they have discretionary time, they are very into TV, the computer, the IPOD, the Wii, the DS etc.  They are very stimulated by technology, much more so than I was when I was growing up.  Of course, when I was young there were only seven TV channels, and when additional channels and the VCR arrived, those were considered major technological breakthroughs.

The norm in a college or university is not to have a smartboard in every classroom.  They tend to be available in the larger classrooms and less so in the smaller classrooms.  Is this lack of universal availability a plus or is it a minus?  I would not advocate for a smartboard in seminar rooms.  The interaction you are looking for in a seminar could be undercut by a smartboard which might be a distraction in this setting.  But what about the many regular classes that have between 25 and 50 students?  The visual display, the access to information, the ability to make the class notes available electronically (so that a student could just listen and watch and not have to take notes at the same time) are all tremendously appealing.  I know that an economics course could come more alive via a smartboard and I believe the same is true for other disciplines.

I am not looking for students to be addicted to a smartboard because in many real world setting, the boards will not be there.  On the other hand, more and more students are used to learning this way and it may be a more effective way to transmit knowledge and stimulate thinking. We need to test this hypothesis.  In addition, and this is simply a perception that may not at all be grounded in reality:  given that most colleges and universities have less technology in typical classrooms, does it give a sense to students and their families that in some ways this is not “higher” education. Is there a technology gap between many goods K- 12 schools and many good colleges and universities?

I am not ready to advocate for smartboards in every classroom but just as higher education looked carefully at the issue of requiring students to buy laptops and bring them to class, we should just as carefully study the smartboard issue.  We clearly have smart faculty and smart students: would a smartboard requirement make the picture complete?