I’ve been drafting a post about what our current board members said about redistricting when they were running for the board, and I came across this moment, on a different issue, from the 2011 school board campaign (transcript after the jump):
All five of those candidates, after they were elected, supported the plan to close Hoover Elementary and build 500-student schools in cornfields on the edge of town. (Four of them voted “yes” on the closure. Swesey, after explaining why she was going to vote “yes,” voted “no” when it became clear that there were enough votes to pass it without her support. In any event, she later opposed reconsidering the closure.)
It’s enough to make you wonder whether there’s any point in going to candidate forums.
Sure, board members can change their minds about an issue. But if you run for office on one platform, and then suddenly realize, after you’re elected, that you support a very different one, shouldn’t you get the community on board for your new opinion before imposing it?
Sunday, May 25, 2014
School board should reject top-down approach to redistricting
I posted last week about some of my doubts about the superintendent’s recommended elementary school boundary changes. But there’s another, more basic objection to the proposed maps: there’s no reason to believe that they have the support of the community.
If watching national education policy for the last ten years should teach a person anything, it’s skepticism toward top-down “reforms.” From the creators of No Child Left Behind to Arne Duncan to Bill Gates to proponents of the Common Core, today’s education “reformers” have one thing in common: they’re so sure they’re right that they don’t care whether the affected communities agree. As they impose their policies on local school districts, regardless of whether the people in those districts want them, they often use the most high-minded rhetoric. When the people who want to privatize education and close schools in impoverished neighborhoods—inevitably citing studies about “student achievement”—tell you that their cause is “the civil rights issue of our time,” it’s a good moment to be skeptical.
The proposal to enact major boundary changes to meet the district’s diversity goals, largely by sending kids from low-income families to schools farther from their homes, has some unfortunate parallels to other top-down policies. I believe its supporters have the best of intentions (unlike some of the obviously profit-driven participants in the national ed reform debate). But there’s no indication that supporters of this approach have persuaded the community of its wisdom, or even that they’ve persuaded the low-income families who are its supposed beneficiaries and who will bear the brunt of the disruption. The board shouldn’t impose a change of this magnitude if the community doesn’t support it.
I’d feel differently if the current board members had run for office advocating major diversity-driven boundary changes, but they didn’t. (On that, more in my next post.) Nor has the community “engagement” process demonstrated support for that approach. At the community workshops, the district pointedly instructed the public to take the diversity policy’s numerical goals as a given, asking the participants only for input on how to use redistricting to meet the goals, not on whether to do that. It’s almost as if the district learned its lesson from the facilities workshops: if you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.
I sometimes hear, in response, that “you can’t please everyone,” but that’s just fighting a straw man. Of course you can’t please everyone; no one is suggesting that every change has to be unanimous. Any redistricting is going to make some people unhappy. But that can’t justify imposing a change that doesn’t have the support of most of the broader community. It’s a big leap from “You can’t please everyone” to “So therefore we should adopt my ideas regardless of what the community wants.”
It is understandably tempting for people, even for those who consider themselves progressive, to impose their policies on the community when they have the chance, even without public support. But in the long run, that just legitimizes the kind of top-down government-by-elites that is hostile to progressive values (and to many strands of conservative values as well). If you’re against top-down governance only when you disagree with the policies, you’re not against top-down governance.
Everybody’s got a great idea. The best thing you can do for people, though, isn’t to impose your great idea on them. It’s to empower them democratically. Then try to win them over to your idea. I’m sure that in any community-driven system, many of my ideas would be voted down, but I’d trade all of my policy preferences for a school system that reflected the community’s values. I’d much rather put my kids’ education in the hands of the greater Iowa City community than in the hands of any set of people who think they know better.
Related posts here and here.
.
If watching national education policy for the last ten years should teach a person anything, it’s skepticism toward top-down “reforms.” From the creators of No Child Left Behind to Arne Duncan to Bill Gates to proponents of the Common Core, today’s education “reformers” have one thing in common: they’re so sure they’re right that they don’t care whether the affected communities agree. As they impose their policies on local school districts, regardless of whether the people in those districts want them, they often use the most high-minded rhetoric. When the people who want to privatize education and close schools in impoverished neighborhoods—inevitably citing studies about “student achievement”—tell you that their cause is “the civil rights issue of our time,” it’s a good moment to be skeptical.
The proposal to enact major boundary changes to meet the district’s diversity goals, largely by sending kids from low-income families to schools farther from their homes, has some unfortunate parallels to other top-down policies. I believe its supporters have the best of intentions (unlike some of the obviously profit-driven participants in the national ed reform debate). But there’s no indication that supporters of this approach have persuaded the community of its wisdom, or even that they’ve persuaded the low-income families who are its supposed beneficiaries and who will bear the brunt of the disruption. The board shouldn’t impose a change of this magnitude if the community doesn’t support it.
I’d feel differently if the current board members had run for office advocating major diversity-driven boundary changes, but they didn’t. (On that, more in my next post.) Nor has the community “engagement” process demonstrated support for that approach. At the community workshops, the district pointedly instructed the public to take the diversity policy’s numerical goals as a given, asking the participants only for input on how to use redistricting to meet the goals, not on whether to do that. It’s almost as if the district learned its lesson from the facilities workshops: if you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.
I sometimes hear, in response, that “you can’t please everyone,” but that’s just fighting a straw man. Of course you can’t please everyone; no one is suggesting that every change has to be unanimous. Any redistricting is going to make some people unhappy. But that can’t justify imposing a change that doesn’t have the support of most of the broader community. It’s a big leap from “You can’t please everyone” to “So therefore we should adopt my ideas regardless of what the community wants.”
It is understandably tempting for people, even for those who consider themselves progressive, to impose their policies on the community when they have the chance, even without public support. But in the long run, that just legitimizes the kind of top-down government-by-elites that is hostile to progressive values (and to many strands of conservative values as well). If you’re against top-down governance only when you disagree with the policies, you’re not against top-down governance.
Everybody’s got a great idea. The best thing you can do for people, though, isn’t to impose your great idea on them. It’s to empower them democratically. Then try to win them over to your idea. I’m sure that in any community-driven system, many of my ideas would be voted down, but I’d trade all of my policy preferences for a school system that reflected the community’s values. I’d much rather put my kids’ education in the hands of the greater Iowa City community than in the hands of any set of people who think they know better.
Related posts here and here.
.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Expensive construction is expensive
According to the latest school board agenda packet, the administration is recommending that the district delay the renovation and expansion of Twain Elementary that was supposed to begin this summer, because the bids came in much higher than expected.
It’s not a good sign when the very first project in the Facilities Master Plan has to be delayed and re-bid, “with possible revisions in the scope,” because it’s too expensive.
At some point, won’t it make sense to reconsider tearing down existing capacity while building new capacity elsewhere? I’m all in favor of Twain getting renovations, air conditioning, and a gym or multi-purpose room, but what is the urgency about adding new classrooms? Under the most recent redistricting proposal, both Twain and the new South elementary school will be only two-thirds full. Even if the district wants to leave some extra space to try a magnet school at Twain, the capacity is there in the short-term, and the addition can wait. But instead, the Twain project includes not only renovations but an addition—and then it turns out to be so expensive that the whole thing may be delayed.
Just wait until we see the actual price tag for the Mann and Longfellow additions, which are much bigger than the Twain addition. Both of those schools could have gotten air conditioning, renovations, and multi-purpose rooms sooner if the projects hadn’t been accompanied by huge, expensive additions—none of which would be necessary if Hoover were kept open. Now those schools will have to wait much longer—all the while wondering whether the projects will ever happen as planned, or whether they too will end up facing “possible revisions in the scope.”
We don’t need to tear down 300 seats of capacity at Hoover. We don’t need to build 330 seats of new capacity onto Longfellow and Mann. We don’t need to rush into adding capacity to Twain. What those buildings need is air conditioning, renovations, and multi-purpose rooms. The district’s drive to shift toward fewer, larger elementaries, farther away from where people live, is what’s delaying and endangering the construction that we actually need.
.
It’s not a good sign when the very first project in the Facilities Master Plan has to be delayed and re-bid, “with possible revisions in the scope,” because it’s too expensive.
At some point, won’t it make sense to reconsider tearing down existing capacity while building new capacity elsewhere? I’m all in favor of Twain getting renovations, air conditioning, and a gym or multi-purpose room, but what is the urgency about adding new classrooms? Under the most recent redistricting proposal, both Twain and the new South elementary school will be only two-thirds full. Even if the district wants to leave some extra space to try a magnet school at Twain, the capacity is there in the short-term, and the addition can wait. But instead, the Twain project includes not only renovations but an addition—and then it turns out to be so expensive that the whole thing may be delayed.
Just wait until we see the actual price tag for the Mann and Longfellow additions, which are much bigger than the Twain addition. Both of those schools could have gotten air conditioning, renovations, and multi-purpose rooms sooner if the projects hadn’t been accompanied by huge, expensive additions—none of which would be necessary if Hoover were kept open. Now those schools will have to wait much longer—all the while wondering whether the projects will ever happen as planned, or whether they too will end up facing “possible revisions in the scope.”
We don’t need to tear down 300 seats of capacity at Hoover. We don’t need to build 330 seats of new capacity onto Longfellow and Mann. We don’t need to rush into adding capacity to Twain. What those buildings need is air conditioning, renovations, and multi-purpose rooms. The district’s drive to shift toward fewer, larger elementaries, farther away from where people live, is what’s delaying and endangering the construction that we actually need.
.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Board needs to consider both costs and benefits of proposed attendance zones
When the school board was debating its Diversity Policy last year, I had mixed feelings. It does seem wrong that the district’s low-income families are packed very disproportionately into three or four elementary schools, and it’s not hard to imagine how that could put a strain on the resources of those schools. The Diversity Policy was an attempt to address that problem. It did so by requiring that the percentage of kids receiving free- and reduced-price lunches at any school—the district’s proxy for low-income status—be no more than fifteen percentage points above the district-wide average. What bothered me about the Policy, and the reason I ended up opposing it, was that it committed itself to those numerical goals without any inquiry into what it would take to meet them. I don’t think it makes sense to adopt a policy that pursues one value with no consideration of its effect on other, possibly competing values. (In fact, that kind of approach is the cause of many problems in education policy today. See posts here and here.)
I didn’t get too worried about it, though, because I knew that any implementation of the policy would need to get board approval, so the discussion of costs and benefits could wait until there was a concrete proposal for meeting the diversity goals. Now the superintendent has recommended specific redistricting maps for portions of both the east and west sides. This means we can finally get a sense of just what it takes to reach the diversity goals, and just what the concrete disadvantages are. My fear, though, is that the board will argue that it has to adopt these maps to “comply with the policy,” and that we will never get the discussion of whether the benefit of pursuing the goals outweighs the cost.
In the community meetings that the district held to get public input into the map-drawing process, the issue of whether to pursue the goals was always kept off the table. People were asked only to discuss how to pursue the goals through redistricting. It’s as if the district is determined to implement the policy without ever discussing—or seeking public input on—whether the costs outweigh the benefits.
But there are costs, and not just fiscal ones. The map-drawing process has made it clear that the burden of meeting the goals through redistricting falls primarily on the kids from low-income families. There is no way, for example, to bring Kirkwood’s FRL rate down without sending many of its FRL kids to schools much farther from their homes. For complicated domino-effect reasons, it also requires sending many FRL kids who go to Coralville Central to a more distant school, too, even though Coralville Central’s FRL rate is close to the average.
The same is true of FRL kids at Twain and Grant Wood schools. In some cases, it’s very clear that low-income areas (e.g, Broadway and Dolphin Lake Point) have been singled out to be sent to more distant schools. (I understand that the construction of a new school on the east side means that some redistricting has to happen there. But it’s clear that some of the choices of how to do that were driven solely by meeting the diversity goals.)
When you live off Fifth Street in Coralville, walking to Lincoln is a very different task than walking to Kirkwood. It’s especially a concern when you’re talking about families who have fewer resources and may be less able to drive their kids to and from school—for example, in bad weather. The district could offer a bus, but taking a bus to school is also different from walking to a nearby school, and could, for example, make it harder for kids to take part in after-school activities.
There are also legitimate concerns about the intangible costs of identifying some kids as being from low-income areas and as being brought into a different school for the stated purpose of spreading the FRL kids out. (I don’t even like using the phrase “FRL kids,” but that is how the policy works, and “low-income kids” is an even worse shorthand.) And there are concerns about how welcome those kids will feel, and about how their destination schools will respond to their presence there.
There will also be disruption for all kids, rich or poor or in-between, who are affected by the boundary changes. At Coralville Central, for example, eighty percent of the current students will be assigned to other schools. Maybe that kind of short-term disruption should not carry much weight if there are clear long-term benefits—though that’s easy to say if you’re not the third-grader who has to go to an unfamiliar school while her friends go somewhere else. Either way, it’s still a cost that should factor into the analysis.
Do these possible costs outweigh the possible benefits? There is no obvious right answer. My inclination is not to presume that I know better than the people who are supposed to benefit from the policy. But I’ve seen no evidence that the district’s low-income families on the whole support this policy, or that they agree that they’ll be better off as a result of these proposed attendance zone changes. That would make a big difference to me, but (so far, at least) it just isn’t there. Without that, the board shouldn’t adopt such large-scale boundary changes that would send so many kids from low-income families to schools much farther from their homes.
.
I didn’t get too worried about it, though, because I knew that any implementation of the policy would need to get board approval, so the discussion of costs and benefits could wait until there was a concrete proposal for meeting the diversity goals. Now the superintendent has recommended specific redistricting maps for portions of both the east and west sides. This means we can finally get a sense of just what it takes to reach the diversity goals, and just what the concrete disadvantages are. My fear, though, is that the board will argue that it has to adopt these maps to “comply with the policy,” and that we will never get the discussion of whether the benefit of pursuing the goals outweighs the cost.
In the community meetings that the district held to get public input into the map-drawing process, the issue of whether to pursue the goals was always kept off the table. People were asked only to discuss how to pursue the goals through redistricting. It’s as if the district is determined to implement the policy without ever discussing—or seeking public input on—whether the costs outweigh the benefits.
But there are costs, and not just fiscal ones. The map-drawing process has made it clear that the burden of meeting the goals through redistricting falls primarily on the kids from low-income families. There is no way, for example, to bring Kirkwood’s FRL rate down without sending many of its FRL kids to schools much farther from their homes. For complicated domino-effect reasons, it also requires sending many FRL kids who go to Coralville Central to a more distant school, too, even though Coralville Central’s FRL rate is close to the average.
The same is true of FRL kids at Twain and Grant Wood schools. In some cases, it’s very clear that low-income areas (e.g, Broadway and Dolphin Lake Point) have been singled out to be sent to more distant schools. (I understand that the construction of a new school on the east side means that some redistricting has to happen there. But it’s clear that some of the choices of how to do that were driven solely by meeting the diversity goals.)
When you live off Fifth Street in Coralville, walking to Lincoln is a very different task than walking to Kirkwood. It’s especially a concern when you’re talking about families who have fewer resources and may be less able to drive their kids to and from school—for example, in bad weather. The district could offer a bus, but taking a bus to school is also different from walking to a nearby school, and could, for example, make it harder for kids to take part in after-school activities.
There are also legitimate concerns about the intangible costs of identifying some kids as being from low-income areas and as being brought into a different school for the stated purpose of spreading the FRL kids out. (I don’t even like using the phrase “FRL kids,” but that is how the policy works, and “low-income kids” is an even worse shorthand.) And there are concerns about how welcome those kids will feel, and about how their destination schools will respond to their presence there.
There will also be disruption for all kids, rich or poor or in-between, who are affected by the boundary changes. At Coralville Central, for example, eighty percent of the current students will be assigned to other schools. Maybe that kind of short-term disruption should not carry much weight if there are clear long-term benefits—though that’s easy to say if you’re not the third-grader who has to go to an unfamiliar school while her friends go somewhere else. Either way, it’s still a cost that should factor into the analysis.
Do these possible costs outweigh the possible benefits? There is no obvious right answer. My inclination is not to presume that I know better than the people who are supposed to benefit from the policy. But I’ve seen no evidence that the district’s low-income families on the whole support this policy, or that they agree that they’ll be better off as a result of these proposed attendance zone changes. That would make a big difference to me, but (so far, at least) it just isn’t there. Without that, the board shouldn’t adopt such large-scale boundary changes that would send so many kids from low-income families to schools much farther from their homes.
.
Friday, May 9, 2014
The needless, drastic rezoning of Coralville Central
It’s become clear that the district intends to comply with its diversity policy almost entirely through redistricting, not through incentives or “voluntary movement,” and primarily by moving kids from low-income families to schools that are significantly farther from their homes, and without regard to what those particular families might want or what the larger community wants. I don’t feel much sympathy with that project. I hope to find time to comment on it at more length sometime soon.
In the meantime, one aspect of the proposed maps seems indefensible, no matter how you feel about the larger project. Coralville Central is a school with an free and reduced-cost lunch (FRL) rate of 42% -- just a few points above the district average and easily in compliance with the diversity goals. Yet the latest proposed map would take 80% of its kids and move them to different schools, bringing in kids from other schools to fill those seats. What possible logic could drive that proposal?
I’m guessing that it’s because the diversity policy requires attendance zones to be contiguous and prohibits “islands.” The most direct way to lessen the FRL imbalance on the west side would be to trade students between Lincoln (4% FRL) and Kirkwood (74% FRL). But it’s difficult or impossible to connect any part of Lincoln to the Kirkwood zone, so the plan uses Coralville Central as a kind of middleman. If that’s the rationale, it’s a bad one. Contiguity isn’t important enough to justify enormous changes to the attendance zone of a school that could otherwise simply be left alone.
I have a lot of doubts about moving kids from Kirkwood to Lincoln, but at least I can understand the logic. Major changes to the Coralville Central zone make no sense at all.
UPDATE:Here’s a counterargument: Many of the families who are currently bused to Coralville Central from the neighborhoods north of Route 80 are within two miles of Kirkwood, and thus would no longer qualify for a bus. So the proposed map would enable the district to discontinue those buses. Much of that cost, however, wouldn’t be saved, but shifted. Putting those Coralville Central kids into Kirkwood would then mean that a roughly equal number of Kirkwood kids would have to move out, and the new plan would put them into Lincoln, reducing the FRL disparity between Lincoln and Kirkwood. Some would go to Lincoln, and some would go to Coralville Central, bumping Coralville Central kids into Lincoln, with the ultimate effect of reducing the FRL disparity between Lincoln and Kirkwood. Some of the transferees to Lincoln would automatically qualify for a bus, and the rest might be given busing anyway because of the difficulty of walking from Coralville to Lincoln.
So the proposed map means that fewer kids from relatively well-off families are taking the bus to school and more kids from low-income families are, for the sake of bringing down FRL disparities. Whether that’s a good idea is debatable, but at least it has a rationale.
Either way, the result is enormous, all-at-once changes to current attendance zones. Whether the larger community supports that kind of “start-from-scratch” approach to boundaries is a question that the district does not seem eager to ask. At all of the community redistricting meetings, the district has instructed people not to question whether the diversity goals are a good policy, but just to discuss how to meet the goals. Many people at the meetings have been understandably resistant to this kind of paternalistic “engagement.” The district has demonstrated no interest in wanting to know what the public thinks about the most central question raised by the maps: whether the cost of meeting the diversity goals outweighs the benefits. Why?
.
In the meantime, one aspect of the proposed maps seems indefensible, no matter how you feel about the larger project. Coralville Central is a school with an free and reduced-cost lunch (FRL) rate of 42% -- just a few points above the district average and easily in compliance with the diversity goals. Yet the latest proposed map would take 80% of its kids and move them to different schools, bringing in kids from other schools to fill those seats. What possible logic could drive that proposal?
I’m guessing that it’s because the diversity policy requires attendance zones to be contiguous and prohibits “islands.” The most direct way to lessen the FRL imbalance on the west side would be to trade students between Lincoln (4% FRL) and Kirkwood (74% FRL). But it’s difficult or impossible to connect any part of Lincoln to the Kirkwood zone, so the plan uses Coralville Central as a kind of middleman. If that’s the rationale, it’s a bad one. Contiguity isn’t important enough to justify enormous changes to the attendance zone of a school that could otherwise simply be left alone.
I have a lot of doubts about moving kids from Kirkwood to Lincoln, but at least I can understand the logic. Major changes to the Coralville Central zone make no sense at all.
UPDATE:Here’s a counterargument: Many of the families who are currently bused to Coralville Central from the neighborhoods north of Route 80 are within two miles of Kirkwood, and thus would no longer qualify for a bus. So the proposed map would enable the district to discontinue those buses. Much of that cost, however, wouldn’t be saved, but shifted. Putting those Coralville Central kids into Kirkwood would then mean that a roughly equal number of Kirkwood kids would have to move out
So the proposed map means that fewer kids from relatively well-off families are taking the bus to school and more kids from low-income families are, for the sake of bringing down FRL disparities. Whether that’s a good idea is debatable, but at least it has a rationale.
Either way, the result is enormous, all-at-once changes to current attendance zones. Whether the larger community supports that kind of “start-from-scratch” approach to boundaries is a question that the district does not seem eager to ask. At all of the community redistricting meetings, the district has instructed people not to question whether the diversity goals are a good policy, but just to discuss how to meet the goals. Many people at the meetings have been understandably resistant to this kind of paternalistic “engagement.” The district has demonstrated no interest in wanting to know what the public thinks about the most central question raised by the maps: whether the cost of meeting the diversity goals outweighs the benefits. Why?
.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Magnet schools I’d like to see
Our school district is thinking about turning one of our elementary schools into a magnet school. I think it would be great if the district could make a magnet school work, though I do have some questions about the idea. In any event, the news got me thinking about what sort of magnet school “themes” I’d find most appealing. Here are my ideas:
I won’t hold my breath. Most of them are probably illegal.
.
- School’s Not Boring Magnet School
- Humane Lunch Period Magnet School
- Students Have Autonomy Magnet School
- Intrinsic Motivation Magnet School
- Local Control Magnet School
- Free Time Is Important Magnet School
- Think For Yourself Magnet School
- Standardized Tests Are Overrated Magnet School
- No Homework Magnet School
- Democracy and Individual Rights Magnet School
- Question Authority Magnet School
I won’t hold my breath. Most of them are probably illegal.
.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Little kids, not goblins
Not a perfect analogy, I know, but for what it’s worth: In 2009, our elementary school became a receiving school for families who chose to transfer out of “schools in need of assistance” under No Child Left Behind. About sixty or seventy new students showed up at the school. Not all of them were eligible for free-and-reduced-price lunches (“FRL,” our district’s proxy for low-income status), but enough were that the school’s FRL rate rose significantly. By 2010-11, the FRL rate was more than twice what it had been four years before.
My only point is: This was not a big deal. I can’t speak for other parents, but I had three kids at the school and so was in contact with a lot of other families and kids there. The particulars of the transition were rocky, since the influx of new students overcrowded the school and was announced just days before the school year started. But the presence of the new arrivals at the school just wasn’t a big deal. They were just a bunch of Iowa Citian little kids.
I suppose the orthodox thing to say is that the increase in racial and economic diversity enriched the experience for everyone. Maybe it did, I don’t know. All I know is that, at least in terms of my own kids’ school experience, the presence of the SINA transfers at the school was a big non-event. If we hadn’t been told it was happening (and it hadn’t caused crowding and last-minute logistical problems), I doubt I would even have noticed.
I certainly can’t speak for the families who transferred in. I don’t know whether they found it a welcoming place or whether it improved their kids’ school experience. I wasn’t crazy about the way the school administration reacted to the change. That was the year the school implemented PBIS; it felt as if the administration had decided that the arrival of the transfer kids was exactly the moment when everyone needed a more intense (and more dehumanizing) kind of behavior management. But that was a problem with the administration, not with the kids. The kids were fine.
I know people have a lot of different concerns about redistricting; I share some of them. I don’t like the process the district has used; I was against the particular diversity policy the board adopted; I think there is value to keeping the distance to elementary school short, and to minimizing disruptive changes to kids’ lives. I’m never automatically persuaded by assertions about what “research has shown.” But I don’t need an academic study to convince me that we don’t need to pack the bulk of our low-income families into three or four elementary schools, some of which have FRL rates near eighty percent. I can’t help but think that we can bring those numbers down without doing anything outlandish with the boundaries.
In any event, to the extent that fear of the unknown is playing a role in the discussion, it shouldn’t. It’s easy to imagine stuff that just isn’t real.
.
My only point is: This was not a big deal. I can’t speak for other parents, but I had three kids at the school and so was in contact with a lot of other families and kids there. The particulars of the transition were rocky, since the influx of new students overcrowded the school and was announced just days before the school year started. But the presence of the new arrivals at the school just wasn’t a big deal. They were just a bunch of Iowa Citian little kids.
I suppose the orthodox thing to say is that the increase in racial and economic diversity enriched the experience for everyone. Maybe it did, I don’t know. All I know is that, at least in terms of my own kids’ school experience, the presence of the SINA transfers at the school was a big non-event. If we hadn’t been told it was happening (and it hadn’t caused crowding and last-minute logistical problems), I doubt I would even have noticed.
I certainly can’t speak for the families who transferred in. I don’t know whether they found it a welcoming place or whether it improved their kids’ school experience. I wasn’t crazy about the way the school administration reacted to the change. That was the year the school implemented PBIS; it felt as if the administration had decided that the arrival of the transfer kids was exactly the moment when everyone needed a more intense (and more dehumanizing) kind of behavior management. But that was a problem with the administration, not with the kids. The kids were fine.
I know people have a lot of different concerns about redistricting; I share some of them. I don’t like the process the district has used; I was against the particular diversity policy the board adopted; I think there is value to keeping the distance to elementary school short, and to minimizing disruptive changes to kids’ lives. I’m never automatically persuaded by assertions about what “research has shown.” But I don’t need an academic study to convince me that we don’t need to pack the bulk of our low-income families into three or four elementary schools, some of which have FRL rates near eighty percent. I can’t help but think that we can bring those numbers down without doing anything outlandish with the boundaries.
In any event, to the extent that fear of the unknown is playing a role in the discussion, it shouldn’t. It’s easy to imagine stuff that just isn’t real.
.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
School budget cuts are only the beginning
This is an extended version of my guest opinion in the Press-Citizen today.
Families in the Iowa City area were disappointed to learn of the school district’s planned cuts to band, orchestra, foreign language and other programming because of a $3.6 million budget shortfall. Many have contacted state officials to urge them to increase funding for K-12 education. But the state is on the verge of making matters worse, not better—and causing more cuts—if it moves forward with its plan to adopt an expensive new regime of standardized tests.
When Iowa adopted its version of the Common Core standards, it also became part of a consortium of states that have pledged to adopt new Core-aligned standardized tests, called the Smarter Balanced Assessments. The legislature has not yet approved the Smarter Balanced tests, but it has required that Core-aligned tests be implemented by 2016 and has tripled the number of grades in which the tests would have to be given. These changes were adopted with bipartisan support.
The tests currently in use, the Iowa Assessments, cost about $3.50 per student to administer and are required in three grades. By conservative estimate, the new tests will cost at least $22.50 per student and will be required in nine grades. That means that the state is about to make districts spend at least nineteen times more than they are currently required to spend on standardized testing. (Because our district already tests in nine grades, it would have to spend over six times as much as it currently spends.)
And that’s just the cost of the tests themselves. Because the new tests are designed to be administered by computer, they would also require a substantial investment in new technology. They would also almost certainly require an ongoing increase in tech support staff.
The legislature also decided to require a science assessment in nine grades. The Smarter Balanced Assessments do not include a science component, so districts would have to pay for additional standardized tests to meet that requirement. Those tests could cost another $10 per student.
Where will all the money come from? If the state spends that much more on standardized testing—at the same time that the Governor is pushing tax relief—the funding can only come at the expense of other educational needs. To pay for all this gold-plated testing, the schools will have to make even more cuts like the ones we’re seeing now. Will French go the way of German? Will band and orchestra be cut from elementary school entirely? Will class sizes increase? Will teachers be laid off? What else will we have to sacrifice for the sake of all this testing?
So yes, people should contact their legislators and the Governor. But it’s not enough to ask for more education funding. We should demand that the state let us fund the kind of education we value, instead of imposing its own idea of test-driven education on our schools.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard protest after protest about the cuts to music, foreign language, and other programs. If the state chose not to implement expensive new standardized tests, would there be even a single complaint? How did our schools end up so far from what our community values?
Here’s some additional information that I couldn’t fit into the guest opinion:
There are several reasons to think that the Smarter Balanced Assessments will cost more than the $22.50 per student estimated by the consortium. First, that figure includes only the year-end “summative assessments,” not the optional additional tests the consortium offers, which could add another $5 per student. Second, the cost figures are only estimates; some of the administration and scoring services will have to be purchased from private vendors, who may well charge more than the consortium estimates. Third, paper-and-pencil versions of the test, which could be necessary if the technology is not ready, will cost an additional $10-12 per student.
One reason the Iowa Assessments are relatively inexpensive is that they are produced by the University of Iowa, which provides them to Iowa school districts at cost. Other states pay as much as $15 per student to use Iowa-created tests, but that’s still a significant savings over the cost of the Smarter Balanced tests.
The legislature may well appropriate funds to pay for new standardized tests, though it’s unlikely to cover all the associated expenses. But even if it does, that’s money that it could have used for other (more compelling) educational needs. If the state won’t give us the allowable growth that we need to pay for things like music and language classes, it will be because it has already spent the money on standardized tests.
There has been an interesting back-and-forth between the state Department of Education and the legislature on the Smarter Balanced tests. Under both Governors Culver and Branstad, the Department made a commitment to the Smarter Balanced consortium to adopt the tests. Meanwhile, though, the legislature decided that schools would have to continue using the Iowa Assessments until it decides otherwise. That put the Department in an awkward spot. The Department continued to push for the Smarter Balanced tests, but the legislature decided only that it would settle on some set of Core-aligned tests by 2016-17, and it created a task force to make a recommendation. The task force has not yet issued its report—but its members were all chosen by the Department.
The legislature did decide to triple the number of grades in which tests would be required, starting in 2016-17. The bill to create the assessment task force and to require testing in nine grades received bipartisan support, including the support of every legislator from Johnson County, including Senators Joe Bolkcom, Bob Dvorsky, and Sandra Greiner, and Representatives Dave Jacoby, Bobby Kaufmann, Vicki Lensing, Mary Mascher, and Sally Stutsman.
The federal government, including the Obama Administration, also bears responsibility for this increase in testing. Iowa’s push for increased standardized testing was part of its attempt to receive federal Race to the Top funding, which incentivized exactly that approach. Alas, even though we adopted the Common Core standards and joined the Smarter Balanced consortium, we didn’t get the money.
Education in Iowa recently had a terrific post on just how little we know about Iowa’s readiness to shift to computer-based testing, including a discussion of testing debacles in other states that “ought to be keeping Iowa proponents of Smarter Balanced Assessments up at night.” An excerpt:
Of course, there are also non-fiscal objections to the role standardized tests now play in our schools. Here are FairTest’s concerns about the Smarter Balanced Assessments.
Where does the money go? It’s hard to say exactly, because each state will do its own contracting with vendors for Smarter Balanced test administration and scoring. But you can bet that Pearson stands a good chance of getting those contracts in Iowa.
Needless to say, standardized testing, together with all its associated “educational services,” is a major industry. Pearson’s North American Education division, for example, reported £536 million in operating profit in 2012—the equivalent of about $900 million.
Does anyone think that the Smarter Balanced Assessments—or for that matter, the Common Core standards—would have been adopted on such a wide scale if there weren’t millions of dollars to be made by for-profit testing companies like Pearson?
The same bill that increased the required testing also established a “teacher leadership” program that will take experienced teachers out of the classroom to spend more time mentoring junior teachers; it will begin in 2015. We have yet to see how this program will affect local budgeting decisions: will more programs become expendable, or will class sizes grow, when the most experienced teachers start mentoring other teachers instead of teaching kids? (The legislature did appropriate funds, but again, that could only make less money available for other needs.)
Notice that our district is already using the Iowa Assessments in three times more grades than it’s required to (not to mention all the other standardized tests it gives). Apparently that category of expense didn’t come up when the administration was making budget cuts.
The single best place to go for information about the status of standardized testing in Iowa, and of the Smarter Balanced Assessments in particular, is the Education in Iowa blog. Its posts on Smarter Balanced Assessments are here.
Source note: The current requirement that the Iowa Assessments be given in fourth, eighth, and eleventh grade is in Iowa Code section 256.7(21)(b) and (b)(1). The requirement that testing be given in third through eleventh grades as of 2016 appears in section 256.7(21)(b)(2), which also requires the science assessment.
.
Families in the Iowa City area were disappointed to learn of the school district’s planned cuts to band, orchestra, foreign language and other programming because of a $3.6 million budget shortfall. Many have contacted state officials to urge them to increase funding for K-12 education. But the state is on the verge of making matters worse, not better—and causing more cuts—if it moves forward with its plan to adopt an expensive new regime of standardized tests.
When Iowa adopted its version of the Common Core standards, it also became part of a consortium of states that have pledged to adopt new Core-aligned standardized tests, called the Smarter Balanced Assessments. The legislature has not yet approved the Smarter Balanced tests, but it has required that Core-aligned tests be implemented by 2016 and has tripled the number of grades in which the tests would have to be given. These changes were adopted with bipartisan support.
The tests currently in use, the Iowa Assessments, cost about $3.50 per student to administer and are required in three grades. By conservative estimate, the new tests will cost at least $22.50 per student and will be required in nine grades. That means that the state is about to make districts spend at least nineteen times more than they are currently required to spend on standardized testing. (Because our district already tests in nine grades, it would have to spend over six times as much as it currently spends.)
And that’s just the cost of the tests themselves. Because the new tests are designed to be administered by computer, they would also require a substantial investment in new technology. They would also almost certainly require an ongoing increase in tech support staff.
The legislature also decided to require a science assessment in nine grades. The Smarter Balanced Assessments do not include a science component, so districts would have to pay for additional standardized tests to meet that requirement. Those tests could cost another $10 per student.
Where will all the money come from? If the state spends that much more on standardized testing—at the same time that the Governor is pushing tax relief—the funding can only come at the expense of other educational needs. To pay for all this gold-plated testing, the schools will have to make even more cuts like the ones we’re seeing now. Will French go the way of German? Will band and orchestra be cut from elementary school entirely? Will class sizes increase? Will teachers be laid off? What else will we have to sacrifice for the sake of all this testing?
So yes, people should contact their legislators and the Governor. But it’s not enough to ask for more education funding. We should demand that the state let us fund the kind of education we value, instead of imposing its own idea of test-driven education on our schools.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard protest after protest about the cuts to music, foreign language, and other programs. If the state chose not to implement expensive new standardized tests, would there be even a single complaint? How did our schools end up so far from what our community values?
_______
Here’s some additional information that I couldn’t fit into the guest opinion:
There are several reasons to think that the Smarter Balanced Assessments will cost more than the $22.50 per student estimated by the consortium. First, that figure includes only the year-end “summative assessments,” not the optional additional tests the consortium offers, which could add another $5 per student. Second, the cost figures are only estimates; some of the administration and scoring services will have to be purchased from private vendors, who may well charge more than the consortium estimates. Third, paper-and-pencil versions of the test, which could be necessary if the technology is not ready, will cost an additional $10-12 per student.
One reason the Iowa Assessments are relatively inexpensive is that they are produced by the University of Iowa, which provides them to Iowa school districts at cost. Other states pay as much as $15 per student to use Iowa-created tests, but that’s still a significant savings over the cost of the Smarter Balanced tests.
_______
The legislature may well appropriate funds to pay for new standardized tests, though it’s unlikely to cover all the associated expenses. But even if it does, that’s money that it could have used for other (more compelling) educational needs. If the state won’t give us the allowable growth that we need to pay for things like music and language classes, it will be because it has already spent the money on standardized tests.
_______
There has been an interesting back-and-forth between the state Department of Education and the legislature on the Smarter Balanced tests. Under both Governors Culver and Branstad, the Department made a commitment to the Smarter Balanced consortium to adopt the tests. Meanwhile, though, the legislature decided that schools would have to continue using the Iowa Assessments until it decides otherwise. That put the Department in an awkward spot. The Department continued to push for the Smarter Balanced tests, but the legislature decided only that it would settle on some set of Core-aligned tests by 2016-17, and it created a task force to make a recommendation. The task force has not yet issued its report—but its members were all chosen by the Department.
The legislature did decide to triple the number of grades in which tests would be required, starting in 2016-17. The bill to create the assessment task force and to require testing in nine grades received bipartisan support, including the support of every legislator from Johnson County, including Senators Joe Bolkcom, Bob Dvorsky, and Sandra Greiner, and Representatives Dave Jacoby, Bobby Kaufmann, Vicki Lensing, Mary Mascher, and Sally Stutsman.
_______
The federal government, including the Obama Administration, also bears responsibility for this increase in testing. Iowa’s push for increased standardized testing was part of its attempt to receive federal Race to the Top funding, which incentivized exactly that approach. Alas, even though we adopted the Common Core standards and joined the Smarter Balanced consortium, we didn’t get the money.
_______
Education in Iowa recently had a terrific post on just how little we know about Iowa’s readiness to shift to computer-based testing, including a discussion of testing debacles in other states that “ought to be keeping Iowa proponents of Smarter Balanced Assessments up at night.” An excerpt:
[The Department of Education] can’t ask the Iowa Legislature to appropriate funds for tech readiness if they don’t know what is needed, leaving schools to fund needed tech readiness upgrades out of existing school budgets that are already stretched thin. This might be much less of a concern for schools ahead of the curve tech wise, but ought to be a concern nonetheless. Diverting local funds from the classroom or needed facility maintenance or upgrades will hardly make the Common Core and the accompanying standardized assessments more popular.
_______
Of course, there are also non-fiscal objections to the role standardized tests now play in our schools. Here are FairTest’s concerns about the Smarter Balanced Assessments.
_______
Where does the money go? It’s hard to say exactly, because each state will do its own contracting with vendors for Smarter Balanced test administration and scoring. But you can bet that Pearson stands a good chance of getting those contracts in Iowa.
Needless to say, standardized testing, together with all its associated “educational services,” is a major industry. Pearson’s North American Education division, for example, reported £536 million in operating profit in 2012—the equivalent of about $900 million.
Does anyone think that the Smarter Balanced Assessments—or for that matter, the Common Core standards—would have been adopted on such a wide scale if there weren’t millions of dollars to be made by for-profit testing companies like Pearson?
_______
The same bill that increased the required testing also established a “teacher leadership” program that will take experienced teachers out of the classroom to spend more time mentoring junior teachers; it will begin in 2015. We have yet to see how this program will affect local budgeting decisions: will more programs become expendable, or will class sizes grow, when the most experienced teachers start mentoring other teachers instead of teaching kids? (The legislature did appropriate funds, but again, that could only make less money available for other needs.)
_______
Notice that our district is already using the Iowa Assessments in three times more grades than it’s required to (not to mention all the other standardized tests it gives). Apparently that category of expense didn’t come up when the administration was making budget cuts.
_______
The single best place to go for information about the status of standardized testing in Iowa, and of the Smarter Balanced Assessments in particular, is the Education in Iowa blog. Its posts on Smarter Balanced Assessments are here.
_______
Source note: The current requirement that the Iowa Assessments be given in fourth, eighth, and eleventh grade is in Iowa Code section 256.7(21)(b) and (b)(1). The requirement that testing be given in third through eleventh grades as of 2016 appears in section 256.7(21)(b)(2), which also requires the science assessment.
.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Should the district keep using Everyday Math?
The district has started up its every-seven-years review of its math curriculum. I know from four years of blogging that there is a good deal of dissatisfaction out there with Everyday Math, the district’s curriculum for elementary school math. I’m no expert on the topic, but my own household’s experience with Everyday Math has not been a particularly positive one. My concerns came down to these four:
First, I thought the Everyday Math curriculum, at least in its current incarnation, sent some mixed messages that were frustrating for the kids. The sense I always got from Everyday Math is that it was designed by people who thought that elementary-age kids just need to be exposed to lots of different math concepts, and that mastery is not important until later. I have some sympathy for that kind of patient approach, but the problem was that the kids felt that they were supposed to have mastered the concepts, and felt frustrated and upset when they hadn’t. There is so much testing all through elementary school; of course if you give kids a math test, they’re going to think you’re expecting them to get the answers right—but often Everyday Math hadn’t equipped them to do so. In the end, the curriculum seemed like neither fish nor fowl: the patiently-cycling-through-concepts was inconsistent with the constantly-testing.
Second, whatever you might think about Everyday Math’s pedagogic philosophy, its materials often seemed needlessly unclear and hard to understand.
Third, because of the first two concerns, I’m afraid Everyday Math creates a lot of bad feelings toward math of the kind that too many people take from their school experience.
Finally, Everyday Math is too reliant on parental help, which raises a serious equity issue. There is a frequent homework, which ought to be unnecessary in elementary school, and many parents feel the need to supplement the Everyday Math program with their own instruction. As a result, kids whose parents can help them end up potentially far ahead of kids whose parents can’t—an advantage that’s compounded by the fact that our system uses math test scores as a criterion for entry into gifted and talented programs and advanced classes in junior high and high school. So it would be a great step forward, in terms of educational equity, if there were a curriculum that enabled kids to learn math in the classroom without as much outside and after-school help.
But I know others have even stronger opinions on the subject. (Feel free to let loose in the comments!) My only point here is: now is the time to speak up. I am hoping (against hope?) that this will be a real review, not just a rubber-stamping of a choice already made, via a committee hand-picked for compliance. The committee should engage in a real debate about people’s concerns about Everyday Math and about potential alternatives. If you have strong feelings on the subject, you should apply to be on the review committee; you can apply using this form. You can also chime in on the email survey that the district is circulating, or by emailing Pam Ehly, the curriculum director, at ehly.pam@iowacityschools.org.
.
First, I thought the Everyday Math curriculum, at least in its current incarnation, sent some mixed messages that were frustrating for the kids. The sense I always got from Everyday Math is that it was designed by people who thought that elementary-age kids just need to be exposed to lots of different math concepts, and that mastery is not important until later. I have some sympathy for that kind of patient approach, but the problem was that the kids felt that they were supposed to have mastered the concepts, and felt frustrated and upset when they hadn’t. There is so much testing all through elementary school; of course if you give kids a math test, they’re going to think you’re expecting them to get the answers right—but often Everyday Math hadn’t equipped them to do so. In the end, the curriculum seemed like neither fish nor fowl: the patiently-cycling-through-concepts was inconsistent with the constantly-testing.
Second, whatever you might think about Everyday Math’s pedagogic philosophy, its materials often seemed needlessly unclear and hard to understand.
Third, because of the first two concerns, I’m afraid Everyday Math creates a lot of bad feelings toward math of the kind that too many people take from their school experience.
Finally, Everyday Math is too reliant on parental help, which raises a serious equity issue. There is a frequent homework, which ought to be unnecessary in elementary school, and many parents feel the need to supplement the Everyday Math program with their own instruction. As a result, kids whose parents can help them end up potentially far ahead of kids whose parents can’t—an advantage that’s compounded by the fact that our system uses math test scores as a criterion for entry into gifted and talented programs and advanced classes in junior high and high school. So it would be a great step forward, in terms of educational equity, if there were a curriculum that enabled kids to learn math in the classroom without as much outside and after-school help.
But I know others have even stronger opinions on the subject. (Feel free to let loose in the comments!) My only point here is: now is the time to speak up. I am hoping (against hope?) that this will be a real review, not just a rubber-stamping of a choice already made, via a committee hand-picked for compliance. The committee should engage in a real debate about people’s concerns about Everyday Math and about potential alternatives. If you have strong feelings on the subject, you should apply to be on the review committee; you can apply using this form. You can also chime in on the email survey that the district is circulating, or by emailing Pam Ehly, the curriculum director, at ehly.pam@iowacityschools.org.
.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
District materials on planned budget cuts
The district has now posted some material about the planned budget cuts. Also, board member Tuyet Dorau provided me with a copy of the material that the district provided to board members last night, which you can read here. (The handwritten notes in the margins are hers.)
UPDATE: The district has now posted those board materials as well.
.
UPDATE: The district has now posted those board materials as well.
.
Information about the planned ICCSD school budget cuts
UPDATE: Some district materials about the planned cuts are now available. See this post.
At last night’s school board work session, the superintendent presented his plan for addressing the $3.6 million budget shortfall for next year. A friend of mine took the following notes on the superintendent’s plan. There was a lot of information to process, and the note-taker warns that there may be inaccuracies in her notes. Also, these notes reflect only what the superintendent presented at the work session, not what may have been discussed later in the work session or the board meeting that followed it. News coverage of the meeting is here, here, here, and here. When (if?) I see that the district has posted an official account of the plan, I will update this post.
Disclaimer: I took notes as best as I could hear from where I was sitting. Members of the public were not provided copies of the budget handout. My numbers add up to more $3.6 million, so it seems likely that I have made one or more transcription errors. (I’m wondering if the world language/keyboarding/junior high general music cuts are double counted?—part of the course offering reduction savings—but also listed out separately?)
District Budget Adjustment
These are cuts from general fund spending; categorical funds were not included.
No reduction in force is planned, but staff may need to be reassigned.
$95,000 from building allocations for printing and other costs.
$26,000 from non-contractual meals provided to staff.
$10,000 from budget forecasting software.
$80,000 from discretionary busing (to be announced later).
$30,000 from athletics line item and 7th grade football eliminated.
$100,000 from not filling Director of Community Relations position, duties to be reassigned to other staff.
$125,000 from building level retirement (principal?), duties to be reassigned to other staff.
$223,000 from clerical staff, duties to be reassigned between media and office secretaries.
$89,000 from overtime (paid $600,000 in overtime this year to date).
$63,000 from ESC staff, duties to be reassigned.
$45,000 from general education para-educators, hours to be reallocated across the district.
$32,000 from substitute teachers, with a change in rules about substitutes for staff without direct student contact for most of the day.
$44,000 from nurses, adjust and re-prioritize staff responsibilities.
$16,000 from reduction in allowed extended contract days.
$91,000 from trades/crafts/custodians.
$628,000 from adjusting the number of course/section offerings and class size of 24-32 at high school level.
$322,000 from adjusting the number of course/section offerings and class size of 22-30 at junior high school level.
$124,000 from phasing out German language instruction at high school level.
$239,000 from cutting 7th grade world languages, phasing out German language instruction at the junior high school level.
$222,000 from reducing to one Dean of Students at each high school.
$88,000 from high school guidance, re-prioritize assignments.
$59,000 from reducing high school library staffing.
$90,000 from eliminating general music at the junior high school level.
$74,000 from eliminating 7th grade keyboarding as a required class, offering it only as an elective to those students who need it.
Elementary class sizes up to 24 at grades K-2, up to 30 at grades 3-6 (will not meet board aspirational goals).
$440,000 from eliminating 4th grade orchestra program and increasing the size of small groups for small group instruction for 5th-6th grade orchestra and band.
$177,000 from elementary guidance, reallocate current staff to cover retirements.
$88,000 from elementary library programs.
$170,000 from efficiencies in scheduling art, general music, and PE elementary teachers to minimize travel time between schools served.
$177,000 from shifting cost of reading instruction from general fund to Title I funds.
$88,000 from shifting cost of MARS professional development from general fund to categorical funds.
UPDATE: You can compare my friend’s notes with those of Paul Deaton here.
.
At last night’s school board work session, the superintendent presented his plan for addressing the $3.6 million budget shortfall for next year. A friend of mine took the following notes on the superintendent’s plan. There was a lot of information to process, and the note-taker warns that there may be inaccuracies in her notes. Also, these notes reflect only what the superintendent presented at the work session, not what may have been discussed later in the work session or the board meeting that followed it. News coverage of the meeting is here, here, here, and here. When (if?) I see that the district has posted an official account of the plan, I will update this post.
Disclaimer: I took notes as best as I could hear from where I was sitting. Members of the public were not provided copies of the budget handout. My numbers add up to more $3.6 million, so it seems likely that I have made one or more transcription errors. (I’m wondering if the world language/keyboarding/junior high general music cuts are double counted?—part of the course offering reduction savings—but also listed out separately?)
District Budget Adjustment
These are cuts from general fund spending; categorical funds were not included.
No reduction in force is planned, but staff may need to be reassigned.
$95,000 from building allocations for printing and other costs.
$26,000 from non-contractual meals provided to staff.
$10,000 from budget forecasting software.
$80,000 from discretionary busing (to be announced later).
$30,000 from athletics line item and 7th grade football eliminated.
$100,000 from not filling Director of Community Relations position, duties to be reassigned to other staff.
$125,000 from building level retirement (principal?), duties to be reassigned to other staff.
$223,000 from clerical staff, duties to be reassigned between media and office secretaries.
$89,000 from overtime (paid $600,000 in overtime this year to date).
$63,000 from ESC staff, duties to be reassigned.
$45,000 from general education para-educators, hours to be reallocated across the district.
$32,000 from substitute teachers, with a change in rules about substitutes for staff without direct student contact for most of the day.
$44,000 from nurses, adjust and re-prioritize staff responsibilities.
$16,000 from reduction in allowed extended contract days.
$91,000 from trades/crafts/custodians.
$628,000 from adjusting the number of course/section offerings and class size of 24-32 at high school level.
$322,000 from adjusting the number of course/section offerings and class size of 22-30 at junior high school level.
$124,000 from phasing out German language instruction at high school level.
$239,000 from cutting 7th grade world languages, phasing out German language instruction at the junior high school level.
$222,000 from reducing to one Dean of Students at each high school.
$88,000 from high school guidance, re-prioritize assignments.
$59,000 from reducing high school library staffing.
$90,000 from eliminating general music at the junior high school level.
$74,000 from eliminating 7th grade keyboarding as a required class, offering it only as an elective to those students who need it.
Elementary class sizes up to 24 at grades K-2, up to 30 at grades 3-6 (will not meet board aspirational goals).
$440,000 from eliminating 4th grade orchestra program and increasing the size of small groups for small group instruction for 5th-6th grade orchestra and band.
$177,000 from elementary guidance, reallocate current staff to cover retirements.
$88,000 from elementary library programs.
$170,000 from efficiencies in scheduling art, general music, and PE elementary teachers to minimize travel time between schools served.
$177,000 from shifting cost of reading instruction from general fund to Title I funds.
$88,000 from shifting cost of MARS professional development from general fund to categorical funds.
UPDATE: You can compare my friend’s notes with those of Paul Deaton here.
.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Information is power. Who has it?
It looks increasingly like our superintendent won’t inform the school board of his planned budget cuts until tonight—the very night when the board is supposed to vote on the budget. School board members have been as much in the dark as the rest of us about possible cuts.
The board is required by law to submit its budget to the state by April 15. Tonight, April 8, is the last scheduled board meeting before that deadline. The agenda for the meeting includes a proposed budget summary, but the proposal just addresses broad categories of spending: so much for “instruction,” so much for “general administration,” etc. It doesn’t disclose the specific cuts in staff or programs that the budget will necessitate. Without those specifics, the board is in no position to assess whether the money should be allocated differently among those broad categories.
Perhaps for that reason, the board chair (at the superintendent’s suggestion) has scheduled a “work session” immediately before tonight’s meeting. The topic of the work session is “budget discussion.” That’s all the agenda says; it contains no additional information or enclosures. Tonight is awfully late for the board members to receive specific information about planned cuts; they’ll have to act on that information within an hour or two of receiving it.
The district has been aware of the $3.6 million shortfall since at least early January. Shouldn’t the board have been informed sooner about the administration’s planned response?
Coincidentally, the district also has community meetings scheduled this week and later this month as part of its redistricting process. (One was last night.) At these meetings, people will get a chance to respond to draft redistricting maps. I’m glad the district is getting input on draft maps; that will be much more useful than the exercises at the meeting I attended. But rather than release the draft maps in advance, the superintendent plans to unveil them at the meetings. Even the school board members, apparently, will not have advance notice of the drafts. The rationale is that this will “allow the superintendent to explain what decisions and compromises were made.” But the effect will also be to prevent people who are affected by specific changes from knowing about them in time to attend the meetings.
Is it really the job of the superintendent to withhold information from the school board and the public until he sees fit to release it? Does withholding that information benefit the board and the public, or does it just benefit the superintendent? Who works for whom?
The work session will start at 5:15 tonight at the Educational Services Center.
Related post here.
.
The board is required by law to submit its budget to the state by April 15. Tonight, April 8, is the last scheduled board meeting before that deadline. The agenda for the meeting includes a proposed budget summary, but the proposal just addresses broad categories of spending: so much for “instruction,” so much for “general administration,” etc. It doesn’t disclose the specific cuts in staff or programs that the budget will necessitate. Without those specifics, the board is in no position to assess whether the money should be allocated differently among those broad categories.
Perhaps for that reason, the board chair (at the superintendent’s suggestion) has scheduled a “work session” immediately before tonight’s meeting. The topic of the work session is “budget discussion.” That’s all the agenda says; it contains no additional information or enclosures. Tonight is awfully late for the board members to receive specific information about planned cuts; they’ll have to act on that information within an hour or two of receiving it.
The district has been aware of the $3.6 million shortfall since at least early January. Shouldn’t the board have been informed sooner about the administration’s planned response?
Coincidentally, the district also has community meetings scheduled this week and later this month as part of its redistricting process. (One was last night.) At these meetings, people will get a chance to respond to draft redistricting maps. I’m glad the district is getting input on draft maps; that will be much more useful than the exercises at the meeting I attended. But rather than release the draft maps in advance, the superintendent plans to unveil them at the meetings. Even the school board members, apparently, will not have advance notice of the drafts. The rationale is that this will “allow the superintendent to explain what decisions and compromises were made.” But the effect will also be to prevent people who are affected by specific changes from knowing about them in time to attend the meetings.
Is it really the job of the superintendent to withhold information from the school board and the public until he sees fit to release it? Does withholding that information benefit the board and the public, or does it just benefit the superintendent? Who works for whom?
The work session will start at 5:15 tonight at the Educational Services Center.
Related post here.
.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Is the district about to cut elementary orchestra and band?
Word has it that our school district’s administration is planning to propose cuts in elementary school band and orchestra programs—possibly eliminating them entirely, which would mean that kids wouldn’t start instruments until junior high. Some band or orchestra teachers were told that if they had other job offers, they should take them. Building administrators were reportedly told not to talk about the possible cuts. The issue may appear on the agenda of the April 8 school board meeting.
There are different theories about what would be prompting any cuts. Some think it’s because the legislature is (as usual) dawdling about setting the allowable growth rate. But as I understand it (and I almost certainly don’t), the allowable growth rate for next academic year has already been set—it’s the rate for fiscal year 2016 that’s still unresolved—so it’s not clear how that would drive any cuts in next year’s staffing. Others I spoke to thought it was because of the district’s $3.6 million budget shortfall. Others suggested that the district was concerned about kids being pulled out of class for their instrument lessons (oh, the instructional minutes!), or about the buildings being too crowded to have adequate space for the lessons.
My first thought was that this sounds like the Washington Monument syndrome—that any proposal would be a ploy either (1) to get people to make a stink to their legislators about allowable growth or (2) to get grudging acceptance of some other cut that the administration is actually after. Yet budget and allowable growth dramas are a regular occurrence, and this is the first time I’ve heard any talk of cuts like these. I’ve emailed the superintendent to ask about the issue.
For what it’s worth, I consider my kids’ orchestra lessons to have been one of the most valuable parts of their elementary school experience—and certainly a far better use of their time than the behavior assemblies and the countless hours of standardized testing. And will the district really cut orchestra and band while using class time for things like the “employability” training described here?
.
There are different theories about what would be prompting any cuts. Some think it’s because the legislature is (as usual) dawdling about setting the allowable growth rate. But as I understand it (and I almost certainly don’t), the allowable growth rate for next academic year has already been set—it’s the rate for fiscal year 2016 that’s still unresolved—so it’s not clear how that would drive any cuts in next year’s staffing. Others I spoke to thought it was because of the district’s $3.6 million budget shortfall. Others suggested that the district was concerned about kids being pulled out of class for their instrument lessons (oh, the instructional minutes!), or about the buildings being too crowded to have adequate space for the lessons.
My first thought was that this sounds like the Washington Monument syndrome—that any proposal would be a ploy either (1) to get people to make a stink to their legislators about allowable growth or (2) to get grudging acceptance of some other cut that the administration is actually after. Yet budget and allowable growth dramas are a regular occurrence, and this is the first time I’ve heard any talk of cuts like these. I’ve emailed the superintendent to ask about the issue.
For what it’s worth, I consider my kids’ orchestra lessons to have been one of the most valuable parts of their elementary school experience—and certainly a far better use of their time than the behavior assemblies and the countless hours of standardized testing. And will the district really cut orchestra and band while using class time for things like the “employability” training described here?
.
Are the redistricting workshops a waste of time?
The school district here is in the early stages of redrawing the boundaries of the school attendance zones, partly because it plans to open several new schools, partly because growth patterns have led to overcrowding, and partly because the school board has enacted a diversity policy that sets goals for reducing concentrations of kids from low-income families in any one school. (The district uses free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) rates as a proxy for low-income status.) The district has scheduled several “community engagement” sessions to get community input on the redistricting. I recently spent two hours attending one of those sessions, focused on redrawing the elementary school boundaries in (roughly speaking) the southeast quadrant of the district.
About fifty or sixty people attended the session. Attendees were randomly assigned to small groups and given two exercises to do. Long story short: I did not find the exercises to be a useful way to give meaningful input to the district. Here are some of my impressions from the meeting.
About fifty or sixty people attended the session. Attendees were randomly assigned to small groups and given two exercises to do. Long story short: I did not find the exercises to be a useful way to give meaningful input to the district. Here are some of my impressions from the meeting.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
“He will be a good employee for the job”
Iowa City parent Scott Samuelson has a great opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal on the real value of teaching the humanities. He cites research showing that undergraduate humanities majors earn more than those who major in professional or pre-professional fields, but argues:
Meanwhile, our school district’s “Guidance” program had fourth- and sixth-graders learning job interview skills this week. In some classes, the kids played the parts of employer and job applicant and then evaluated the applicant’s interview skills. Was the applicant “clean, neat and well-groomed”? Did he have “Hands relaxed (not clenched)”? Did he “honor the end of the interview”? The interviewers then wrote overall comments, such as “He seems like a good employee.” Here’s an example:
The Iowa Core, after all, has twenty-five pages of mandatory standards devoted to “employability skills.” See if you can find the Iowa Core sections devoted to philosophy or the arts.
.
Thinking of the value of the humanities predominately in terms of earnings and employment is to miss the point. America should strive to be a society of free people deeply engaged in “the pursuit of happiness,” not simply one of decently compensated and well-behaved employees.Scott’s book, “The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone,” comes out next week.
Meanwhile, our school district’s “Guidance” program had fourth- and sixth-graders learning job interview skills this week. In some classes, the kids played the parts of employer and job applicant and then evaluated the applicant’s interview skills. Was the applicant “clean, neat and well-groomed”? Did he have “Hands relaxed (not clenched)”? Did he “honor the end of the interview”? The interviewers then wrote overall comments, such as “He seems like a good employee.” Here’s an example:
(Click to enlarge.)
The Iowa Core, after all, has twenty-five pages of mandatory standards devoted to “employability skills.” See if you can find the Iowa Core sections devoted to philosophy or the arts.
.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Five-acre field near City High to sell for $280,000
One of the primary rationales for the school board’s vote to close Hoover Elementary School was that City High, which is next to Hoover, is “landlocked.” “We can’t expand City without this,” the district asserted. “Adding Hoover alone is not even really enough.” To get that five-acre parcel of land for City, then, the district would have to close Hoover, even if that meant spending over ten million dollars to rebuild Hoover’s capacity somewhere else. The money to pay for that new construction will be part of the $119 million in bonding that the district plans to ask voters to approve.
Yet less than a thousand feet away from City, there was a five-acre undeveloped parcel for sale, called “Chadek’s Field.” The City of Iowa City is now on the verge of buying Chadek’s Field for just $280,000. That’s an awful lot less than ten million dollars.
If the district were genuinely concerned about City High being landlocked, and if it genuinely believed that even adding the Hoover property to City is not enough, why would it do nothing to pursue the Chadek property? Simply moving an athletic field from City to the Chadek land, just a block or two away, would have freed up considerable space at City. No matter how you feel about the Hoover closure, isn’t that a huge missed opportunity for the school district?
Fortunately, the land will go to the city, which plans to use it as a park, rather than to a developer, so the district could still try to work something out with the city to share the land. But since the district seems to have no interest in pursuing it, a big part of its rationale for closing Hoover is pretty hard to take seriously.
.
Yet less than a thousand feet away from City, there was a five-acre undeveloped parcel for sale, called “Chadek’s Field.” The City of Iowa City is now on the verge of buying Chadek’s Field for just $280,000. That’s an awful lot less than ten million dollars.
If the district were genuinely concerned about City High being landlocked, and if it genuinely believed that even adding the Hoover property to City is not enough, why would it do nothing to pursue the Chadek property? Simply moving an athletic field from City to the Chadek land, just a block or two away, would have freed up considerable space at City. No matter how you feel about the Hoover closure, isn’t that a huge missed opportunity for the school district?
Fortunately, the land will go to the city, which plans to use it as a park, rather than to a developer, so the district could still try to work something out with the city to share the land. But since the district seems to have no interest in pursuing it, a big part of its rationale for closing Hoover is pretty hard to take seriously.
.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Naming names
From the March 11, 2014 ICCSD board meeting. (Transcript below.)
The proposal to regulate public comment at school board meetings seems to be motivated in part by a discomfort with any criticism that is directed toward specific people. When a member of the public starts to criticize specific board members or administrators by name at a board meeting, it’s as if a taboo has been broken. General criticism is one thing, but naming names goes too far. It’s the quickest way to tell the troublemakers from the team players.
Our school board’s chair, for example, has regularly prefaced the public comment sessions of board meetings with this warning:
We ask that you refrain from making personal or disparaging remarks about staff, students, or any other district personnel. Please keep your comments focused on programs and policies, not people, or you will be asked to stop immediately.This norm against naming names is probably great for preserving peace and harmony when you visit your relatives at the holidays, but it’s not a recipe for good government. Keep in mind that district “staff” includes the superintendent. On its face, the chair’s first sentence prohibits any disparaging comments about the job performance of the superintendent and other central administrators charged with running the school system—though it does not prohibit favorable comments about them. The chair’s second sentence says that you will be asked to stop immediately if your comments are focused on “people”—which, of course, describes not only staff but elected board members as well.
But policies and practices don’t just materialize out of thin air. People make them. Voters seldom get to vote on policies or practices; they vote for individual people who run for the school board, which in turn hires the superintendent. If voters can’t connect policies and practices to actual people, they have no way to hold anyone democratically accountable for what happens in the school system.
The video above is a good example. During the discussion of the proposed public comment policy, one board member asked, “Who wrote the policy?” Another board member explained that “it showed up” at a committee meeting. The rest of the group fell silent. Then one administrator said he didn’t remember writing it, though he remembered that the district’s lawyer somehow “looked at it” before it was drafted. Then another administrator said that he worked on it with the administrator who doesn’t remember writing it—all because “it was asked for.” Good luck figuring out who initiated that policy.
At the most recent board meeting, the chair did not recite the usual warning before the public comment session. I don’t know what accounts for the change, but it’s a step in the right direction.
A transcript of the video appears after the jump.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Fire!
In the ongoing debate about the proposal to regulate how members of the public can express themselves at school board meetings, several people have argued that free speech must have its limits. One example, from this comment thread:
The one example I’ll focus on here is from just three years ago. The plaintiff in the case was a man whose son was a Marine accidentally killed while serving in Iraq. During the son’s funeral, members of the Westboro Baptist Church picketed on a nearby public street. Members of the church believed that God was punishing the United States, and particularly its military, for its tolerance of homosexuality. Timing their protest to coincide with the funeral, they held up signs saying, among other things, “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “America is Doomed,” “Don’t Pray for the USA,” “Thank God for IEDs,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” “You’re Going to Hell,” and “God Hates You.” The soldier’s father sued the church for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
It’s hard to imagine a case better designed to test one’s tolerance for offensive speech. Yet the Supreme Court held, by a vote of 8-1, that the First Amendment prohibited the state from imposing liability on the church for its protest. Here are some excerpts from the court’s opinion. (For readability, I’ve omitted the citations and added boldface for emphasis; you can read the full opinion here.)
If picket signs saying “God Hates Fags” and “You’re Going to Hell” near a military funeral pass the test, it’s awfully hard to see how calling a political candidate a “whore” could fail it.
Depending on the hypothetical, Person A’s comment could certainly run afoul of other permissible restrictions. For example, the board can insist that members of the audience not interrupt those who have the floor. But the board can’t single out for punishment only those interruptions that use harsh but protected speech on matters of public concern.
From some of the commentary online, you would think that speakers at our school board meetings were being routinely shouted down. That’s not at all true. It’s definitely true that at least one speaker has spoken with an intensity and a harshness that makes some people uncomfortable. It’s precisely that intensity and harshness that some people hope the proposed policy will ban; the policy’s defenders have repeatedly argued that it’s fine for people to express criticism as long as they do it “respectfully.” It’s hard to see how that rationale could be constitutional in light of cases like the one above. (And it’s not the only one.)
I consider myself lucky to live in a country with such broad protection of speech. People are free to disagree about that, of course. But, like it or not, First Amendment protections are very broad. When the board members make their decision about the proposed speech regulation policy, they should do so with their eyes open.
.
As for freedom of speech, all freedoms have their limits. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean it’s okay to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. It’s also not okay to disrupt a public meeting by calling another citizen a whore.The writer is right that there are limits and that the government can punish a person for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. However, the writer’s conclusion does not follow from her premise, and does not appear to accurately reflect current law. I think many people would be surprised to know just how broad American protections of speech are.
The one example I’ll focus on here is from just three years ago. The plaintiff in the case was a man whose son was a Marine accidentally killed while serving in Iraq. During the son’s funeral, members of the Westboro Baptist Church picketed on a nearby public street. Members of the church believed that God was punishing the United States, and particularly its military, for its tolerance of homosexuality. Timing their protest to coincide with the funeral, they held up signs saying, among other things, “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “America is Doomed,” “Don’t Pray for the USA,” “Thank God for IEDs,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” “You’re Going to Hell,” and “God Hates You.” The soldier’s father sued the church for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
It’s hard to imagine a case better designed to test one’s tolerance for offensive speech. Yet the Supreme Court held, by a vote of 8-1, that the First Amendment prohibited the state from imposing liability on the church for its protest. Here are some excerpts from the court’s opinion. (For readability, I’ve omitted the citations and added boldface for emphasis; you can read the full opinion here.)
“[S]peech on ‘matters of public concern’ ... is ‘at the heart of the First Amendment’s protection.’” The First Amendment reflects “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” That is because “speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government.” Accordingly, “speech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection.” . . .So suppose Person A, while in the audience at a school board meeting, were to call Person B, a speaker at the meeting, a “whore.” (I’m treating the example as a hypothetical, since I have no first-hand knowledge that it ever occurred.) Suppose Person B is a community activist who had recently run for school board and had already announced his intention to run in the next election. No one reasonably understands Person A to be suggesting that Person B is actually selling sexual services; it’s clear that Person A means that Person B has “sold out” in some way that’s relevant to school issues. Does Person A’s epithet count as speech on a matter of public concern?
Speech deals with matters of public concern when it can “be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community,” or when it “is a subject of legitimate news interest; that is, a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public” . . . . The arguably “inappropriate or controversial character of a statement is irrelevant to the question whether it deals with a matter of public concern.”
Our opinion in Dun & Bradstreet, on the other hand, provides an example of speech of only private concern. In that case we held, as a general matter, that information about a particular individual’s credit report “concerns no public issue.” . . . To cite another example, we concluded in San Diego v. Roe that, in the context of a government employer regulating the speech of its employees, videos of an employee engaging in sexually explicit acts did not address a public concern; the videos “did nothing to inform the public about any aspect of the [employing agency’s] functioning or operation.” . . .
Given that Westboro’s speech was at a public place on a matter of public concern, that speech is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment. Such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt. “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Indeed, “the point of all speech protection... is to shield just those choices of content that in someone’s eyes are misguided, or even hurtful.” . . .
In a case such as this, a jury is “unlikely to be neutral with respect to the content of [the] speech,” posing “a real danger of becoming an instrument for the suppression of ... ‘vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasan[t]’” expression. Such a risk is unacceptable; “in public debate [we] must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate ‘breathing space’ to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.” . . .
Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.
If picket signs saying “God Hates Fags” and “You’re Going to Hell” near a military funeral pass the test, it’s awfully hard to see how calling a political candidate a “whore” could fail it.
Depending on the hypothetical, Person A’s comment could certainly run afoul of other permissible restrictions. For example, the board can insist that members of the audience not interrupt those who have the floor. But the board can’t single out for punishment only those interruptions that use harsh but protected speech on matters of public concern.
From some of the commentary online, you would think that speakers at our school board meetings were being routinely shouted down. That’s not at all true. It’s definitely true that at least one speaker has spoken with an intensity and a harshness that makes some people uncomfortable. It’s precisely that intensity and harshness that some people hope the proposed policy will ban; the policy’s defenders have repeatedly argued that it’s fine for people to express criticism as long as they do it “respectfully.” It’s hard to see how that rationale could be constitutional in light of cases like the one above. (And it’s not the only one.)
I consider myself lucky to live in a country with such broad protection of speech. People are free to disagree about that, of course. But, like it or not, First Amendment protections are very broad. When the board members make their decision about the proposed speech regulation policy, they should do so with their eyes open.
.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Dorau, McGinness oppose public comment policy
Credit to school board members Tuyet Dorau and Jeff McGinness for opposing the proposal to regulate how members of the public can express themselves during the public comment sessions at board meetings. Dorau argued that the proposal was unnecessary and questioned whether it could be applied in a viewpoint-neutral way. McGinness, the only lawyer on the board, said that he is now convinced that the proposal is unconstitutional.
Four other board members were unwilling to give up on the policy, but agreed to send it back to committee for review. It appears that the board will ask its lawyer, for the first time (!), to review the legality of the proposal.
Maybe this episode is working its way toward a happy ending, though an awful lot of time and energy will have been spent on it. Although it’s discouraging that people aren’t more alert to civil liberties issues, the debate over this policy may well be a case study in the value of a relatively open approach to public comment. On this proposal—like on the visitor ID issue and the Martin Luther King Day issue—the abundance of dissent and criticism may ultimately result in better policy-making. At least it offers that chance.
The policy’s defenders argue that “uncivil” and “disrespectful” speakers deter other people from speaking. Yet there has certainly been no shortage of people speaking their minds at board meetings. What do those people have that the (unidentified) others don’t?
One awkward moment stood out at tonight’s meeting. Tuyet Dorau asked, “Who wrote the policy?” The chair of the committee that approved it, Brian Kirschling, could say only that “it showed up” at the committee meeting. No other board member would answer the question. The central administrators gave inconsistent responses and had no direct answer. For all the talk about “accountability” in education, funny how hard it is to find out who actually does what. Who triggered this lengthy detour into what is likely to be a dead end?
.
Four other board members were unwilling to give up on the policy, but agreed to send it back to committee for review. It appears that the board will ask its lawyer, for the first time (!), to review the legality of the proposal.
Maybe this episode is working its way toward a happy ending, though an awful lot of time and energy will have been spent on it. Although it’s discouraging that people aren’t more alert to civil liberties issues, the debate over this policy may well be a case study in the value of a relatively open approach to public comment. On this proposal—like on the visitor ID issue and the Martin Luther King Day issue—the abundance of dissent and criticism may ultimately result in better policy-making. At least it offers that chance.
The policy’s defenders argue that “uncivil” and “disrespectful” speakers deter other people from speaking. Yet there has certainly been no shortage of people speaking their minds at board meetings. What do those people have that the (unidentified) others don’t?
One awkward moment stood out at tonight’s meeting. Tuyet Dorau asked, “Who wrote the policy?” The chair of the committee that approved it, Brian Kirschling, could say only that “it showed up” at the committee meeting. No other board member would answer the question. The central administrators gave inconsistent responses and had no direct answer. For all the talk about “accountability” in education, funny how hard it is to find out who actually does what. Who triggered this lengthy detour into what is likely to be a dead end?
.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
More bogus labels from No Child Left Behind
The newspaper dutifully reported this week that two local elementary schools—both with a high percentage of low-income students—have been designated “persistently low-achieving schools” under No Child Left Behind, because of the standardized test scores of the students. This designation allows the schools to receive federal grant money if they take certain types of corrective action—all of them based on the assumption that there is something wrong with how the schools have been educating the kids.
The district has stated, wisely, that it will forgo the grant money, explaining that the schools are already making changes. I can’t say whether those changes are good or necessary, but I wish the district would address the federal government’s faulty logic more directly. The district, and its school board, should be shouting: This designation, and the test scores that it is based on, tell you nothing about the quality of the education at those schools. Schools and teachers aren’t to blame for the poverty in their attendance areas. That doesn’t mean the schools shouldn’t do their best with whatever kids they have—but No Child Left Behind’s labels are dishonest and its “improvement” schemes are fraudulent.
.
The district has stated, wisely, that it will forgo the grant money, explaining that the schools are already making changes. I can’t say whether those changes are good or necessary, but I wish the district would address the federal government’s faulty logic more directly. The district, and its school board, should be shouting: This designation, and the test scores that it is based on, tell you nothing about the quality of the education at those schools. Schools and teachers aren’t to blame for the poverty in their attendance areas. That doesn’t mean the schools shouldn’t do their best with whatever kids they have—but No Child Left Behind’s labels are dishonest and its “improvement” schemes are fraudulent.
.
Kids are more than just test scores
Credit to Mary Murphy for prompting an apparent change in our district’s practices on admitting kids to “gifted and talented” programs. Parents at some schools had been told that their kids’ admission to a gifted and talented class depended entirely on one or two standardized test scores—even if those tests had nothing to do with the subject matter of the class. Mary pointed out that state law puts several requirements on how schools admit kids to gifted and talented classes, including:
Interestingly, judging from the superintendent’s email, the district appears to consider grades and grade point average to be “subjective” criteria—which implies that it considers standardized test scores to be the only objective measure of a student’s performance. This seems clearly wrong. The whole point of requiring “subjective” criteria is to ensure that the school engages in “comprehensive appraisal of the student,” rather than reducing the student to a number. Moreover, it’s discouraging to think that the district would see teachers as incapable of objectively grading a student’s performance in a class.
- Schools must base their admission decisions “on a comprehensive appraisal of the student.”
- Schools must consider both subjective and objective factors.
- Schools must consider multiple criteria, “with no single criteria [sic] eliminating a student from participation.”
- Schools must consider data “with direct relevance to program goals, objectives and activities.”
- If there are more openings than applicants, the school must select students “according to the extent to which they can benefit from the program.”
Interestingly, judging from the superintendent’s email, the district appears to consider grades and grade point average to be “subjective” criteria—which implies that it considers standardized test scores to be the only objective measure of a student’s performance. This seems clearly wrong. The whole point of requiring “subjective” criteria is to ensure that the school engages in “comprehensive appraisal of the student,” rather than reducing the student to a number. Moreover, it’s discouraging to think that the district would see teachers as incapable of objectively grading a student’s performance in a class.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
No criticism allowed?
Last night, a school board committee made it clear that the purpose of its proposed public comment policy is “to encourage the community to engage and feel they have the ability to do so without being attacked or criticized.” (See pages 3-4 here.) Yes, they want to regulate some people’s speech to ensure that other people don’t feel criticized.
This strikes me as reflecting a very peculiar understanding of what the First Amendment permits a governmental body to do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when I read reports like the one described here.
.
This strikes me as reflecting a very peculiar understanding of what the First Amendment permits a governmental body to do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when I read reports like the one described here.
.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
“The pernicious effects of an artificially controlled public debate”
When I wrote last week about how our school board would be risking expensive litigation by approving a proposal to regulate speech at board meetings, I linked to a federal case from Virginia, Bach v. School Board of the City of Virginia Beach. That case can give you some idea of the kind of litigation the board’s policy could trigger.
Here’s what happened in Bach: A school board in Virginia passed a policy “designed to preserve decorum and order” at board meetings. One clause in the policy required speakers to:
The court found the provision unconstitutional. Here are some excerpts from the case. (Again, for readability, I have omitted citations and added boldface for emphasis. You can read the full opinion here.)
Legal questions are seldom 100% predictable. Bach, and the two similar cases it cites, are from different jurisdictions and are not binding on courts here; nor do they involve exactly the same clauses that appear in our district’s proposal. My point here is just that the district is asking for trouble and needless expense with the language in its policy. How much is it worth?
.
Here’s what happened in Bach: A school board in Virginia passed a policy “designed to preserve decorum and order” at board meetings. One clause in the policy required speakers to:
Avoid references, statements, or conduct reasonably likely to result in disruption or undue delay in the orderly transaction of the business scheduled for consideration by the Board. This provision means and includes, but is not limited to, attacks or accusations regarding the honesty, character, integrity or other like personal attributes of any identified individual or group. Such comments are prohibited because, by virtue of their personal nature, character and/or manner of presentation, they would fairly call for an immediate response by the person or group so identified, thus delaying or disrupting consideration of agenda items scheduled for consideration by the Board.A member of the public sued, arguing that the provision was an unconstitutional abridgement of free speech. He argued that the provision acted “as a filter to screen out any negative comments toward the current administration, while allowing their proponents to speak at will.” The board never actually enforced the policy against the man who sued. He argued that the policy was invalid on its face, regardless of how it was applied, because it would deter protected speech.
The court found the provision unconstitutional. Here are some excerpts from the case. (Again, for readability, I have omitted citations and added boldface for emphasis. You can read the full opinion here.)
The Supreme Court has long since warned about the pernicious effects of an artificially controlled public debate and have held that the First Amendment serves to prevent such manipulation. . . .In that case, the school board policy also required speakers to refrain from “obscenity, vulgarity, or other breach of respect.” That particular clause was not the subject of the lawsuit, so the court did not examine whether it, too, was impermissibly broad or vague. But this case, from the Supreme Court, would certainly support an argument for striking down that clause, too.
Two other school boards enacted policies similar to the contested provision in this case, and the courts reviewing these policies found both to be content-based restrictions. These policies contained different language, yet each had the same effect. Participants in an open session of a public meeting were permitted to praise the actions of school employees but were prohibited from making any critical or accusatory comments. The Baca Court, following the decision of the Leventhal Court, held that it is “difficult to imagine a more content-based prohibition on speech than [a] policy, which allows expression of two points of view (laudatory and neutral) while prohibiting a different point of view (negatively critical) on a particular subject matter.....” The Plaintiffs allege that the contested provision draws the same distinction on the content of the speech — favorable versus unfavorable — and under the reasoning in Baca and Leventhal, it cannot be considered content-neutral.
The Defendants [that is, the school board] explained that the contested provision only prohibits attacks that are targeted at school officials in their personal capacity. According to the Defendants’ interpretation of the contested provision, a speaker, therefore, is free to allege that a school official lied about spending school funds for personal use. That same speaker would be cut short, however, if the speaker called the school official a liar. The Defendants believe that this example demonstrates that the contested provision regulates the manner of the speech not its content.
The First Amendment affords the broadest protection to political expression in order to sustain the unfettered interchange of ideas to bring about political and social change and promote the will of the people. The Supreme Court has repeatedly explained that “it is a prized American privilege to speak one’s mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions, and this opportunity is to be afforded for vigorous advocacy no less than abstract discussion.” This includes the ability to question the fitness of the community leaders, including the administrative leaders in a school system, “especially in a forum created specifically to foster discussion about a community’s school system.” The contested provision tests the boundaries of the fine distinction between content-based and content-neutral regulations. First Amendment scholars, judges, and attorneys could engage in endless debate over whether it discriminates against speech on the basis of its content by allowing general praise while silencing criticism. Fortunately, the Court need not engage in such a comprehensive analysis, for a policy that deters individuals from speaking out on an issue of public importance violates the First Amendment. The contested provision has that effect and for that reason is unconstitutional.
If the contested provision would have been written in the language of the Defendants’ argument at trial, the Court may have concluded that it is a content-neutral restriction on the manner of speech. The Defendants’ lengthy explanation, however, does not solve the constitutional issue before the Court. Potential speakers do not have the benefit of the Defendants’ scholarly research of the constitutional basis of the contested provision when attempting to determine if their comments are in conformity with Bylaw 1-48(B)(2). Their only guidance is the Bylaw itself, and thus, the contested provision must be examined on its face without regard to the Defendants’ technical interpretation of its proscriptions. Some citizens may share the Defendants’ reading of the contested provision and may feel free to criticize school officials’ conduct without threat of sanctions. Other citizens, however, may not appreciate the distinction drawn by the Defendants between attacking the conduct but not the individual. These citizens may see no distinction between stating, “the principal is a liar” and “the principal lied to us about spending the money.” According to the Defendants’ interpretation, the latter would be acceptable but the former forbidden by the contested provision. It is reasonable for these citizens to read the contested provision and conclude that most comments critical of school officials constitute an attack on their honesty, character, or integrity and are therefore improper subjects on which to speak. Accordingly, their concerns may not be shared with their fellow citizens, and the “robust public debate” the First Amendment seeks to foster will be thwarted.
There is no indication that the School Board acted in bad faith in enacting or enforcing this restriction. The video shown by the Defendants demonstrates that Mr. Bach was not silenced when he accused several officials by name of being involved in a conflict of interest. Yet the content of the contested provision may prevent many citizens from so speaking. . . . A policy that chills protected speech cannot stand. The Court FINDS that the contested provision in Bylaw 1-48 is unconstitutional as a prior restraint upon speech in a limited public forum.
Legal questions are seldom 100% predictable. Bach, and the two similar cases it cites, are from different jurisdictions and are not binding on courts here; nor do they involve exactly the same clauses that appear in our district’s proposal. My point here is just that the district is asking for trouble and needless expense with the language in its policy. How much is it worth?
.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Whose culture?
In the debate over our school board’s proposal to regulate how members of the public express themselves at board meetings, some board members argued that the policy is just an attempt to establish a particular culture of respect and decorum. I do think the board wants to enforce a particular culture, but that’s one reason I think the policy is a bad idea.
Not everyone shares the board majority’s view about what is appropriate decorum. There are all kinds of cultures of public participation out there, even in Iowa City. Some cultures (and some individuals) are freer with the “amens” and the audible expressions of disapproval. In some cultures, people are more comfortable with using strong language, or expressing strong emotion, when speaking publicly. That is not a reason to treat those cultures as somehow “wrong” or “impolite” or “threatening.”
Yes, there is a point at which the speakers and the audience could prevent the board from conducting business or could drown out other speakers. The proposed policy, though, goes way beyond what is necessary to prevent those problems. Some degree of audible audience reaction is to be expected at any public meeting; a board that wants to be inclusive should put up with it. It’s not for the board to tell the public what kind of culture to have.
There’s another “culture” at work here, too: the culture of bureaucracy and the establishment, which naturally values “positivity” because it favors the status quo. Loud applause for the school district’s accomplishments has never provoked any regulation. Loud booing, however, would almost certainly violate the policy’s requirement of “respect and decorum.” If that isn’t viewpoint discrimination, I don’t know what is.
.
Not everyone shares the board majority’s view about what is appropriate decorum. There are all kinds of cultures of public participation out there, even in Iowa City. Some cultures (and some individuals) are freer with the “amens” and the audible expressions of disapproval. In some cultures, people are more comfortable with using strong language, or expressing strong emotion, when speaking publicly. That is not a reason to treat those cultures as somehow “wrong” or “impolite” or “threatening.”
Yes, there is a point at which the speakers and the audience could prevent the board from conducting business or could drown out other speakers. The proposed policy, though, goes way beyond what is necessary to prevent those problems. Some degree of audible audience reaction is to be expected at any public meeting; a board that wants to be inclusive should put up with it. It’s not for the board to tell the public what kind of culture to have.
There’s another “culture” at work here, too: the culture of bureaucracy and the establishment, which naturally values “positivity” because it favors the status quo. Loud applause for the school district’s accomplishments has never provoked any regulation. Loud booing, however, would almost certainly violate the policy’s requirement of “respect and decorum.” If that isn’t viewpoint discrimination, I don’t know what is.
.
The value of “verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance”
I wrote last week about our school board’s proposal to require members of the public who speak at board meetings to show “respect and decorum” and to prohibit them from making “abusive, harassing, bullying, discriminatory, or lewd” remarks. Defenders of the proposal have argued that some speakers have been too “caustic” and that the board should engage in “moderation” to ensure that other speakers are not “intimidated,” “to make sure all voices are heard.” (See Karen W.’s post here.)
The policy itself is framed almost entirely in terms of protecting the sensitivities of the listeners and the people who are spoken about, with many references to ensuring a “positive,” “safe,” “civil,” “dignified,” and “respectful” environment. The policy makes no mention of protecting the First Amendment rights of members of the public. Nor does it make any mention of the great value of dissent and criticism in the policy-making process. Nor does it acknowledge the inherent dangers of allowing a government body to decide what is or isn’t acceptable speech.
I want to quote a portion of a case called Cohen v. California, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1971. I’m not arguing that this case applies directly to the board’s proposal; there are many potentially relevant distinctions between the two situations. Instead, I’m quoting the case because it does a particularly nice job of explaining the good reasons for tolerating political speech that makes people uncomfortable.
For readability, I’m omitting the court’s citations; you can read the full opinion here. I’ve also boldfaced some passages for emphasis.
Schools are, as a rule, authoritarian and undemocratic institutions. It’s hard to have faith in their ability to prepare your kids for life in a democracy. Elected school boards, on the other hand, are the most democratic element of the system. It’s awfully disappointing, then, when the elected school board’s policy on public speakers makes no mention, and reflects no recognition, of the importance to democracy of free speech.
.
The policy itself is framed almost entirely in terms of protecting the sensitivities of the listeners and the people who are spoken about, with many references to ensuring a “positive,” “safe,” “civil,” “dignified,” and “respectful” environment. The policy makes no mention of protecting the First Amendment rights of members of the public. Nor does it make any mention of the great value of dissent and criticism in the policy-making process. Nor does it acknowledge the inherent dangers of allowing a government body to decide what is or isn’t acceptable speech.
I want to quote a portion of a case called Cohen v. California, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1971. I’m not arguing that this case applies directly to the board’s proposal; there are many potentially relevant distinctions between the two situations. Instead, I’m quoting the case because it does a particularly nice job of explaining the good reasons for tolerating political speech that makes people uncomfortable.
For readability, I’m omitting the court’s citations; you can read the full opinion here. I’ve also boldfaced some passages for emphasis.
This case may seem at first blush too inconsequential to find its way into our books, but the issue it presents is of no small constitutional significance.I don’t doubt that there is some conduct the board could permissibly prohibit. I do doubt the board’s ability to write a policy that singles that conduct out. I especially doubt the board’s ability to apply such a policy in a viewpoint-neutral fashion. But what worries me most is that the rationale for broad protection of speech, expressed so well in Cohen, seems to be lost on much of this board. (Board member Tuyet Dorau has been the notable exception.)
Appellant Paul Robert Cohen was convicted [of violating a statute that] prohibits “maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person . . . by . . . offensive conduct. . . .” He was given 30 days’ imprisonment. The facts upon which his conviction rests are detailed in the opinion of the [lower court], as follows:
“On April 26, 1968, the defendant was observed in the Los Angeles County Courthouse in the corridor outside of division 20 of the municipal court wearing a jacket bearing the words ‘Fuck the Draft’ which were plainly visible. There were women and children present in the corridor. The defendant was arrested. The defendant testified that he wore the jacket knowing that the words were on the jacket as a means of informing the public of the depth of his feelings against the Vietnam War and the draft.” . . .
Admittedly, it is not so obvious that the First and Fourteenth Amendments must be taken to disable the States from punishing public utterance of this unseemly expletive in order to maintain what they regard as a suitable level of discourse within the body politic. We think, however, that examination and reflection will reveal the shortcomings of a contrary viewpoint.
At the outset, we cannot overemphasize that, in our judgment, most situations where the State has a justifiable interest in regulating speech will fall within one or more of the various established exceptions [such as obscenity and “fighting words”], discussed above but not applicable here, to the usual rule that governmental bodies may not prescribe the form or content of individual expression. Equally important to our conclusion is the constitutional backdrop against which our decision must be made. The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. It is designed and intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us, in the hope that use of such freedom will ultimately produce a more capable citizenry and more perfect polity and in the belief that no other approach would comport with the premise of individual dignity and choice upon which our political system rests.
To many, the immediate consequence of this freedom may often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance. These are, however, within established limits, in truth necessary side effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate permits us to achieve. That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength. We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values are truly implicated. That is why “[w]holly neutral futilities . . . come under the protection of free speech as fully as do Keats’ poems or Donne’s sermons,” and why “so long as the means are peaceful, the communication need not meet standards of acceptability” . . . .
Against this perception of the constitutional policies involved, we discern certain more particularized considerations that peculiarly call for reversal of this conviction. First, the principle contended for by the State seems inherently boundless. How is one to distinguish this from any other offensive word? Surely the State has no right to cleanse public debate to the point where it is grammatically palatable to the most squeamish among us. Yet no readily ascertainable general principle exists for stopping short of that result were we to affirm the judgment below. For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.
Additionally, we cannot overlook the fact, because it is well illustrated by the episode involved here, that much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated. Indeed, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter has said, “[o]ne of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures—and that means not only informed and responsible criticism but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation.”
Finally, and in the same vein, we cannot indulge the facile assumption that one can forbid particular words without also running a substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process. Indeed, governments might soon seize upon the censorship of particular words as a convenient guise for banning the expression of unpopular views. We have been able, as noted above, to discern little social benefit that might result from running the risk of opening the door to such grave results.
It is, in sum, our judgment that, absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display here involved of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense.
Schools are, as a rule, authoritarian and undemocratic institutions. It’s hard to have faith in their ability to prepare your kids for life in a democracy. Elected school boards, on the other hand, are the most democratic element of the system. It’s awfully disappointing, then, when the elected school board’s policy on public speakers makes no mention, and reflects no recognition, of the importance to democracy of free speech.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)