Taxing Our Tomorrow

It is a pity that that first stimulus package was given to the architects of our crisis and received by no one in particular with less than nominal oversight. It looks now as if Democrat officials have begun to think hard about round two of troubled asset relief funding as spending proposals are released this week. The National Association of Budget Officers (NASBO) counts that $141.6 billion is to be applied to the project of education, and $79 billion of that number is for the purpose of paying for education within the states:

The state directed funding is made up of $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas; $15 billion to states as grants for meeting key performance measures; and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education. Additional funds include $15.6 billion to increase Pell grants by $500 and $6 billion for higher education modernization.

For one, as New Jersey’s school funding formula is difficult enough to understand without the confusion of exterior formulas and legislation, it will be important for New Jerseyans to keep an eye on this money—school funds disappear inexplicably in this state. Also, whether New Jersey even qualifies for this kind of assistance isn’t clear. It would be unfortunate if the money marked for education was absorbed somehow into the pet issue of lowering the property taxes of suburban New Jersey while poor schools and poor students in our various blighted areas continue to decline.

Whether every state should qualify for stimulus or not, the new plan should be much better appreciated by Americans than the prior plan, if you can call it a plan. The initiative shown by legislators to enrich all tiers of our nation’s schools is refreshing and long overdue. And if we think about it, the stimulus infusion gives educators and administrators the space and time to work out all of the un- or under-funded school reform programs of the past eight years. For instance, one often wielded bone of contention, the lack of funding for after school programs has been the most blaring of the nation’s school reform issues. Here is a program that gets kids off the street and makes constructive the time that might otherwise be spent in a troubled or empty home. Organizations like New Jersey after 3 are probably the best suited for this type of assistance. Specifically speaking, somewhere in the modest $39 billion, we may be able to find the resources to keep school facilities like libraries and study areas in low income areas open and supervised long after school is out. We could expand counseling programs, sports and leadership programs. We should add to, extend the duration of, and fundamentally amend the title 1 program in order to make it more like a grant or fellowship based on excellence and experience rather than willingness and need. Let us network with organizations like vista and sweeten stipends, pay new teachers to shadow, intern, and build or maintain urban habitats rather than paying them to cut their teeth on disadvantaged kids who, really, have enough on their plates without the added aggravation of inexperienced and mercenary teachers. Enriching after school and reforming title 1 are two of the most important priorities for any sincere education reformer.

Let us make these changes while reforming the way we test and spend. This isn’t an economic buffet but a buffer that may allow reformers to set in place what works and swiftly remove what doesn’t. Obama once said that he wants teachers to have a buy-in to accountability. Let’s sell them accountability while we have time to pay for it. Before we grade and discourage future adults with our accountability complex, why can’t we turn accountability on educators. I do not mean to say that we should be over harsh when we hold people accountable, but that it should be common sense that we hold educators accountable before we discourage, alienate, and experiment on students in an effort to make test scores and coffers balance. There are better ways to make education work. These children are assets who must be prepared to enter the labor market and perpetuate that business cycle that we are all so concerned about. Let us give educators SAT and GRE exams regularly and let us leverage their scores with promotions. Our $141 billion should be used as breathing room and it should encourage administrators to air out the unsatisfactory teachers and reward the excellent ones. Educators should base their decisions on a number of factors including competency and student performance. If educators are “teaching to the test” in order to keep their jobs then people should begin to wonder why there is such a divide between “the test” and “the teaching.” What is it, exactly, that children should learn and is that in some way different from what we expect them as adults to know? There are fundamental and philosophical problems that precede any attempt to induce the education of children with a 100 percent chance of success. Education is more subtle than this.

The “subtlety” of education describes a notion held by former New Jersey governor Brendan Byrne’s education commissioner Fred Burke who during the national shift to quantified educational outcomes in the 1970s and 1980s, emphasized “process” measures rather than the logic of input-output that reigns over our education system today.

Presumably, “process” describes a method of funding only the sufficient means of education, i.e. facilities, books, teachers, rather than the educational means to some predicted end. Process holds education to be variable, something experienced differently by everyone. The notion that educational success is subtle rather than predictable supports the notion of genius, originality, and novelty. Further, a process approach assumes that educational outcomes are, essentially, unpredictable. This does not mean that there are no conditions for adequate education but that deep and lasting educational experiences come only through a delicate process that cannot be reproduced in a lab with a 100 percent rate of success. Simply put, let us at least put a sufficient amount of money into providing programs and facilities that tend to produce better educational outcomes and better students. Let us raise the quality of life for students in poor districts.

In the higher education sphere, we must get realistic about the meanings of words like “modernization” and “education.” Schools that consider the erection of temples to Ditka, i.e. stadiums and massage rooms for coaches and athletes should be excluded from stimulus as long as their priorities are not the higher education of their students. It’s a shame but no one should ever have to insist that higher education be the first priority of our institutions of higher education. I know that people like sports, it’s great for families and alumni, for morale and all that. However, just like any school spending gimmick, there ought to be some measurement of tangible return to the school for each dollar spent. If even the money is not being redirected from the original purpose of education, parents and students must still wonder what kind of people would allow New Jersey’s future labor force to drop out or bankrupt themselves at so young an age so that wealthy football fans can have a cushy new sky box and a cute little tapas bar to enjoy once a year. At least use the room for classes in the off season. The skybox idea was absurd. College graduates know that building a school requires that a school be built. Building a stadium requires that…well, you get it. Trading a new stadium with a sky box for books and educational opportunity is not how I would define the modernization of higher education. Rather, I would call that instead the noticeable decline of civilization. Three years ago when students at Rutgers University were being turned away at the financial aid line or asked to take on significantly more debt and a part time job, these private sport-funding people didn’t move a finger. School funding whiners—look there and only there before you ask the state and random alumni for more money. Don’t hound your graduates for donations when several millions are flowing into the college without a dime devoted to relieving the real and rising debt of students. Call some “helicopter company” somewhere and ask them to foot the bill for 25 or 50 deserving undergraduates. You’ll impress everyone. Regarding the definition of education, the University of Chicago since the 1930s has had a pretty good definition of higher education that other schools may want to emulate. It’s called a strong core curriculum. Not only does it make teaching a profession, it also adds worth to the degrees of graduates. It should be nurtured and strengthened because, for employers, it represents the quality of the graduates that it tempers. Likewise, it earns graduates real jobs and thereby earns departments real endowments. That’s real return. There is your god, educators. It’s not the skybox, it’s the curriculum.

Spending our money wisely is absolutely necessary because there will most likely be no third chance to get things right. This $141 billion dollars does not exist, this is money borrowed from the next generation that the federal government is investing in the American people. The stakes are high. Will we settle on a definition of “education modernization” and play football with old pads and without the skybox or will we destroy the next generation of students and tax them into oblivion simultaneously?