Monday, June 11, 2007

The Scandal of DC Schools

The Washington Post has taken some heat recently for its credulous immigration reporting - but due praise please for the amazing series on the DC schools launched yesterday and continuing today . Part 1 detailed the heart-rending chaos of the schools. Part 2 offers a valuable history of how DC arrived at its present disastrous condition.

Short summary: The DC schools spend more per child than all but two school system in the nation and get consistently the worst results. Even when compared only to other urban predominantly minority systems, DC consistently ranks at the bottom. Three decades of reform have utterly faile - defeated largely by the interests of politicians and school officials in protecting political clients and political turf. Corruption and incompetence pervade the schools.

Late one night, after attending a meeting, [former chief academic officer Arlene Ackerman] returned to headquarters to see a line of people in a hall waiting to see one of her subordinates. She said she eventually came to believe that the man, a longtime employee who no longer works in the system, had amassed great power through his ability to hand out jobs, award contracts and outlast superintendents. "He was like the godfather," Ackerman said.

The school system's inscrutably chaotic operations provide cover for a host of people who have learned how to "game the system," Ackerman said. "It's the way of life in D.C. It may be in other urban school systems, but not as in-your-face as I saw it. And you need an army of people to fight it."

Ackerman balked when she discovered that the school system was paying millions of dollars annually to lawyers representing special education students who had successfully sued for better services. A lawyer sending a short form letter setting up a meeting might bill the schools $450, she said. Ackerman persuaded Congress to cap the amount lawyers could bill the schools at $80 an hour, she said.

Instead of winning plaudits for saving money, "you would have thought that I was responsible for World War III," Ackerman said. "I started getting pressure — 'we don't need to get a cap,' 'this is not fair' — and I mean from all parts of the community. Somebody said to me these were trial lawyers who support certain politicians."

Repairs take up to two years. High school transcripts arrive studded with errors. Rats scurry across classroom floors. Three out of four students fail to reach proficienty in math, two out of three fail in reading. More money is spent administering the schools than teaching children. And then there is this arresting detail:

Citywide, fewer than half of core courses are taught by teachers who are considered "highly qualified" in their subject, which requires that they have earned a degree or passed a competency test in that subject. Nationally, the numbers are worse in only one state — Alaska. In most states, the figure was over 90 percent.

Within the District, teachers are less likely to meet this "highly qualified" standard at schools with poorer students, according to a Post analysis.

At Deal Junior High, which has relatively few poor students, two-thirds of the core classes have highly qualified teachers, twice the figure at MacFarland and Garnett-Patterson middle schools, where almost all the students come from poor families.

Across the city, 58 percent of classes in the junior high and middle schools with the most affluent students are taught by highly qualified teachers, compared with 38 percent at the poorest schools, The Post found. The gap is smaller at elementary schools.

Under the law, parents must be told if their child's teacher does not meet this standard. But that hasn't happened because the District is more than a year behind in submitting the data.

 That last point makes you wonder: Is it quite accurate to describe the DC schools as "dysfunctional"? Doesn't that depend on what you take their true "function" actually to be? If you imagine that function to be educating the young, well yes obviously they are not very successful at that. But what if they have a very different function? What if their real function were to create employment and transfer wealth? At that, after all, they are extremely successful.

And this may explain why "reform" attempts so often fail. Reforms intended to improve the quality of education threaten to damage the schools' ability to carry out their most fundamental mission: emplyment and enrichment.

This hypothesis suggests that the latest reform attempt by newly elected Mayor Adrian Fenty is again almost certain to fail.

Indeed, it suggests that we may have to accept that the DC schools are unreformable.

Let me suggest a different approach. Give up.

Of the District's 130 schools, only 19 have a majority of students performing at a "proficient" level. So start by closing the 111 failing schools. Then close the DC board of education and every educational administrative  agency. Sell the school buildings, and use the proceeds to help finance severance payments for the discharged teachers and administrators.

In the 19 non-failing schools, offer teachers and principals an option: In lieu of severance, they can have the building and all its contents, plus a charter to continue operating as they think best.

Then divide the educational budget into vouchers. DC spends almost $13,000 per child per year. Create a standard voucher of $10,000. Children from poor families and children rated as English-Language Learners would get a voucher worth the full $13,000. Children rated as Special Needs would get more still.

It's a crude idea, subject to many improvements. But the core insight is: stop trying to fix the unfixable. DC has failed too many kids for too long. Things are not going to improve. It's time for the bulldozers.

06/11 12:52 PM