When you read Bruce Baker’s work, you hear a fresh and thoughtful voice in the education debates.
I wish that President Obama was listening to him instead of the number-crunchers now in control of the U.S. Department of Education.
Bruce Baker is a social scientist at Rutgers University who specializes in statistical analysis of school data. Unlike many others who do the same, he was a teacher in public and private schools before he became an academic. So he has a depth of knowledge and understanding and empathy that many others in his field lack.
In his latest blog, he reviews some of the truly terrible reform ideas of the day.
One is the 65% solution, the idea that legislatures should mandate what must be spent on instruction. It sounds so appealing, this notion that money will be spent in classrooms and not on bureaucrats. As Baker explains, the idea was cooked up by Republicans who needed a good idea, but it doesn’t work. What is really interesting is how carefully messaged the program was. It made budget cutters look like reformers.
Another is weighted student funding, which sounds good on the surface as all these ideas do until they are implemented.
And a third is the parent trigger, now in the news, which allows and encourages a bare majority of parents to seize control of their school. Baker calls this “mob rule.”
If you want to know the other two, read Bruce Baker.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The term “economist” is usually applied to people who have a PhD in Economics; Baker doesn’t have any degree in economics.
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Your first mistake, supporting an Obama Admin. sticking it’s nose in public education. This is the PROBLEM. Read the 10th Amendment!
You want the right people dictating education at the federal level when the federal level shouldn’t be involved in education to begin with.
When will everyone figure out that the problem IS the U.S. DOE just existing?
Instead the argument becomes about who should be in control. Who should be running the show.
The parents continue to go ignored. The teachers now are the target with a bulls-eye on their back and instead of finally realizing that the Feds/bureaucrats brought public ed to its knees, you are going to try to wish and beg for different leadership.
This is what happens when you make a tyrannical govt. your master. You then become the slave who has to beg for something better.
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I agree that Arne Duncan and the federal DOE is not helpful…however, look around the states. Wisconsin…Indiana…Michigan…Ohio…Florida…New York — The state governments aren’t doing any better. Are you suggesting we 1) end public supported education? 2) Let it try to be self sustaining at a local level? 3) or privatize it and let the hedge fund managers run it?
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I think we should have equitable funding of public education, and the federal government should stop imposing bad ideas on states. It would be wonderful to have professionals of a high caliber in charge of the schools rather than politicians who know little about education.
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Oh but Diane, I’m sure you know that if you have the govt. funding education there is NO way they will give up their control. NO way. They simply will not allow that to happen.
When you have equity in funding, then it’s a problem taking money and directing it to the schools who truly need it.
In our state, this is exactly the problem we have with the State Court ruling. Funding is equitable, but we are sending extra money to our district (the richest in the state) and unable to send it to the schools that truly need the extra money. The court made it fair and this is what we are stuck with.
The legislators, trying to take it out of the court’s hands and give this decision to the legislators were denied by those who wanted
local control.
The amendment (to the State Constitution) contained language that stated the STATE had the responsibility to set “standards”. That language was put in the amendment because there is NO way our governor or many of the Democrats would dream of supporting the amendment if they did not state their “responsibility”.
Those who supported local control in education wanted no part of the amendment because they didn’t want any language enshrining state control over standards in the state constitution.
Granted we have NO local control now in education, many didn’t want it enshrined in the State Constitution.
What you say, simply is NOT the reality of bureaucrats and legislators. They will never give up that control in education, if you allow them to hold the $$ as hostage.
They simply do not trust parents and local communities to make those decisions. Sad reality if you frequent Education committee hearings with legislators!
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Check your State Constitution and see if the State even has the Constitutional right to be involved in education.
I don’t believe for a minute that the Feds should be involved, per the 10th Amend.
I have an issue with the states involved too.
I have no problem with local communities and parents running the schools but I know that bureaucrats will never trust parents. I know that legislators will never trust parents. I hear them say it all of the time in hearings on education.
If you want the state involved or the Feds involved, then why complain when they dictate and mandate to the point where you have to beg and plead with the “masters” for any scraps they will throw you?
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Diane:
I was hoping you might comment on this story, which bubbled up a day or two ago:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/13324181-418/activists-chicago-school-reforms-violate-minority-students-rights.html
There’s a ray of hope in it I think.
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I tweeted that and may blog about it.
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I enjoy Bruce Baker’s work. Another topic that he’s written on is international comparisons in school finance, pointing out that different nations account “education spending” quite differently. The US, for example, pays for a lot of health care costs in its education budget through its employee benefits, its school nurses, and its special ed programs; in other countries, those costs might be accounted to national health care spending.
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The parent trigger is reminiscent of China’s Cultural revolution’s overturn of its artistic and educational institutions.
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Can you explain? I tend to support any power given back to parents since it’s THEIR children and THEIR earned income that pays for the school?
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