IN WILDER’S POWER
A Fiscal Stick Could Discipline
Education Reform
Wednesday, September 1, 1993
By Robert Holland
Douglas Wilder’s greatest accomplishment as Governor may have come on fiscal
defense. The governor has insisted
that Virginia hold the line against general tax increases while most states and
the federal government were raising their rates.
Politically, that will give Wilder plenty of attack lines to use against fellow
Democrat Chuck Robb in next year’s battle royal for Robb’s Senate seat.
When it was fourth and inches in Congress for Bill Clinton’s tax-happy
economic plan, Robb’s support was
crucial.
But in telling the General Assembly money committees last week that no state
service will be sacrosanct as he seeks to balance his final budget proposal
sans new taxes, was the Governor
sending a message to – in particular – the Department of Education?
The challenge, said the Governor, is to identify
“those programs, activities, or services
that we are prepared to do without.”
Then he added: To go about this exercise in a
meaningful way, just about everything
needs to be put on the table for downsizing or elimination, if only for the
purpose of clarifying our priorities.
So what about the much-ballyhooed World Class Education Initiative, and the
expensive and unproven pedagogy of Outcome-Based Education on which it is
predicated? Is it now on the table?
After spending several million in the current biennium to see OBE in various
starter projects, the State Board and the Department of Education had hoped to
add about $80 million in new initiatives in the 1994-96 budget.
Additionally, if their original plan to tie teacher pay raises to extra
work implementing OBE were approved by the Assembly, new spending would rise to
$310 million.
Remember, this is a 10-year program the department already has begun
implementing in various ways, possibly in contravention of the Administrative
Process Act, which requires citizen input and a fiscal-impact analysis.
A full accounting of costs (beyond “initiatives”) would include positions
DOE has been filling based on applicants’ fealty to OBE principles.
My sources are the DOE budget plans the Board of Education first considered June
24 and approved in revised form August 16.
The state spends close to $5 billion per biennium on public education.
On June 24, DOE reported that an increase of $359 million would be needed
simply to maintain current programs.
Over and above that, DOE’s leadership wanted $489 million for “initiatives,”
mostly OBE-related. Because of what
the board called “fiscal realities” (for which, thank Heaven we can only hope
for some educational ones), DOE trimmed the initiatives to $98 million, of which
I identify $78 million as OBE-related.
Teacher compensation is the tricky deal.
The June 24 initiatives would have given teachers a 14.3 percent pay hike
over two years (costing $230 million) in return for their working an extra five
hours a week on curriculum and testing to implement the “learner outcomes” in
the Common Core of Learning. But the
August 16 board approved package replaces that, in essence, with an IOU – a
resolution urging the legislature to find the money to reward teachers if they
go the extra mile for OBE.
Good teaching is hard work. Like the
rest of us, teachers have to pay their mortgage, put gas in the station wagon
and buy groceries. I wonder what
teachers think about the prospect of having their pay hikes, if any, tied to
Ed-Central’s latest flight of theoretical fancy?
These are the state educationists’ highest priority initiatives:
*Staff
Development: $5.4 million.
This funds the far flung activities of a
Virginia Center for Staff Development, described as “the vehicle for
disseminating the products, core curricula, and reform practices developed by
Department of Education efforts and the World Class Education transformation
sites.”
*Model
schools: $3.6 million.
There are already 18 of these in place to
develop prototypes of the new, mandatory early childhood education the OBEists
envision. This would add another 12 to start the transition to the pre- and
early-adolescence level.
*Assessments:
$2.8 million for Three Ps’ testing –
portfolios, products, performance – that OBEists prefer to objective
measurements of knowledge.
Particularly noteworthy is the $600,000 DOE wants to lavish on the New Standards
Project, based at the University of Pittsburgh.
That hotbed of OBE is developing what may prove to be a national testing system
for Clinton’s Goals 2000. Because
foundation money is running out, declares DOE, the 18 participating states must
pick up the tab. Oh?
Do Virginia taxpayers have a say in that?
How does that square with Governor Wilder’s tests of fiscal necessity?
And if national tests are the expected “outcome,” why aren’t all 50
states paying?
*Class
size reduction: $41 million.
This would lower pupil-to-teacher ratios in
the state’s poorest school divisions from 25 to 1 to 18 to 1 in kindergarten
through grade three. The idea is
that this would help reduce disparity while also making reform work more
smoothly. (Originally DOE wanted
$112 million to reduce ratios in all districts.)
No doubt school systems would welcome the extra money but studies have shown
that cuts in class size, while expensive, do
not yield substantial gains in pupil achievement.
Governor Wilder’s idea of using the budget squeeze to reassess priorities has
great application for education. And
the General Assembly, which holds the purse strings, must play a critical role.
Western Fairfax County Delegates Jay O’Brien and Robert McClure and
Senator Warren Barry have proposed that the Assembly’s education committees hold
hearings this fall to shed light on the
OBE question.
What works? How about (from ample
case studies): Phonics to teach
reading. Strong leadership from
principals. Rewards for excellent
teaching. Discipline.
Homework. Specific
(and high) standards in academic subjects.
And ability-grouping targeted for obliteration by the OBEists.
Even after so much World Class hype, it still is not too late for Wilder to
refocus Virginia’s education debate on the basics.
However, if he fails to do so, he could fund OBE to be as much an
albatross around his neck as taxes (and Virginia Beach, etc.) will be around
Robb’s next year.