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Walter Williams and Ryan Cundiff work on computers during class at Carson School in Cincinnati. Carson is one of Cincinnati's Elementary Initiative schools, a group of 16 lower-performing schools the district has been investing resources like technology and professional development in. Many of these additional resources are being funded by the district's Title 1 stimulus allocation. [Photo by Tony Tribble]
Search Related StoriesPublic education advocates are delighted to see $100 billion in federal stimulus money go to the nation’s schools, right?
Not necessarily.
Schools aren’t averse to receiving the once-in-a-lifetime windfall, which has already saved thousands of teachers’ jobs and prevented countless program cuts.
But some observers worry about the unintended consequences of the spending spree. They say the expectation of big gains in student achievement in just two years could be setting schools up for failure. If that happens, they reason, it could result in fewer federal education dollars in the future—or even a push to end federal school aid.
“I have many nightmares about the stimulus,” says Amy Wilkens of the Education Trust, an education advocacy group based in Washington D.C.
“If, in two years, $100 billion hasn’t provoked change, it’s going to be tough to go back to Congress and say, ‘Give us more money.’ ”
Will history view the stimulus package as an education reform catalyst or as a jobs program? Will it spark change or protect the status quo? Do districts have the capacity to spend the money wisely? How will salaries and new programs be paid for after the stimulus dollars are gone?
Those questions go to the heart of the Obama administration’s goals for education stimulus spending. The administration let states use some money to fill budget gaps to quickly save and create jobs. But that meant some of the funding would not drive reforms or innovation. The next round of federal incentive grants, however, is aimed at new or existing programs that can produce better academic performance. The two goals have left public school executives with much to be thankful for and much to wrestle with.
“Administrators across the country are absolutely grateful for the investment in education that we’ve seen,” says Mary Kusler of the American Association of School Administrators. “However, a lot of this comes in the ‘be careful what you ask for’ category.”
Innovation versus inertia
In Ohio, questions about the stimulus often end up in Superintendent of Public Instruction Deborah Delisle’s office. Local superintendents started calling her last spring, asking how they should spend their share of the largest infusion of federal money in the nation’s history. The calls sometimes left Delisle, herself a former superintendent, shaking her head.
“I had people call me and ask me what to do with the money,” she says. “That really concerns me. What kind of deep thinking is happening there?”
Nobody disputes that state and local school districts, reeling from losses in tax revenue, desperately needed federal help to fill deep budget holes and save jobs. By mid-October, the White House estimated that 250,000 education jobs—including teachers, principals and support staff—had been saved or created by stimulus dollars. Those estimates ranged from 60 averted layoffs in Akron to more than 14,000 teaching jobs in New York City.
What all this means to education reform is another question. Some observers wonder whether the government simply saved the jobs of teachers and administrators who were getting the same dismal academic results Education Secretary Arne Duncan and others bemoan. Three in five children can’t read or do math at their grade level. A quarter drop out of high school. Most international benchmarks show other nations passing the U.S. in math and science.
So did the stimulus maintain a shaky status quo, or is it a real opportunity to remake public education? Stanford University researcher Eric Hanushek fears it’s the former.
“You could have done a variety of things to better position yourself for the future,” says Hanushek, who studies education economics at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. “You could buy out bad teachers, or buy out old teachers, since they are more costly and most research shows that experience after the first few years doesn’t matter too much.”
Frederick Hess, director of educational policy studies at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, says the economic crisis could have given schools cover to make hard decisions—such as cutting bureaucracies or outsourcing services—that would have benefited them down the road. Instead, stimulus money allowed those decisions to be deferred.
“The only time anyone can make unpleasant decisions is in the time of crisis,” Hess says. “We really had the opportunity to make decisions we have put off for so long. Instead, we used the money to minimize disruptions and for routine expenditures. It’s hard to point to any examples where it promoted innovation.”
Urbans set the pace
Others counter that stabilizing budgets and preserving jobs was exactly the role of the initial stimulus dollars. Innovation will be the focus of a third round of stimulus awards: the $4.35 billion in Race to the Top grants that will be awarded to states next year (see story page 13). They also argue that there has been plenty of innovation so far.
Urban districts, in particular, appear to be spending stimulus money on programs they could not otherwise afford (see story page 9). While as many as 90,000 jobs have been saved in large urban districts, city school systems are also using the money to target unique needs. In Anchorage, stimulus money is being used to help prepare students for college, post-high school training and careers. In Boston, English-language learners are getting extra help. In Pittsburgh, money is being used to ease the transition of 8th-graders to high school.
“We know there are probably places where there will be a misuse or spending on silly things,” says Michael Casserly, head of the Council of Great City Schools in Washington, D.C. “But as a coalition, we’re determined to push through our reforms.”
Some say there should have been more of those efforts. While districts were required to spend initial stimulus money under the broad umbrellas of Title 1 and special education, there was ambiguity in how it was spent within those areas. It was clear the money couldn’t be spent extravagantly—no luxury SUVs for superintendents to ride in—but the law was less clear on items such as computers and electronic classroom boards.
And while the money can surely go to professional development of teachers, nothing prevents that training from being any more than a one-shot workshop with a chicken salad lunch at the local Marriott, says Wilkens.
“For it to be stupid, it doesn’t have to be an SUV or a color TV,” says Wilkins. “There are a lot of silly programs out there that don’t boost student achievement.”
Catalyst Ohio is an editorially independent newsmagazine published by the Community Renewal Society
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