POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
Education is without any doubt one of the most critical services that state and local governments can provide to society. People For Effective Government (PEG) believes that our K-12 public school system plays a fundamental & critical role in preserving our system of government and providing for the general welfare of its citizens. Support for the public school system should be of the highest priority. As Horace Mann, the great advocate for public education pointed out, public education is the vehicle to “lift all boats” and provide for opportunities for all of our people to advance themselves. The public school system should be the vehicle for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds to come together and learn from each other and improve each other’s academic standing.
In order to more effectively achieve these goals, PEG recommends that:
1. Teacher compensation needs to remain a priority, in order to ensure that high quality educators are being recruited and retained. Compensation for teachers with technical skill sets should reflect the fact that markets generally value these skill sets more highly.
2. Teacher and principal compensation should be partially linked to overall performance and the achievement of specific educational outcomes.
3. A clear hierarchy of accountability should be established so that the public knows who is responsible for educational successes and failures.
4. Washington should adopt a statewide assessment tool for student achievement that is well tested and cost-effective.
5. While following all the elements of legitimate due process, teachers and principals who are demonstrably ineffective should be dismissed in a timely manner so that the quality of our students’ education is neither unduly nor perpetually diminished.
6. School administration and staffing should be streamlined, so that a higher proportion of educational spending can be directed toward student instruction.
7. Principals should have more autonomy with regard to budgetary expenditures and staffing decisions.
8. Information about school budgets, school outcomes, and staffing qualifications and performance should be made readily available to the public.
9. Families should be allowed to select the public school that best meets their educational needs.
10. Strong vocational programs should be made available to all students who will not be pursuing academic post-secondary education.
11. All students should be required to complete coursework in practical life-skills and civics.
BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
What is the current status of our education system?
Washington State’s educational system has many challenges. It ranks in the bottom quartile in the nation in high school graduation rates, with approximately 20% of public school students failing to graduate. Of those that do graduate, over 40% graduate without the knowledge and skills necessary for college or the workplace. Over half (52%) of public school students entering community or technical colleges must take remedial courses in math, English or reading to catch up. Employers overwhelmingly (84%) say that public schools are not doing a good job of preparing students to succeed in the workplace.
And all of this is occurring in an environment of increased spending on education. Because the state’s total population has grown at a much faster pace than the number of children, the state has a larger tax base to pay for educating a proportionately smaller number of students. Between 1971 and 2009, the state population increased by 3.2 million people (a 93% increase), while K-12 public school enrollment increased by a little over 200,000 students (a 25% increase). Per-pupil spending is higher than ever, and school officials have more resources than in the past with which to educate a given number of students. Between 1980 and 2010, spending on public schools doubled, while the number of students increased by only about a quarter. However, of the money for public schools, only 60% is spent on classroom instruction. The rest is spent on administrators, maintenance personnel, special education, transportation, food services and interest on debt.
Some have argued that what is needed is increased funding for targeted education programs, but experience has shown that this strategy does not work. Since 1993, the state has spent over $5 billion on more than 80 education reform programs such as: smaller class sizes, increasing teacher pay, Math Helping Corps, Math Initiative, Reading Grants, Promotion Academic Success, and many others. Lawmakers funded these targeted programs in the hope they would help students learn; none of them has succeeded in significantly raising student academic achievement.
Simply spending more money does not improve educational outcomes for students. What is needed are innovative changes, made within the current rate of budget increase, to improve the performance of public schools.
How can we ensure that our teachers are as effective as possible?
There is no doubt the quality of a student’s education is in large part a result of the quality of the teachers who are providing instruction. Research consistently shows that placing an effective teacher in the classroom is more important than any other single factor, including smaller class size, in raising student academic achievement. A good teacher, as opposed to a weak one, can make as much as a full year’s difference in the learning growth of students. Students taught by a high-quality teacher three years in a row score 50 percentile points higher on standardized tests than students of ineffective teachers. We will not maximize success in our educational system until we are able to ensure that teachers are as effective as possible.
We must therefore ensure our ability to attract and retain high quality candidates for teaching positions. Most public school teachers simply do not earn enough money, considering the importance of the work society asks them to do. In Washington State, due to court rulings in recent years, the legislature has only recently approved significant funding for increasing teacher pay (among other increases in K-12 funding), but maintaining a commitment to appropriately compensating these professionals is of critical importance.
Outside of education, it is generally true that more technical jobs, i.e. those involving significant skills in math and science, pay better than non-technical jobs. Our compensation policies in the field of education need to recognize this fact, and ensure that those with math & science knowledge are not unduly discouraged from entering the teaching profession. We need to work towards a teacher salary schedule that more fully recognizes this challenge, and compensates more technical skill sets that are in higher demand with higher pay.
Ideally, the best teachers would earn more than their less effective peers. We should be working toward a system of teacher compensation that is linked to teacher performance and student outcomes.
In addition to attracting and retaining effective teachers, we need to ensure that ineffective teachers are not allowed to continue in the key role of educating our students. Of course, no teacher should ever be dismissed without due process, which must certainly include the opportunity for teachers to demonstrate an improvement in performance over a reasonable period of time and to have access to an impartial review and appeals process, including union representation. However, teachers who ultimately fail to meet reasonable standards should not be allowed to remain in teaching positions.
Finally, we need to do all that is possible to maximize the amount of time that teachers have to educate their students. Teachers should spend more time teaching and less time completing the bureaucratic reporting requirements of unfunded mandates. Onerous administrative requirements, in conjunction with low pay, have contributed to professional disenchantment with the education system, and this has resulted in the premature departure of many well qualified, experienced, and gifted teachers.
How can individual schools provide more effective education?
While teachers are the most important factor in the quality of a student’s education, more can also be done at individual schools to improve educational outcomes.
As with teachers, it would be preferable to link part of the compensation of a school principal to educational outcomes, so that more effective principals earn more than principals who are less effective. The principal’s salary should be set by the district superintendent, based on how well the principal works with teachers to achieve good student retention, attendance, conduct & graduation. To ensure accountability, school districts should hold principals answerable for teacher performance and yearly student progress at their schools. Principals should be subject to periodic review to ensure that they are capable in carrying out their leadership and administrative duties. And as with teachers, principals who, after due process, are demonstrably ineffective should be dismissed.
In most Washington school districts, principals have little influence over the budget, staffing or daily management of their own schools, often controlling less than 5% of the money allocated to their schools. Central office administrators and pre-set regulations exercise a large degree of control over spending, hiring and staff assignments. Staffing schools through automatic ratios means central administrators, not principals, control the assignment of personnel to individual schools.
While recognizing the role of centralized school district governance, the search for creative solutions to our educational challenges should include an increase in autonomy at the individual school level. This might include giving principals greater control and management of their budgets, so that individual schools are better positioned to spend funds in the specific ways that will most directly benefit their students, including evaluating and selecting supplemental curricula materials. It would provide for greater flexibility in implementing innovative, and school-specific, approaches to learning (e.g. regarding class size, union work rules, staffing formulas, school hours, home visits, tutoring, etc.). Greater autonomy might also include the possibility of empowering principals to more directly assemble and manage their teaching teams, giving them greater input to hire the best candidates for the students’ needs, to alter the mix of staff and faculty in a way that benefits students, and to more effectively promote excellence in the classroom by retaining teachers who demonstrate a strong ability to teach.
How could the curriculum be changed to better prepare our students?
While a focus on basic educational skills (e.g. reading, writing, mathematics, and sciences) will continue to be critical, effective and extensive vocational programs should be made available to all students who do not anticipate continuing to post-secondary education. These vocational training programs could be offered in conjunction with other school districts in a given geographic area (i.e. through a “Vocational Skills Center”) and/or through community colleges located in the same geographic area in order to avoid duplication of vocational programs in a given geographical area. The need for vibrant vocational education programs is significant, as our country suffers from a shortage of labor in skilled trades and computer technology. The emphasis on a high school education has been skewed toward college, whereas many students are neither interested nor capable of pursuing a college education. In addition, there are significant opportunities for employment for those who complete vocational training programs in lieu of a college degree.
Students should also be required to complete course work that will prepare them in a more practical manner for successful and constructive participation in our communities throughout their adult lives. This might include, e.g., instruction in financial literacy, lifelong learning, interpersonal communication, and social awareness. Most critically, especially given the objectives of organizations such as PEG, all students should be required to complete a civics class that would include a thorough study of the principles upon which our country was founded, the Constitution, our electoral process, our system of government and laws, and the separation of powers. The class would also provide students with the information and tools to engage in reflective and civil political debate.
What else can be done to improve the quality of our K-12 education?
As noted previously, Washington State currently spends more per student on K-12 education than ever before. But not all of this spending is effective, as much of it is tied up in administration and low-priority programs. For example, in 2012 a total of 4,955 people worked full-time for Seattle Public Schools, but only 50% of them were actually teaching students. Thus in Seattle only half of public education employees are actually carrying out the schools’ central mission of instructing children. This is due in large measure with administrative requirements being placed on school districts due to unfunded federal and/or state mandates; reducing or eliminating such mandates will permit administrative staffing to be streamlined so that more resources are devoted to instructional staff. By shifting this existing funding from administration to instruction, there should be ample resources to increase teacher pay, as suggested above, and/or hire additional teachers.
We should allow open enrollment in public schools, with funding following a student to the school of the family’s choice. This will allow a family to select the public school that will provide the best educational experience for the student.
We should adopt the most effective, reasonably priced, method of statewide student assessment. For example, the long-standing Iowa Test Of Basic Skills is a respected test that meets federal requirements and complies with the Common Core Standards. Private schools across the country currently use this test to measure the success of their students. In contrast, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test currently used in Washington is experimental. Moreover, the Iowa test costs only $10 to $15 per student, substantially less expensive than the SBAC, which is $27 per student.
What do we need to do in order to ensure appropriate accountability in our educational system?
As suggested above, greater accountability could be built into the Washington State educational system by linking staff pay to performance and by supporting processes that permit the timely dismissal of any staff member failing to deliver satisfactory outcomes.
Open enrollment options would go a long way toward ensuring accountability at the school level, as families would “vote with their feet”. Low, stagnant, or decreasing enrollments would provide an early warning to the principal, the superintendent, the school board, and the community that a school was failing to meet expectations. The principal would then have the opportunity to make improvements over a reasonable timeframe.
Better accountability will also be achieved by establishing a clear hierarchy of responsibility within the educational system. Currently, the lines of responsibility are so muddied it is difficult for parents and taxpayers to know who is responsible for failures in public education, and who should get credit for its successes. Officials at each level of the educational system should be accountable to the level above, in the following order:
Governor and legislature
School boards
District superintendents
Principals
Teachers
Another key element of increased accountability is enhanced transparency of school
budgets, staff and school performance, and teacher qualifications. Currently, school-level spending is not reported to the state, so important information, such as actual spending per teacher, is not available. Aggregate funding for each public school should be reported online, so parents and education leaders can see whether a particular school is attracting students and funding over time. Better information about teacher and staff cost is needed, as well as better information about staff qualifications, including academic specializations/majors and degrees, and routes to certification. The state’s comprehensive Public School Accountability Index should be used to assign a letter grade, A through F, to every K-12 public school each year, so the public can see how well local schools are performing.
Currently in Washington State, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is an elected position. Stakeholders should engage in an active debate about the potential benefits of changing the superintendent’s position from an elected one to one that is directly appointed by the governor. While there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods of selection, one clear benefit to appointment is that the office holder does not need to spend time fund raising or campaigning, activities which are required when the position is elected, and which pull the superintendent away from the primary responsibilities of the job. An appointed superintendent would not be as subject to undue influence from labor and or corporate interests, and an appointed superintendent would be more clearly accountable to the governor for the quality of public education. This direct accountability makes sense in the context of the governor as chief executive of the state. Against this, an appointed position runs the risk of being politicized by the appointing governor, with the superintendent potentially being less responsive to the public’s expressed objectives. Again, it is not clear which method of selection is ultimately preferable, but we should be engaged in an active debate about the issue.
What is the role of vouchers and private school options?
While there may be a place for private school options, public policy needs to be directed to fulfilling the obligation of the state to ensure a quality public education for all students, irrespective of their socio-economic background. All public funds need to be dedicated to that effort. Those families that choose to go outside the public education system to educate their children will need to bear the cost of that education themselves, so long as a quality public education option is available to them.
Policy adoption date: 4/10/2018