Sorting Out the Education Stimulus

The $787 billion stimulus package includes $100 billion for education—an unprecedented amount.

The roller coaster of the past few weeks has been crazy. Governor Paterson called for $9 billion in state spending cuts in December, including $700+ million in education cuts. Then in late January, Mayor Bloomberg announced a $4 billion city budget deficit and threatened 15,000 teacher layoffs. Now that the political theater’s climax has been reached and the stimulus has passed, New York State schools will see increased rather than decreased education funding. According to The Times:

“The $2.5 billion the state is expected to receive to restore education cuts…more than cover[s] the $770 million in reductions the governor had called for.”

Senator Chuck Schumer says, “Any way you slice it, this bill is great for New York.” A pot this big will not only stabilize school budgets but also will change education in profound ways.

UPDATE: But not so fast! The drama continues. No one seems to really know fully how the stimulus is going to be spent. See here for the New York City politicking and here for an inside look at Ed Secretary Duncan's hothouse.

Philly Road Trip / Philly’s Bruising Education Politics

I’m back from a trip to Philadelphia, where I picked up a copy of The Notebook, a terrific independent paper focusing on Philly’s public schools. The Notebook’s latest issue profiles new Superintendent Arlene Ackerman’s plans to transform the Philly schools. Ackerman speaks in crisis terms about the state of schooling in the nation’s sixth largest city:

“The future for far too many of our poor students of color who attend our public schools is up for grabs. For some, it is teetering precariously. Unless those of us entrusted with their educational well-being take unprecedented actions on their behalf, they will not get a second chance.”

Ackerman, in planning her next steps, is talking about redistributing resources to schools in accordance with student needs, especially to failing schools. In a time where the funding pie is not growing, reallocating funding is a zero sum game. As Ackerman waits to roll-out her reform agenda, the language of crisis is rallying support for change, but will it be enough to quickly steamroll over those schools and communities who will lose funds? In New York City, Joel Klein announced school budget cuts in May 2008, with the cuts disproportionately hitting middle-class schools like Stuyvesant and Townsend Harris, but it was done (1) quietly, (2) with Klein acknowledging the “pain” and not relishing in the redistribution, and (3) in the context of a Keep It Going we’re-making-progress vocabulary. Maybe Ackerman should look to Klein’s strategy for guidance, as change doesn’t always need to be loudly announced.

p.s. The Eagles are down 24-19 but rallying. Go Donovan!

Mo' Money for Schools / No Money for Some Schools

There’s nothing that would have a greater impact on inequalities in educational outcomes by race and class than addressing inequities in education funding—inequalities that allow some suburban districts to spend $17,000+ annually per student while other urban and rural districts spend $10,000 annually per student. In yesterday’s Week in Review, Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress writes,

The grim equation by which accident of birth determines educational quality in the United States is straightforward. The poorer the district and the state, the lower the local tax base, with less money for students. No other advanced nation tolerates such inequities.

Miller proposes that Obama and the Democrats issue a new national tax, tied to the elimination of some state and local taxes, that would increase the federal government’s contribution to 25-30 percent of all education spending, up from the current 9 percent—a proposal similar to what Nixon advocated before Watergate sent his administration into a tailspin. Good idea…but…I don’t see it having a chance of getting passed. What keeps school funding the way it is not as much a pure philosophy of “local control of schooling” as it is suburban politicians who fight tooth-and-nail against any new approach that would transfer property tax revenue from their constituents’ schools to less well-financed schools. Plus, if it were to happen, what would prevent the affluent districts from raising property taxes higher just to keep their schools one step ahead of the schools in the neighboring district? Nonetheless, Miller’s point that Nixon took leadership on the issue is important in setting a precedent for Obama to step up to bat for schools, including spending federal bailout dollars on education programs in under-funded districts.

Applications Up at Public Colleges, The Boston Globe Says It’s Middle Class Families Clamoring for Affordability

Application numbers are skyrocketing at Massachusetts’s public higher education institutions, reports The Boston Globe. At UMass-Amherst, applications are up 29% over last year, and at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (North Adams), applications are up 60%. The Globe attributes the rise in applications to middle class families abandoning private higher education due to shrinking investment portfolios. The anecdotes in the article attest to this, yet there are a lot of other factors that might be at play, including sheer demographics and the trend that high school students are applying to greater numbers of colleges. As a counterpoint to The Globe’s article, applications are also up—even soaring, you might say—at some private institutions. For instance, early applications at Stanford are higher by 18% and at MIT, applications are up 25%.

The real test of how the economy is affecting college choices will come in the late spring as institutions begin to report their yield rates—the percent of admitted students who decide to attend. I suspect that the yield rates will be dramatically higher at public institutions than in years past and dramatically lower at private institutions. Predicting is bad in the news business, but again, this is a blog, and I can do what I want here.

Hurtin': College Grads Line Up for Unemployment

The latest unemployment data shows that college graduates are taking a harder hit in this downturn than non-college graduates, according to The Times:

Since March 2007, the number of college graduates who are unemployed has risen at a faster rate, 75 percent, than has the number of all unemployed Americans who are 25 and older, 62 percent.

In today’s knowledge economy, knowledge is dispensable when the bottom falls out, not that the critics of higher education's expansion are gaining much ground, as no segment of the labor market is having employment success.

The claim that America needs a more highly educated workforce to remain globally competitive in the twenty-first century needs more rigorous analysis. When the economy does pick-up, it will surely need lots of skilled workers, including college-educated ones, but questions remain about in what sectors, in what quantities, and how higher education can service those occupational needs.