Terry Cowgill

You’ve Got To Be Kidding

March 7, 2007 on 2:36 pm | In Education, Main, Regional, State |

Kudos to Rick Green for writing a spot-on column in yesterday’s Hartford Courant on school spending.

It was especially needed, given the timetable for school budgets, including the Region One and local school budgets in the Northwest Corner that are being finalized for a referendum and town meetings in May.

As even some Region One administrators have admitted, cutting program budgets may have a painful effect on educators and students, but as enrollments continue to decline there is little alternative, lest budgets be rejected by the voters and the cuts become severe.

But the larger point Rick makes is that with Gov. Rell’s budget proposal targeting billions in new aid to local school districts, someone needs to ask the question: “Will this improve our schools?” So far, most of the discussion has focused on the increased income tax burden town residents will shoulder versus the amount of aid the town will receive (or not receive) in return.

The simple fact is that there has never been a correlation established between school district spending and student achievement. Family income, yes: but school spending, no.

Too often educators assume that if they just had enough money to do what they want — for this piece of equipment or that field trip — then their students would learn infinitely more.

Nobody has been too concerned that for each of Hartford’s 24,000 students, taxpayers fork over nearly $15,000 — a figure larger than almost every other district. For this sucker investment, we get about 5 percent of students graduating from a four-year college.

Right Rick, although I’m not sure the percentage of students graduating from a four-year college is best measure of success. Be that as it may, the city of Hartford, with 40 schools and enormous purchasing power, currently spends more per student pre-K-12 than the tiny Region One School district does at its 465-student high school (and high schools typically cost even more to run than preK-8). And Rell is talking about pumping more money into the state’s largest cities and effectively taking it away from towns like ours? Her budget is a huge redistribution of wealth without any hope of urban school improvement on the horizon.

Lest I be accused of callousness toward urban centers, it should be pointed out that Connecticut’s cities have some pressing problems: drugs; broken families, poverty, gangs. But will increasing aid solve any of those problems? There is scant evidence that it will. Until fathers stop abandoning their families and children routinely grow up with parents who meet their responsibilities, you will see little movement in failing schools.

Rick has a five-point program to improvement that will cost little or no money but might at least help students who are eager to learn but are being dragged down by disruptive peers or shoddy instruction. To Rick’s list I would add vouchers that will help qualified students in failing schools attend private schools of their choice.

Without an incentive to improve, public school districts like Hartford’s will just limp along, secure in the knowledge that revenue will continue to fill the treasury and guilt-ridden lawmakers will ratchet up the aid.

P.S. If I thought it would make a difference to our cities, I would gladly pay more in taxes. But as Tony Soprano says, “Fughett about it!”