The Real Key to Better Schools
By Dr. Tom Patterson
12 May 2000
Arizonans are clearly concerned about their schools and with good reason. Before we plunge ahead with solutions, though, we need to resolve perhaps the most important question of all: is our ultimate goal to produce better schools or simply better funded schools?
The two goals may be related, but they are definitely not the same. In fact, they imply very different courses of action. If our desire is to have better funded schools, say like New Jersey or Connecticut, as a matter of state civic pride, that is a relatively simple goal to achieve. We simply need to appropriate more money, perhaps from a dedicated source like the sales tax that has been proposed, and otherwise keep the same basic approach to running our schools. That is, we should continue to make most major operating decisions at the state level, the remainder at the district level and none at the school level; across the board teacher pay raises, smaller classes and additional school days seem to be among the latest “good ideas” coming from the top.
However, if the serious goal is to achieve better schools, as measured by the academic output of the schools, that requires a more thoughtful approach. Fortunately, a great deal is known about the characteristics of high performing schools. The evidence, based on research and abundant experience, is worth reviewing. There are three major components to creating better schools: increased autonomy, enforced accountability, and expanded choices.
To achieve excellence, local schools must have a high degree of autonomy. Human beings cannot perform up to their potential in institutions that function under rules imposed by a distant bureaucracy. The Heritage Foundation recently published “No Excuses,” a study of 21 schools which have records of high academic achievement even though they serve low-income students. The most striking similarity was that these schools all had strong, effective principals who established curricula, hired and fired their own teachers and made all the major operating decisions for their schools. The researchers commented that, “even on shoestring budgets, effective principals make their schools work, but innovation and flexibility are the keys to their successes.”
Second, schools need clear, enforceable methods of accountability. We have made significant progress in Arizona by establishing academic standards and a means of assuring the students demonstrate proficiency in the standards. Yet our public schools still have diffuse goals as we charge them with responsibility for everything from health care to diversity training. Meanwhile, there are no real consequences for learning failures. Social promotions abound and too many children pass through the system without acquiring the skills required for success in the Information Age. Schools deserve to know exactly what is expected of them and that it matters to them whether they succeed or fail.
Finally, evidence demonstrates that excellent schools are schools of choice. Whether public, private or public charter, high output schools have students who want to be there, not students who are trapped in the school by economic circumstances. Where parents have choices and the money follows the child, schools are naturally motivated to excel and to treat parents like the valued customers that they are – or they lose them. Moreover, parents are still by far the most important factor in any child’s education. Parents who chose a school have an enhanced role which energizes them and the educators to work together in pursuit of their common goal. It is no accident that voucher students in Milwaukee and Cleveland are now demonstrating solid academic gains, nor that the Milwaukee Public Schools, in response, have instituted some promising reforms.
Obviously there are many other critical issues that contribute to successful schools. The point is, educators would never have subjected our children to so many ineffective teaching methods if they were truly empowered and accountable for the educational outcomes that they produce. Local school districts would not have avoided consolidation and administrative workforce reductions if they were under normal pressures to achieve operating efficiencies. Our schools will prosper not with more instruction coming from the top down but by setting our educators free, in an environment of intense accountability, to create and excel.
So, bottom line, does all this require more money? It’s actually not terribly clear, based on the evidence, that money would matter more if a truly competitive free market existed. Certainly, focus on results, classroom discipline, more homework and an enhanced role for parents are all critical reforms which need not cost anything at all. Arizonans may in the end decide that our schools would indeed benefit from having more resources. At they very least, we should take a hard look at what it would really take to improve our schools and only then, if necessary and a competitive marketplace is functioning, ask taxpayers for more funding.
Tom Patterson is Vice Chairman of the Goldwater Institute and a former state senator.
Note: Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Goldwater Institute or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any legislation. Permission to reprint is granted provided credit is given to the author and the Goldwater Institute.
[Source: http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/]