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     Jerry Moore (Admin) Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 2905 Registered: 01-2000  Rating: N/A |
Too many carrots spoil the schools By Tom Ferrick Jr. / Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist Stand back. I am about to summarize 20 years of debate, research, policy papers, forums, symposia, books and doctoral dissertations on the best ways to improve the public schools: You've got to use carrots. You've got to use sticks. The carrot part we know about. Education costs money - to lower class size, to attract good teachers, to provide the latest in materials and supplies. It can't be done on the cheap. Education is one area where the federal government doesn't play Daddy Warbucks. Most of the money comes from local and state taxpayers. From you. From me. From that fellow behind the tree. Gov. Rendell is wielding the carrot in his budget proposal this year. And what a carrot! Rendell wants to increase taxes to raise several billion dollars to lower class size, improve teacher compensation and training, institute full-day kindergarten in every district, and increase the state's share of paying for public education. Did I mention? Democrats are very good at carrots. Now for the stick part. It rises from a public demand that says, in so many words, if the schools are going to cost this much, we want to make sure they are working. So tell us: Are the children learning? The most popular way to measure that is standardized testing. Most districts and many states do it. The stick is also known as accountability. More money Not surprisingly, the education establishment dislikes the stick part. Give us more money? Sure, please do. Tie it to results? No, thank you. But Rendell's proposal does include the stick part. For one thing, he wants to continue the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment - the state-run standardized tests given to students in all districts to measure their grasp of the basics. The PSSA was begun during the Tom Ridge administration. (Did I mention? Republicans are good at sticks.) Rendell also wants to repeal tenure laws as they apply to principals, replacing this traditional form of job protection with contracts, ranging from three to five years, that tie compensation and continued employment to school performance. The state principals' association is cool to Rendell's idea, according to Dan Collins, head of the group. Collins argues that principals don't have much power. They are hemmed in by the school board above them, by the teachers' union below them. Why should they be the ones held accountable for student performance? "It looks like the principals are holding all the consequences but no authority to do anything, for instance, to a teacher who doesn't do their job," Collins said. Rendell does have a stick - actually, more of a twig - for teachers. He wants to scrap the traditional salary scales - which are now based on academic credentials and length of service - and replace them with a "career ladder." Pay grades As Vicki Phillips, Rendell's education secretary, explained to a Senate committee this week, teachers would be graded as meeting six different standards, among them "basic," "proficient" and "advanced." There would be different pay grades for each - with the highest pay going to the best teachers. Would the evaluations be based in part on student performance? Phillips was asked. No, she replied. They would be based on classroom performance, but not student performance as measured by test scores. Hmm, said State Sen. Ted Erickson of Delaware County. This idea, he told Phillips, "seems to be confined to the carrot portion of the carrot-and-stick equation." Erickson told me yesterday that he believes student performance should be part of the discussion about teacher evaluations. Someone say Amen. Erickson also said the legislature is unlikely to approve any of Rendell's spending ideas on the schools unless it is linked to accountability. No stick, no carrot. Let us watch as this debate over the schools unfolds, to see if that formula holds. 
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