Re: Kozol's op-ed piece

[Peter Campbell <campbellp@mail.montclair.edu>]

On Jul 12, 2007, at 11:49 AM, Monty Neill wrote:

> I don't think sending relatively small numbers of blacks or latinos or 
> poor kids in general (no doubt the latter given Supreme Court rulings) 
> across lines if state pays a town the 'going rate' for those kids will 
> raise much concern. The key is 'relatively small numbers.' A huge 
> metro interdistrict system with massive transport that was mandated 
> almost certainly would. It'll be interesting to see what actually now 
> transpires in Omaha, a relatively small city, since supposedly some 
> sort of major reorganization on those lines is now in the planning 
> stage (I don't know details).

This brings to mind Fordham Foundation's so-called "100% Solution." 
(http://www.edexcellence.net/fundthechild/index.cfm) Its creators ask, 
"How should different student characteristics be weighted?" They ask 
this in response to their proposal that "hard-to-educate" (sic) 
children receive more funds. But how do you determine how much each 
child gets? The authors admit, "WSF (weighted student funding) cannot 
work if there is not an accurate picture of the student population of 
every school. With more money flowing to students with greater needs, 
there will be great temptation for schools to exaggerate their 
students’ disadvantages. To ensure a fair process, the school should 
not have responsibility for classifying students."

As one way to crack this inherently corrupted nut, the authors sing the 
praises of the marketplace:

"One approach is to set weights over time based on the 'marketplace' 
for students that are weighted. In a comprehensive WSF system such as 
we propose, weights can (and should) be established such that 
hard-to-educate children become desirable for schools to enroll. 
Knowing that student performance standards must be reached, principals 
should find the weight for an at-risk child sufficient to make that 
child an asset to the school. Principals should seek out the children 
who bring with them weights that are at least sufficient to enable the 
school to meet achievement standards. Just as the free market sets 
prices for goods and services, the market for hard-to-educate children 
can determine their weighting. Principals and schools should seek to 
enroll hard-to-educate children because they know that with the money 
accompanying the child they can show improvement trends and reach 
performance levels. If this doesn’t happen, the district or state 
should adjust weights until it does."

So let me get this straight: under this proposal, principals will go 
out of their ways to find the most challenging "hard-to-educate 
children" because these children will bring more dollars with them.

But wait a minute: these extra dollars are supposed to be used to 
educate these so-called "hard-to-educate children." If that's the case, 
then it's a wash. In other words, there would be no incentive 
whatsoever to enroll these children. It would take more money to 
educate them. The principals would get more money to educate them. The 
principals would spend the extra money on educating them.

Or not.

It would most definitely be an incentive for principals to enroll these 
children if they got the extra money to educate them and then spend the 
extra funds on whatever they chose: a new football field, a new 
air-conditioned teachers' lounge, a new set of textbooks from 
McGraw-Hill.

Ironically, in pointing out the possibility of corruption within the 
system, the authors have provided a new channel for corruption in a 
plan ostensibly designed to prevent it.

A disproportionate percentage of these "hard-to-educate children" are 
black. A call to the marketplace to cure what ails them calls to mind a 
different kind of marketplace at a different time, e.g., America 
pre-1864. But this marketplace was also designed to cure what ailed 
them. The fates of the "hard-to-educate" lay in the hands of the 
highest bidders.