I'm interested in your reaction to these thoughts on Kansas school funding. Please email me at minister[at]smuuch[dot]org and let me know your reaction. Do I have it right? Am I misguided? Thanks for sharing your opinions and thoughts with me.
Ten
days ago I attended a forum on public education and school financing hosted by
the MainStream Coalition. More than sixty
of us met in the basement of a UCC church and heard from a school
superintendent, a Kansas legislator with a pro-education track record, and the
lobbyist of the Kansas NEA. I was just about the
youngest person in the room and, unfortunately, there were only a few families
with young children represented.
At
the forum we learned about more proposed cuts to education coming out of Topeka
as well as several awful pieces of legislation that are being considered this
session. I am convinced that the
administration in Topeka doesn’t believe that public education should
be appropriately funded. They cut programs so they can
turn around and cut taxes on the wealthy.
They propose legislation that would funnel money away from public
education and towards private (religious) education. When they can’t point out shortcomings in
public education (shortcomings caused or magnified by a lack of funding) they
manufacture data to show that Kansas schools are failing. They are interested in creating an atmosphere
in which public support for education is so low that scuttling the system is
not met with resistance. They are
interested in the wealthier districts taking an “every man for himself” approach
that is shortsighted and self-destructive.
Over
the past couple of years I’ve attended several public forums on public
education and school funding. I leave
each of these meetings troubled by the state of politics in the State of
Kansas. But, I also leave these meetings mourning what I see as a failure on
all sides to imagine what a truly great public education looks like.
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I
grew up attending public schools in Wayland, Massachusetts, one of the best
public school systems in the entire country. Many of my teachers in high school, middle
school, and even elementary school had doctorates. (My second grade teacher had a
doctorate!) My high school English
teacher had a Ph.D. in English literature and an undergraduate degree from
Stanford. My high school biology teacher
had a Ph.D. in biology. My high school
American History teacher was a published historian. One of my friends from college, a brilliant
woman, went on to earn an advanced degree in education from the Harvard
Graduate School of Education and is now a teacher at Wayland Middle School.
There
were 132 students in my graduating class and 130 of them went to four-year
colleges or universities. And, the list
of academic institutions that Wayland High School graduates went to was nothing short of
amazing. Whether true or not, it was
widely rumored that Harvard capped the number of students it would accept from
Wayland High at four per year. (If true,
this meant that it was easier to get into Harvard than to finish at the top of
the class at Wayland High.) Besides
sending four students to Harvard, Wayland High graduates from the class of 1995 also
went to Yale, Brown, Dartmouth (4), MIT (2), Stanford (2), Amherst, Swarthmore,
Johns Hopkins, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Duke, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown. That is just the beginning of a list! As high school students we were even required to
attend a set number of individualized college counseling sessions with one of
the school’s guidance counselors.
I
was one of two students in my graduating class to go to Reed College, a small
liberal arts college with a first class reputation in Portland, Oregon. Even though I was at college 3,000 miles from
home, I was around another high-achieving Wayland High student. One of my high school classmates also majored
in religion at Reed. He was a finalist
for the Rhodes Scholarship. Another of
my high school classmates is now a speech writer for President Barack Obama.
I
don’t mean to imply that gaining admission to elite universities is a
prerequisite for a successful education or a successful life. However, the K-12 public education received
by students in Wayland is a launching pad for a life with tremendous
opportunities.
I
could go on bragging about such a public education. Maybe you are reading this and asking how
such public education is possible. The
answer is that the residents of the town paid for it. There is no denying that this education was
possible because of the tremendous affluence of the town of Wayland. However, the town also made a conscious
decision to leverage that tax base and invest in education. The town attracts the best teachers by paying
for the best teachers.
In
2009-2010 the average teacher salary in Wayland was $83,872. That was good for seventh in the state. Although it is impossible to know how much
the salaries of individual teachers increased, we do know that from 2004-2005
until 2009-2010 the average teacher salary in Wayland increased an average of
4.7% per year.) This article from 2008
details the high end of teacher salaries in Wayland. The current contract between the Wayland
Teacher Association and the town of Wayland includes a provision (section XXII)
for annual salary increases for all teachers.
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Members
of my community send their children to some of the best public schools in the
State of Kansas, even in the whole Midwest.
The Shawnee Mission, Blue Valley, and Olathe school districts are well-regarded. Shawnee Mission leads the state in teacher salaries with Blue Valley second.
I
am well aware that measuring school performance is a challenge. Among the factors that makes it so
challenging is that different communities are vastly different in terms of socio-economic
standing. What do standardized tests
prove when opportunity is not standardized?
However, I would be willing to bet that there is a high correlation
between teacher compensation and student performance.
Towns
like Wayland are far from perfect. But, there
is no denying the basic argument that it is a town that invests in education,
though sometimes it gets it wrong. In
thinking about the recent debates about funding for public education in Topeka
and in Kansas, the debate so often seems myopic, small-minded, and lacking in
imagination. The conversation would
change entirely if the public schools of my childhood were imagined, if public
education was widely regarded as a sound investment, and if taxes were
increased with the goal of funding excellence.
