Thoughts on Obama's Education Ideas and related topics

I just finished reading a story outlining President Obama's proposed initiatives to "overhaul" the American education system. Several thoughts ocurred to me, or recurred, to me concerning his ideas.

One of the first items in this overhaul called for an increase in the number of "charter schools" and a removal or a raising of the cap on charter schools that is in place in 26 states. In theory, this is a good idea but it fails to take into account what I see as the dilemma facing the public school system in our country.

We have (at least) two overriding imperatives in our current system. One is to provide the best education possible our students. The other is to provide this maximal education to ALL children. This wasn't always the case and in practice creates a serious conflict. The legal system we operate under and the financial realities we operate under make these two imperatives impossible to reconcile.

The first "horn of the dilemma" is the mandate or goal of providing each and every child an education that maximizes that child's potential. In what is considered by many the heyday of American education this imperative wasn't in effect. We did not educate ALL children to their maximal potential. Many we didn't even TRY to educate, much less attempt to provide an education that maximized each child's potential. In my own memory I can remember encounting a variety of students whos simply didn't attend school. The reason for this varied with the student but their absence in the public school significantly improved an individual teacher's effectiveness. These students would have taken a far disproportionate amount of time and money to educate at all adequately and at the time they were simply left out of the calculation.

Special Education is a relatively recent invention in our system and I really don't know if many of the countries our education system are compared to and ranked against have anything like the far reaching Special Education programs that are in effect in this country. Special Education is a good thing but it seriously taxes several elements in the mix. The first and most obviously strain on schools is financial. Special education is very costly. The classes are smaller and reasonably require an "Aid" to provide the services required by the "Individual Education Plans" that are mandated by law. Schools systems and teachers that have been seen as failing to provide proper IEPs or failed to live up to the IEPs as written have been taken to court and sued. The courts have most often, or very often, sided with the plaintiff in these suits. As it stands few systems can really offer the services required by law and outlined in the IEPs as submitted. It is a process of hedging and making do that too often is implemented. But even with the hedging and cutting corners the costs of Special Education are staggering in many school districts. They hit the urban schools the hardest and these school usually are among the poorest. The result is a disproportionate percentage of the funds in these systems going to a small number of special education classes and students. Just administering the system properly is a significant expense for most urban districts.

Private and Charter schools do not operate under this mandate. They can restrict and most often do restrict the number of special education students they service. They most often won't even take on the really serious cases of students who have severe physical disabilities and require the most intensive remediation. They also tend not to deal with another class of special education students I will discuss shortly. Until Private schools and Charter schools agree to take on a proportionate number of these students the public schools will be required to take on a disproportionate cost. The per student costs will reflect the necessary subsidization by regular ed students of the education of these special needs students. This is a concern that is rarely reflected in the charter school or private/public school debate. The costs of education a private or charter school student is often quoted to be much lower than the per student cost in the public schools. This is truly an "apples and oranges" comparison. The private and charter schools have a selection process which screens out many or most of the more costly students to educate. Our legal system and the "educate students to their maximal potential" requires that the children screened out by charters and private schools be educated and this burden falls almost totally on the public schools. Until this problem is remedied the bleeding off of the "better" students from the public schools will deprive them of funds and drive down the average achievement of the students in public schools simply because those "better students" are removed from the pool and it is those students who raise the overall average, and the costs per student will remain significantly higher than those cost in private or charter schools.

The second, related, horn of the dilemma is providing this high level of education to ALL students. The first horn directed schools to provide this education to "challenged" students in general. The second horn requires that "NO CHILD be left behind". In the past children were often "left behind". Special Education students were a case in point. However, there is another category of studentm some of which are special ed, that severly taxes the energy, funding and morale of teachers and principals. These students are the "problem children", the behavior problems, the students that in the past were labeled "incorrigible". In the case of those children classified as "emotionally or behaviorally disturbed" they fall into the jurisdiction of special education and the laws affecting that system. One of the consequences of this is these students are almost impossible to discipline in any ordinary way. They cannot, by law, be punished for behavior that falls within the scope of their "disability". And their disability is impulse control and acting out and refusal to cooperate with the rules and regulations the schools operate under. This affects the overall operation of the school. Under recent requirements that special education students be "mainstreamed" these students are placed in a regular classroom and the teacher in that classroom MUST BY LAW make special accomadations for that student. This is taxing when the student is "mild or moderately impaired" (in the old, politically incorrect nomenclature, mildly "retarded") but it is usually manageble. When the student is emotionally or behaviorally disturbed it becomes a severe problem for teachers to maintain classroom order and discipline. The "teaching process" is severly compromised. Law, in Louisiana at least, required that these students be suspended for no more than 9 days per year. Expelling them is almost impossible. A lot of money, time and effort is spent trying to deal with these children who, once upon a time in America, would simply be labeled "incorrigible" and thrown out of the system. Private and charter schools almost never take on the task of education them and when they do, once the child proves to be a significant problem s/he is expelled and sent to the public schools. The restrictions on suspension/expulsion dont apply to the private and charter schools because in the highly probable event that the child becomes "too much" for these schools to handle, the public schools are considered the "safely net" that will catch them and educate them.

Many of the same restrictions apply to children who pose significant behavior problems but do not fall under the headings covered by special education. These students must "act up" and misbehave a number of times to be considered candidates for expulsion. In the meantime, they are disrupting the classroom and the overall order in the school. In the event that they do get expelled, the school districts are required to provide "alternative schools" . These schools have an extremely high cost to maintain because of very low classroom size, counseling support, and plant upkeep. (The "problem children" present a continuing problem in the destruction of school property, books and equipment.) In the Louisiana system, and I think this is federal law, it is almost impossible to recover the costs of lost or damaged books and equipment. The traditional approach was to withhold school records when the student transferred or graduated, or to implement suspensions until the debt was recovered. however the savvy parents have found out that the mandate to "educate all students" applies to their child and that child by law is entitled to those records and that seat in the classroom. The school is left holding the bag. Unless the child wants to participate in sports or the band or related activities there is nothing the school can withhold to enforce collection of the debt. Maintaining an full inventory of books and supplies becomes nearly impossible. It is not just the "behavior problems" that fall into this category. In urban systems throughout the country schools have an impossible job replacing lost and damaged books. When you hear of school where children "don't even have books", this is generally the problem. The schools are allocated so much money for textbooks and that allocation is rarely, if ever. adequate to relace even a small percentage of the books lost and destroyed.


Unless this country allocates significantly more to the education of our children these two imperatives will remain irrevocably irreconcilable for the vast majority of school systems, particularly urban and other financially strapped systems. Under the current financing of schools the cost of special education severely drags on the overall budget of the schools. The requirement that schools do "everything possible" to educate students previously classified as "incorrigible" taxes the finances, effectiveness and morale of schools. Teachers are asked to take on burdens in the classroom that teachers of old would never consider as their responsibility. Private and charter schools are largely exempted from this burden. I can remember a conversation with a teacher in a private (Parochial) school and the subject of behavior problems came up. She catelogued the problems that most plagued her were students chewing gum, running in the halls and not coming to class with pencils and pens. I could only sigh inwardly and wish that I had similar "urgent" problems. All the teachers in the schools I taught in had a cache of paper, pencils and pens (supplied at their own expense) to handle some of these "emergencies".

We simply CANNOT, with current funding, satisfy both imperatives. And, unfortunately for most children, it is the second imperative that takes precedence. We are required and seriously attempt to keep all children in school somehow. This requirement falls almost totally on the public schools and almost never is considered by the advocates of charter and private schools.

I do not think Special Education is a bad thing. I do not think trying to get maximum educational results for behavior problems is a bad thing. By far the vast majority of these children can be educated. Many of them are extremely bright and can be constructive leaders in the school environment. The history of education is replete with stories of such students being "turned around" and becoming good, even "model", students. However in my experience such a turn around requires intensive interaction with the child. It requires almost one on one remediation. This kind of remediation is almost impossible with current funding. The funding is minimal compared to incarcerating these children later in their lives but we remain, as a country, more willing to expend vast amounts on courts and prisons while skimping on education.

There were other aspects of President Obama's vision for our schools. All of them lauditory but in my estimation flawed and unrealistic. As one teacher's advocate put it, "the devil is in the details". I hope to continue this blog and address some of those details at a later time.