Stimulating Equity? Part I

During her welcome speech to the newest crop of Teachers College students back in August, Susan Fuhrman, president of TC gave the usual speech about the importance of trying to balance all of our responsibilities during our time as graduate students. She recommended that we view this as a time of luxury, unrealistic as that would sound to us as the demands of our classes began to pile up. She was referring, she explained, to intellectual luxury. As students, we would have the freedom and relative flexibility to learn all sorts of things by attending lectures, listening to visiting experts, and taking classes out of our fields. While, alas, my schedule of classes in the reading specialist program doesn't leave a lot of opportunity to deviate from the prescribed course load (although I did get to take some interesting electives, like neuro and linguistics), I have loved going to see as many speakers and panels as I can fit between my classes, practicum, and fellowship obligations. I continue to be surprised by how few of my fellow students I see at these events. Most of them are free, and while some have been a little disappointing, I always come away with something new to think about.

Today is the first day of a two-day symposium hosted by TC called "Stimulating Equity? The Impact of the Federal Stimulus Act on Educational Opportunity." This is an annual event, but the focus is different each year. The cost to me as a TC student: $10. (It's something like $65 for outsiders.) When you figure in two free breakfasts and lunches and a complimentary pen, it pretty much pays for itself. I was concerned that I'd have trouble staying awake - there are about six hours of speakers lined up for each day, and I had trouble falling asleep last night. But it wasn't a problem. I'm learning a lot about educational policy, economics, and politics, and I'm taking pages of notes. (Not everyone was so riveted. One former presenter slept through the afternoon session, and another woman stayed attentive while knitting furiously.) I was the only student from my program there. In fact, I recognized only one other student in attendance, although I'm guessing that about 15% of the audience was TC students I'd never seen before.

The first speaker of note this morning was Ed Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, he is due to present the annual state budget tomorrow and so wasn't able to come in person; we had to watch him on a screen via live video feed. I'd never heard of him, but I'm a huge fan now. He's known as "the education governor" and education is his top budget priority. However (and this is big) he doesn't advocate just throwing money at education; as he said, he issues no blank checks. He increases funding in very specific areas - like early childhood education, after-school tutoring, the implementation of small learning communities, technology in classrooms, and more Advanced Placement courses in high schools - and revisits them continuously for results. (Pennsylvania is the largest single purchaser of laptops in the US apparently. Every high school student and teacher gets one.) He said that we have a responsibility to educate children well because it's both morally right and economically sound, a nice two-pronged argument aimed at both bleeding hearts and stony realists. Unfortunately, he won't be serving another term, but I'm willing to bet that now that he has nothing to lose he's going to implement some pretty bold legislature aimed at education on his way out.

For the second portion, we heard five speakers who presented three research papers between them. The aim of all three papers was essentially to determine what had happened to the federal stimulus money and whether states were implementing it well (with a focus on equity, if only for the purpose of this symposium). Gotta love higher education: the first guy said it was going to all the right places, the second team said it hadn't gone to the right place in any one of the states they investigated, and the third team said that while it appeared to go to all the right places it actually hadn't. And they were all technically right, because they looked at the question from different angles using different research methods. The first guy, although he works for an independent research company and has no incentive to skew his results, relied on surveys distributed to states for his data. Although the states' anonymity was assured, I still find that practice a little fishy. So I'm more inclined to agree with the other two papers that were presented. One point I found interesting: In general, the number of dollars invested in education is up. However, the increase in spending doesn't match the inflation rates, nor the growth in population, meaning that although the governments (state and federal) are spending more in total, the number of dollars spent per pupil is down, and of course that's the number that really matters. Those scheisty politicians.

After a (free!) lunch, we met up for what were supposed to be the final two sessions. The first one featured a panel comprised of an official from the department that makes the annual statewide educational budget in Georgia (with a fantastic southern accent); a superintendent from a school district in South Dakota whose at-risk students have made tremendous gains in the last seven-or-so years under his watch (with a less fantastic midwestern accent); and a woman from New Jersey who's high up in legislation for students with disabilities (with no accent at all, to my disappointment). All three were pretty impressive, but the superintendent was incredible. I never could have imagined that someone would make me want to move to South Dakota, but I wanted to work for him after hearing what he had to say, even if it meant living in, well, South Dakota. His district was eligible for a huge sum of money from the federal government because he has so many children who live in poverty, and he posed the question: How can I use short-term funding (i.e. the stimulus bill) to instigate long-term effects? He went right to he research - real research, not commercial programs that claim to be research-based - and signed a 5-year contract with Achieve 3000, a literacy program, so that the district will have it after the stimulus money is no longer available. He also invested in technology in classrooms and the results are incredible. I could go on about this guy, but I suppose I shouldn't. The last panel of the day focused on the stimulus in the state of New York. It wasn't very cohesive, and I had class coming up, so I ducked out a little early.

I could also go on about the symposium, but I won't. As I wrote before, I took pages of notes. It has really left me with a lot to think about, and although I'm pretty mentally fried from 6 hours of speakers followed by 4 hours of class, I'm really glad I decided to do this. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

For more information (as if you ever want to read anything about this again) The New York Times ran this article about the symposium and the issues it covers. Also, here is the website where you can download the studies and other information presented.

More tomorrow.