As most of you know, I have a keen interest in public education, and so, I have been closely following the debate about the Constitutional Amendment (Amendment #1 on the November ballot) to create the “Opportunity School District” (OSD).

Those for the amendment seem to focus on the limited nature of the OSD.  The OSD can only ever include 100 schools and can take in no more than 20 schools in any given year.  Schools can’t remain in the OSD in perpetuity and eventually must be returned to the district.  Advocates stress the urgency of the problem and make the claim that over 68,000 students are trapped in perpetually failing schools.

Those against the amendment focus on the loss of “local control” of education.  They accuse the OSD as being “more government”.

I continue to be amazed that we do not research how other states hold districts and schools accountable for their results and financial stewardship.  There are some successful models all around.

I wish my friends on the right would take note of the conservative states that have much more robust state systems of accountability and accreditation than Georgia.  I wish everyone would ask why public schools are not accredited by the state based on a system of achievement metrics and financial stewardship rules.  The state of Texas has such a system. (Click here to read about the powers the state has when districts and schools fail children and/or taxpayers.)  In Texas, the state also has broad power to intervene in failing schools and districts, including state monitors, conservators, or even dissolving a wasteful and ineffective school district.  They take these steps every year.  If we were to adopt such a system, we wouldn’t even need to discuss the OSD.  Their system of accountability, and those of many other states, make our state Department of Education look downright useless.

Back to the issue at hand.

My thought about the local control argument is this:  If you fund your school district solely using local funds, then I think that the state should have absolutely no voice or influence in your district.  Zip.  Zero.

So long as a district receives state funding, the state has an obligation to represent the interests of the taxpayers of the state to ensure that our tax dollars are being used effectively and efficiently.  Why should taxpayers from Ellijay pay for failure and mismanagement in DeKalb?  Why should someone from Alpharetta be forced to invest in the mess and procurement scandals that go on in Bibb County?  Why don’t they get a say so?  After all, it’s their money.  Don’t they have a right to make some demands?  Really, shouldn’t every Georgian be making that demand?

It is ironic to me that a number of high performing districts have stated they oppose the OSD.  What is the argument they have against preventing your tax dollars from being wasted by bloated, ineffective bureaucracies that are failing children?

It appears to me that the policy of the state of Georgia, and all those that are opposed to protecting the taxpayers and kids from failure and waste can be summarized as this:  We demand that you subsidize failure.

With every dollar of state taxpayer money sent to these failing districts, we only purchase more failure and waste.  Don’t you think if these districts could have fixed these schools, they would have done so by now?  What is motivating their recent concern for improving achievement in their worst schools?  Even the possibility of an OSD has had a profound effect.

We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results.  I’m quite sure the OSD won’t be perfect.  I’m sure it will have some successes and failures.  But put yourself in the shoes of a single mom, with limited resources who is made, by government, to send her child to a persistently failing school.  She is forced to see a parade of incompetent leaders and teachers come and go while nothing improves, because the school district has become a jobs program and a cash cow for vendors.  And no one holds the district accountable for failing so many moms like this.  What do we say to her?  How do we allow the system to keep up this abuse of the vulnerable parents and children in these situations?  They deserve for us to do something.  We must try.

My only issue with the OSD is that it doesn’t go far enough.  We need a complete overhaul in the way our state thinks about education and accountability to children and taxpayers.  The OSD is a step in the right direction.  I hope there are many more to come.

With all of the talk about recent weather and traffic events, we’ve lost an important education story.

Georgia, has now become the first and only state to forfeit Race to the Top (RT3) grant money.   Officials in Georgia were warned last July to address failures in implementing a new teacher evaluation system or lose almost $10 million in funding for a teacher merit pay system.

In the letter regarding the forfeiture, federal officials stated:

On September 16, 2013, I notified the State of my intent to withhold $9,904,629, pursuant to sections 454(a)(1) and 455 of the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA) (20 U.S.C. § § 1234c(a)(1) and 1234d), until the State submitted a credible plan detailing its strategy for coming into compliance with this section of its Race to the Top grant. To date, the State has not submitted such a plan. ….. To date, the OALJ has not received an application for a hearing nor have I received a written show cause response. As a result, the Department is withholding $9,904,629 of Georgia’s Race to the Top grant award, effective with this letter.

I’m not a fan of some of the aspects of RT3 but if the state commits to it, one has an obligation to manage it properly.  Whether you like RT3 or not, this is an embarrassment at the national level for Georgia.  The headline draws attention to the poor state of affairs regarding education management in our state.  Furthermore, it removes funding that would have gone to our best performing teachers.

Georgia’s Department of Education created the very evaluation system they failed to implement.  The evaluation system had problems from the start.   The length of the 358-page evaluation handbook is a clue that the system may have failed under the weight of its own complexity.

Given that it is National School Choice Week, the story of a failed evaluation system is ironic.  The simplicity and equilibrium of parent choice in education as a metric and driver of success is all the more compelling, compared to the byzantine and lengthy teacher evaluation system created by bureaucrats.

Georgians deserve more choice and less bureaucratic failure.

In October, the Marietta Daily Journal published an article I wrote about Common Core, Common Core is No Path to Prosperity. Subsequently, Politifact ran a piece examining my comments about Georgia’s aggregate spending on education.  They confirmed that, indeed, Georgia does spend in the top ten on education in the nation.  Click here to review the U.S. Census data on that.  The Politifact article went onto discuss per pupil spending by state – a topic that I did not address.  Their point was that if one reviews per pupil spending, Georgia’s ranking drops significantly.  They further indicate that ranking drops, “when adjusted for regional costs of living…”.  The citation embedded in their article for this claim doesn’t given the adjusted per pupil data, rank or methodology used for adjusting the figures.  It’s fair to assume that their per pupil spending data is adjusted using CPI information by region (their stated level of adjustment).

I was pleased that Politifact noted that my fact on aggregate spending was correct.  Pursuant to their further critique, they would have preferred I discuss per pupil spending.  The main reason I did not discuss per pupil spending is there are significant differences in the wage structures for education professionals and their benefits between states.  The largest components of costs in K-12 education are salaries and benefits so adjusting each state relative to each other would be necessary for an accurate comparison.

I downloaded the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most current Occupational Employment Statistics to gather salary/wage data for each state.  I isolated those occupational profile codes specific to K-12 education in each state.  I averaged these wages to determine an average salary.  I then compared this average salary to Georgia’s average salary.  As you would expect, some states have significantly higher salaries than Georgia.  These states are often those that we think of as having a higher cost of living.  For example, adjusted against Georgia’s salaries, New York’s educational salaries are 31% higher; Massachusetts are 17% higher.

After developing a measure between Georgia and every other state, I used this to adjust each state’s per pupil spending relative to Georgia’s and then ranked the states’ adjusted per pupil spending.  The result is that Georgia’s per pupil spending is in the middle of the pack.  We rank 25^th in per pupil spending on instruction and 28^th in total per pupil spending.

I’ll leave you with this.  Every state that borders Georgia has a higher graduation rate.  And, every state that borders Georgia spends less per pupil than Georgia.  You can go west to Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas and you will find that they too, also have a higher graduation rate and all but Louisiana spend less per pupil than Georgia.