Last Night in Annapolis in front of the Statehouse
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
MD #1 in Education. Again.
Update:The Baltimore Sun has more detail on the continuing racial gap in achievement even as Maryland leads in improvement by African Americans on AP exams.
From a press release issued by State Superintendent of Schools Nancy Grasmick:
Dear Friend of Maryland Education:
I have more great news to share! The College Board just announced that Maryland public education scored yet another NUMBER ONE National Ranking.
For the third year in a row, Maryland leads the nation in the percentage of seniors who earned a score of 3 or higher on one or more Advanced Placement (AP) exams in 2010. A score of 3 or better is considered “college mastery” level and many colleges and universities award college credit for high school students scoring in that range.
Maryland also ranked first in the nation in the percentage of graduating seniors who had taken AP exams in the mathematics and sciences disciplines. Maryland placed second to Florida in the total percentage of seniors completing an AP exam (43.4 percent to Florida’s 43.5).
In recognizing Maryland’s achievement, College Board President Gaston Caperton said, “Maryland students are rising to the challenge set by educators across the state and, as a result, more students graduate high school armed with the tools to succeed in college and beyond.”
High standards and quality programs drive success in our high schools. By providing our children with a strong classroom experience, such as an AP course, we give them a rocksolid foundation for future learning and growth.
I am so very proud of our local superintendents, educators, and students. Their combined efforts are putting Maryland education at the top of the class and making us the envy of other states. The College Board announcement follows last month’s news that Maryland schools ranked first in the nation for the third straight year by Education Week, the nation’s leading education newspaper.
A strong education system leads to an even stronger State economy. Maryland’s Number One AP ranking for the third straight year solidifies that Maryland is definitely the place to live, work, and receive a high-quality education that prepares our students for the 21st century and the workforce.
Sincerely,
Nancy S. Grasmick
State Superintendent of Schools
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Pinsky vs. the Post on Teacher Evaluation
Senator Paul Pinsky (D-22) and the Washington Post are squaring off over teacher evaluation standards. Here are the basic facts.
Maryland, along with many other states, is competing to receive federal public school aid under the “Race to the Top” program. In the last session, the General Assembly passed legislation intended to bring the state into compliance with federal requirements for Race to the Top money, which would be about $250 million for Maryland. One of the provisions of that legislation said that student achievement should be a “significant” part of teacher evaluation. The State Department of Education devised regulations providing that student achievement would be 50% of teacher evaluation even though the law limited any one factor to 35%. A committee of state legislators voted against the regulations 12-3. In addition to the 50% requirement, the legislators objected that the state had not consulted with local school systems before developing the regulations.
The Post editorialized that the state legislators were endangering the state’s application for federal money and accused Senator Paul Pinsky (D-22), an MCEA employee who chairs the committee that rejected the regulations, of a conflict of interest. (This is the second time the Post has made such an accusation.) Following is Pinsky’s response from a mass email.
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Dear Friends:
Once again the Washington Post gets it wrong on education: accusing me of jeopardizing Race to the Top money earmarked for Prince George's County and, additionally, weakening state efforts to reform our schools.
Set aside the fact that the Post reporter didn't even attend this week's hearing of the state's AELR Committee (Administrative, Executive & Legislative Review), which I chair. The assertions by the Post are simply wrong. The regulations proposed by the Maryland State Department of Education simply don't comply with state law and there's no reason to believe the committee's rejection of the proposed regulations jeopardizes any federal school funds.
Last spring, I actually served as floor leader (explaining and defending the bill on the Senate floor) for Gov. O'Malley's bill to reform teacher tenure laws, change teacher and principal evaluation systems and provide support in high-poverty schools.
The state superintendent of schools, Dr. Nancy Grasmick, proposed regulations, required by passage of the law, that actually ignored the state law. They would remove local school system input and decision-making, while actually jeopardizing the most effective evaluation systems already in place around the state. The state superintendent simply didn't like the law we passed and was attempting to do an 'end-run' around the state law. How do we know this? A member of the State Board of Education admitted as much: writing in a recent journal article that "Nancy Grasmick, willingly took on the Maryland legislature . . . using her regulatory power to interpret a new state law on teacher evaluation much differently than the . . . legislature intended."
Because of these facts, the AELR Committee rejected the regulations by a 12-3 vote and asked Dr. Grasmick to go back, get them right and comply with the law. This may mean a minor change to the state's Race to the Top application, an allowance included in the application. No one, including me, wants to jeopardize additional funds for our schools.
I don't want to get too detailed or "in the weeds" on the issue but what follows is a little further explanation:
The law passed in April required the state Board of Education (BoE) to solicit information and recommendations from the 24 school systems and convene a meeting to discuss the feedback before new regulations were generated so they would know what is working and what is not. This was ignored.
Next, the law called on the State BoE to (1) adopt 'general standards' for evaluation systems (observations, evidence, rigor, including using data on student growth as a 'significant component') and (2) develop model evaluation criteria.
The law then directed that each of the 24 local school systems, the superintendents, school boards and teachers, develop a system collaboratively, including how to use data on student growth -- under those general standards.
And finally, as a 'hammer" if they couldn't come to agreement within six months, the complete state-developed system would go into effect.
The state-proposed regulations, which the committee rejected, included in their 'general standards' a 'general standard' requiring 50% of all evaluations, including evaluations for new teachers, be based on student growth from newly developed student tests. The lawyer for the state board declared the regulations were simply "specific general regulations." (That's usually called an oxymoron.)
What's wrong with this picture? Not only would this requirement remove flexibility and collaboration from the local school systems, it very likely would result in the dismantling of some of the most effective evaluation systems in the state and a massive expansion of mandated statewide standardized testing of all students in all grades and subjects.
Our neighbor to the west, Montgomery County, has a teacher evaluation system where brand new teachers, and teachers-at-risk (experienced teachers) deemed to not meet the county standards, are offered support for a year. If at the end of the year they have not improved, they are removed. Over the last nine years close to 5,000 teachers received this support; over 450 teachers who didn't meet the county's standards after the support were dismissed or left the system, the largest number in the state. And who votes to recommend dismissal of the teachers who have not improved? Representatives of the teachers union and the principals union. This system would have to be radically changed or dumped if the new regulations had been adopted.
The Prince George's County superintendent has also closely collaborated with the county teachers union to develop new improvements in a number of schools. The school system has already received millions of federal dollars on another grant and successfully worked together. This type of collaboration and flexibility would be seriously compromised with the new regulations. That's why I, too, voted to reject these regulations.
Additionally, while I believe student achievement should be a component of assessing teachers' effectiveness, the proposed solution is not only simplistic and formulaic, it has no data or research to show it works. In fact, there has not been one study to show this 'solution' will get the results intended. A recent study showed just the opposite: in New York City, the least amount of student growth on test scores came from new teachers in their first or second year of teaching (not surprisingly). Should we fire all new teachers because of their lack of experience? And finally, do parents want more testing in the schools that don't count towards student grades just so teachers can be ranked and sorted by numbers? I think the answers are obvious.
All the committee said was, "go back and get it right."
That's why I thought you deserved a fuller explanation, something the Washington Post chose not to provide.
Yours,
Paul
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Bob Ehrlich: The Anti-MoCo Candidate, Part Two
In Part One, we showed how Bob Ehrlich’s positions on transportation and the Purple Line would damage Montgomery County. Today, we examine a different set of issues that are connected to another county priority: education.
Teacher Pensions
For decades, the state government has administered and financed a pension fund for teachers and other local school employees for the purpose of attracting talented educators. The system has contributed to Maryland’s repeated Number One ranking for its public schools. But the pension fund has encountered three problems: a change to the state’s contribution formula enacted during the Glendening administration that allowed the state to lowball its payments into the fund, investment performance problems during the recent stock market crash, and a large unfunded benefit increase signed by Governor Ehrlich. The state will either have to increase its contributions to the pension fund, restructure future benefits, or both. But some in Annapolis have a different idea: pass down the funding obligations to the counties even though they did nothing to cause the problems.
The state’s assumption of teacher pensions is one of the few state programs that benefit Montgomery County. That’s because MoCo hires lots of teachers and has to pay them well to compete with the rest of the Washington area. Most of the state’s other aid programs are tied to wealth formulas that send MoCo tax dollars away to other jurisdictions. In the last session, the Senate passed a handoff plan that would have cost MoCo $192 million over four years – far more than any other county. MoCo already runs nine-digit annual budget deficits and such an additional cost would play havoc with county services.
So what of the two candidates for Governor? Ehrlich favors at least a partial shift while O’Malley is vague. We do not find O’Malley’s ambiguity comforting. But the truth is that O’Malley has had multiple opportunities to pass down pension liabilities to the counties, an idea aggressively supported by the Senate President, and he has not done so. Ehrlich’s election would certainly saddle MoCo with a gigantic pension obligation that it cannot afford, while O’Malley’s reelection would give the county a little bit of hope that we can negotiate something marginally better. On this issue, MoCo’s interest aligns with O’Malley.
Education Funding
Maryland’s Number One public schools ranking depends not only on the state’s funding of teacher pensions, but also in part on the massive amounts of state aid that go to its local school systems. Much of that school aid has its roots in the 2002 Thornton Plan, which committed the state to hundreds of millions of new dollars in school spending. Education funding is popular in Maryland, but Thornton is not just an aid program: it is also effectively a transfer program because it is driven by wealth formulas. That means the state disproportionately funds “poor” jurisdictions with money taken from “wealthy” jurisdictions.
Let’s put aside the fact that MoCo is not as rich as the state believes. Montgomery County has one-sixth of the state’s population, pays one-fifth of the state’s combined income and sales tax revenues and accounts for one-third of its business income. One would believe that the county would receive comparable benefits from the state in return. But in FY 2009, MoCo received $166 million of the state’s $2.8 billion in base education aid, or just 6% of the total. This is despite the fact that MCPS has a higher percentage of limited English students than any other jurisdiction in Maryland.
Back in 2002, when the Thornton Plan was being drafted, then-County Executive Doug Duncan and his top budget expert, future Senator Rich Madaleno, were aware that this kind of disparity would result. So they pressed the state to include a program with Thornton that would later be known as the Geographic Cost of Education Index (GCEI). The point of GCEI was to direct additional money to jurisdictions that experience higher costs of educating students. Because the program also benefited Baltimore City and Prince George’s County, it passed the legislature along with Thornton – but only as a discretionary spending item. Governor Ehrlich refused to fund it. Governor O’Malley phased in funding over his term.
GCEI is a relatively small program, even under O’Malley. It accounts for $127 million of the state’s $2.9 billion in school aid in FY 2011, of which just $31 million goes to MoCo. (Prince George’s County gets $39 million.) But Bob Ehrlich has targeted it for elimination to partially pay for his proposed sales tax cut. Ehrlich told the Associated Press that the program was “a political ploy” and that “It was all about getting votes in the 2002 session… They just made it up to get votes from Montgomery County to pass Thornton in the first place.”
Let’s be clear, Governor Ehrlich. We in Montgomery County pay more in taxes to the state than any other jurisdiction. We are entitled to ask for a fair share of state money in return. We support any effort by our delegation to fund public education and to bring back the dollars we need for MCPS. Any politician who has a problem with that does not deserve our vote.
Want more? Come back tomorrow for Part Three.
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Ehrlich vs. O’Malley on School Construction
State political news has been dominated this week by the debate between Bob Ehrlich and Martin O’Malley on state education aid, a worthy topic on which we will have some comment. But operating support is only one side of state funding for local schools. The other side is capital support for school construction. How did the two Governors do on that measure during their terms in office?
First, let’s understand how the state makes funding decisions on school construction. The Public School Construction Program (PSCP) is administered by staff overseen by the Board of Public Works, a three-person body consisting of the Governor, the Comptroller and the state Treasurer. Every year, the state’s twenty-four local school districts submit capital funding requests to PSCP. Those requests are reviewed by the staff and an inter-agency committee comprised of the State Superintendent of Schools (Nancy Grasmick), the Secretaries of the Departments of General Services and Planning, and one member each selected by the House and the Senate. The staff and the inter-agency committee review each school district’s capital submission to determine those projects with the most merit and forward their recommendation to the Board of Public Works. State support is given in the form of matching grants for local contributions, with the state paying a higher percentage of project costs in “poor” jurisdictions than in “rich” ones. The school districts can appeal that recommendation to the Board before the Board takes a final vote.
Obviously, the Governor is not the only player in this process, but he is the single most important player. Early on, the Governor determines a preliminary allocation for school construction, which sets the total pie available for school construction funds. This preliminary allocation then forms the basis for a bond authorization to be passed by the General Assembly which actually pays for the state’s school construction funding. And while the Governor does not directly determine funding allocations by county, he can substantially influence that decision through his appointment of two of the five inter-agency committee members and his relationship (or lack thereof) with Grasmick.
In practice, the counties submit more money in requests than they know the state will approve. Many small jurisdictions submit small requests and get most or all of them approved. Big jurisdictions submit massive requests and get less of them approved, but they also get more money. The biggest factor influencing the entire process is how much money is available – and that is the Governor’s call.
Here are the amounts of school construction funding requested by the counties and approved by the state during the Ehrlich and O’Malley administrations.
Unsurprisingly, the amounts requested by the counties have gone up – WAY up – during the last eight years. In Ehrlich’s first year, the counties asked for $310 million in school construction money. This year, the counties asked for $729 million. The state’s approval rate has varied between 30% (in FY 2005) and 45% (in FY 2008). Total amounts have risen substantially over time as O’Malley has raised his school construction funding allocation to keep pace with the counties’ rising requests.
Here are the total amounts of school construction funding requested and authorized by county for the two Governors’ terms.
The Ehrlich administration approved $765 million in school construction money. The O’Malley administration approved $1.2 billion in school construction money, a 63% increase. Part of this was driven by more funding requests from the counties, but O’Malley made more money available to meet them. Nineteen of the state’s twenty-four jurisdictions received more school construction funding under O’Malley than under Ehrlich. Every county that saw a decrease asked O’Malley for less money than they asked from Ehrlich.
Here are the school construction funding increases enjoyed by the state’s eight largest jurisdictions under O’Malley’s term relative to Ehrlich’s term.
Anne Arundel: +95%
Harford: +93%
Montgomery: +92%
Baltimore County: +89%
Baltimore City: +82%
Prince George’s: +73%
Howard: +56%
Frederick: +37%
Bob Ehrlich served as Governor in fat budget times but only made school construction a priority in the year he ran for reelection. Martin O’Malley has served as Governor in lean budget times but has made school construction a priority every year.
For those who are concerned about crowded schools, the choice is clear: O’Malley.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Hans Riemer: Working Together To Support High Quality Schools
Following is a policy piece released by at-large candidate Hans Riemer's campaign on public schools.
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Montgomery County is in the midst of an ongoing fiscal crisis. Teacher pay has been cut along with school services that parents have come to rely on. As we move forward, we must work to keep cuts out of the classroom. We cannot take our educational progress for granted, and we must be mindful that while our tax base is shrinking our challenges to promote excellent education are growing as a result of demographic change. We must work hard to protect our schools and remain ahead of the curve so that Montgomery County can continue to be a great place to raise a family.
Accountability and Partnership in School Management:
Hans’ first priority as Councilmember will be to stabilize our long-term fiscal position in a way that protects our key priorities, particularly education. Hans’ goal is to meet the challenge of restructuring our government for a new era of reduced tax revenues, while working diligently to expand our tax base for the long term.
The County Council is the funding agent for Montgomery County Public Schools, and has an obligation to make sure that our money is well spent. On the Council we should have a culture of accountability and collaboration with the school board and MCPS leadership.
The next Council will need to take a step forward in its relationship with the School Board and MCPS to provide an effective and constructive financial oversight role. In the recent budget, the process clearly broke down, as MCPS threatened to sue the County. Collaboration must be the guiding principle for our toughest decisions as we work through our fiscal challenge.
Dynamic Teaching Practices for a New Student Body:
Educational data shows that the most important factor in student achievement is teacher quality – it is more determinative than the social conditions in the family or the overall conditions at the school or in the school system. Teachers who are not meeting standards for our children need training on successful methods and peer support from teachers in the district who graduate students with records of excellence. Hans supports MCPS and MCEA’s teacher evaluation program to support teacher progress, including termination for those who do not improve.
Engaging All the Communities in our Student Population:
Low-income and disadvantaged families are increasingly moving into Montgomery County and their children are enrolling in the school system. The county faces signficant achievement gaps in our schools. While we have made strides in areas such as increased AP success for minority students, graduation rates for non-white, non-Asian Pacific students have also gone down steadily over the past 5 years.
On the Council Hans will advocate for universal Pre-K so we can put children on the path to overcoming second-language issues early. To involve parents who are unfamiliar with English or with our educational system, our schools have to take full advantage of every tool to make these willing parents full partners in their children’s education. The Language Assistance Services Unit is an essential tool. We need to make sure schools take advantage of these services to improve parent participation by communicating in their language about school calendars, parent meetings and student activities.
Montgomery College: Training Workers for High-Paying Jobs
Montgomery County’s higher education system needs to be a critical part of our plan to attract new jobs and investment in green energy, life science and nanotechnology industries. We need to partner with Montgomery College and our other higher education institutions and leading employers to train workers to take the higher paying jobs that we are striving so hard to create here in Montgomery County.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Friday, September 03, 2010
Ali's Education Contrast Mailer
Here's a contrast mailer on education sent out by District 39 Senate challenger Saqib Ali against Senator Nancy King.
This is a more respectable piece than anything involving Disney characters, but we do have one observation on it. Ali says, "Saqib's tireless work also helped to save $23 million for Montgomery County Public Schools," and cites HB 223 2010, a bill to waive MoCo's $23 million maintenance of effort penalty. That bill was lead-sponsored by Delegate Sheila Hixson (D-20) and co-sponsored by MANY other Delegates, of whom Ali was just one. While HB 223 passed, so did SB 476 2010, which also waived the penalty. That bill was lead-sponsored by none other than... Senator Nancy King.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
School Unions Hit Back on Furloughs
The three public school unions – MCEA, SEIU Local 500 and the Montgomery County Association of Administrative and Supervisory Personnel (MCAAP) – have written the County Council in opposition to the intention of some Council Members to spread furloughs to cover the school system. The council cannot mandate school furloughs, but it can cut the schools’ budget by an equivalent amount and leave it to the Board of Education and the Superintendent to figure out how to deal with the cut. Needless to say, this option is not favored by the school unions.
The three unions sent a joint letter to the council raising a number of logistical issues associated with furloughing school employees. Notably, they asked what would happen if the state denied the county’s newest Maintenance of Effort (MOE) waiver application. Would the fine be applied to the schools or to other parts of the budget? The unions also raised the question of whether furloughs are truly a way to deal with long-term deficits. Finally, the unions alleged that the county would not have to furlough anyone if it allowed Sunday sales at county-owned liquor stores and postponed restoring the rainy day fund to 6% of revenues by a year.
Our sense is that the council is rather united in asking for more cuts from the school system – an attitude reinforced by the schools’ consideration of legal options. The Management and Fiscal Policy Committee, which unanimously called for a “principle of equity” in furloughs, is comprised of union nemesis Duchy Trachtenberg as well as union allies Valerie Ervin and Nancy Navarro – both former members of the school board. If Ervin and Navarro are favoring furloughs in the school system, the school unions have nowhere else to go.
Following is the unions’ letter.
May 4, 2010
Ms. Duchy Trachtenberg, Chairperson
Management and Fiscal Policy Committee
Montgomery County Council
100 Maryland Avenue
Rockville, Maryland 20850
RE: Proposed Furloughs
Dear Ms. Trachtenberg,
Last Thursday, your committee voted (3-0) to support the “principle of equity” in proposed employee furloughs for next year, as illustrated by a Council staff option presented to the Committee. Council staff made clear that the Council does not have the authority to mandate furloughs within the Montgomery County Public Schools. It is the Board of Education that has the ultimate decision-making authority over how to operate the school system to best achieve its desired outcomes. The option presented by Council staff proposed a five day furlough of all county employees, including all MCPS staff, at a cost of $34 million to the school system.
We understand, as Committee member Valerie Ervin made clear, that the ultimate decision on the budget is in the hands of the Council members and not the Council staff. However the option presented to the Committee raises a number of questions about what it means to apply furloughs “equitably” and whether there is any such thing as an “equitable” furlough.
As we have made clear in recent discussions with Council President Nancy Floreen and Vice-President Ervin, we do not believe it is possible to do furloughs equitably, and we believe the Council should be working to avoid furloughing anyone in county government or the agencies. The County Executive presented a budget that saved only $15.1 million through furloughs. We believe the Council can make choices to find that $15.1 million elsewhere and avoid furloughing anyone.
Can Furloughs Ever Be “Equitable”?
We have a number of questions about the “five-days-for-all” scenario presented by Council staff to your Committee and what it means to be “equitable.” We would appreciate your responses to the questions below, so we can better understand the thinking of the Committee on what you mean by “equitable.”
1. What is an “equitable” formula for determining the allocation of furlough costs across agencies?
MCPS represents approximately 50% of the tax-supported county budget. Yet on the scenario, MCPS is identified for absorbing $33.7 million of the total furlough costs of $48.2 million – or 70% of the furlough costs. Is that equitable and if not, how would the formula be adjusted?
2. Should MCPS be treated differently from other agencies?
The Council staff scenario proposed that Montgomery College and the Park and Planning Commission be allowed to develop a furlough plan to absorb the budget reductions already recommended by the County Executive, but in contrast suggested that the $33 million cost of the furlough plan be an additional cut to the MCPS budget on top of the budget reductions already recommended by the County Executive. Is that equitable and if not, how would the formula be adjusted?
3. Is a “five-days-for-all” furlough plan equitable when employees have different work years?
Most county employees are paid for a full work year of 260 days. Most MCPS employees are only paid to work 195 days. Is a furlough plan equitable if it represents 2.6% of some employees annual income (5/195) but only 1.9% of other employees annual income (5/260) and if not, how would the formula be adjusted?
4. Is it equitable to furlough part-time employees who are already having their hours permanently reduced?
More than 5,000 MCPS supporting services employees are part-time workers. We recognize that up to 244 county employees in filled positions face possible layoff, if they do not qualify and avail themselves of the proposed retirement incentive program. In MCPS, rather than laying off employees, the Board’s proposed budget reduces the work hours for several hundred part-time employees, and does not include any retirement incentive program. Primarily para-educators and media assistants, these employees have already been notified of permanent reductions in hours that are cutting their annual income from an average of $23,000 to just $15,400 (based on a reduction from 6 hrs/day to 4 hrs/day). Is it equitable that they be furloughed on top of that, and if not, how would the formula be adjusted?
5. How can the Committee ensure equitable treatment of pension impacts?
At last week’s meeting, the MFP Committee also unanimously recommended support for Bill 18-10, designed to prevent any adverse impact of furloughs on the defined benefit pension plans covering approximately 4,750 of the county’s employees. Under this bill, the county would still make pension contributions based on the full annual salary of these employees, as if they had not been furloughed. In addition, any employees retiring in the next three years would have their pension benefit calculated as if they had not been furloughed. We agree this is the right thing to do. However within MCPS, the majority of employees are in a state-controlled pension plan - and one that is less generous than the County’s defined benefit pension plans. Therefore MCPS has no ability to provide similar pension protection to its employees if they are furloughed. How can furloughs across agencies be equitable if some employees will have their pensions impacted and others will not?
6. How can school bus drivers and cafeteria workers be furloughed without reducing the number of school days?
The Council staff memo asserts that school employees can be furloughed “without affecting instructional days or the classroom.” However, school bus drivers and cafeteria workers only work on days that are student instructional days. So we are unclear on how they can be furloughed unless schools are closed. The Council staff memo refers to vacation days as an option; however none of the approximately 19,000 10-month employees in MCPS get vacation days. So how would furloughs be equitably applied to school bus drivers and cafeteria workers?
7. When is a furlough just a pay cut?
A furlough is typically defined as a temporary layoff from work. When an hourly employee is furloughed, they work fewer hours. However when salaried employees are furloughed, there’s usually no reduction in work. If teachers were furloughed on grading days, wouldn’t they still be expected to complete grades? If they were furloughed during pre-service week, wouldn’t they still be expected to have their classrooms set-up and be prepared to teach on day one? If “furloughing” salaried employees is really just a reduction in salary with no reduction in work, isn’t that really just a pay cut?
Will additional savings from expanding furloughs be dedicated to reducing layoffs?
The scenario presented to the Committee by Council staff suggested expanding furloughs to save the County more than $48 million, compared to the $15.1 million in savings recommended by the County Executive. No one wants to see employee layoffs, just as we hope no one wants to see reductions in hours for part-time workers who are already low- paid. If the Committee decides to expand rather than reduce furloughs, will the additional savings be used solely to avoid layoffs, or will the added savings be used to reduce the proposed energy tax or build up the reserves?
Will the Council absorb the state penalty for failure to meet the Maintenance of Effort (MOE) requirement if the State Board of Education rejects reductions to the MCPS budget beyond the $137 million already proposed?
The State Board is scheduled to meet on May 25 to consider Montgomery County’s request for an MOE waiver based on the County Executive’s proposed $137 million reduction. If the Council imposes an additional reduction on MCPS in the name of furloughs, what will happen if the State Board rejects that additional reduction and withholds the $53 million in increased state aid already built into the proposed budget for MCPS? Will the Council absorb that additional shortfall, or is it your intent that MCPS would have to suffer that loss on top of whatever additional reduction the Council has imposed in the name of furloughs?
How Do Furloughs Help Solve the Long-Term Deficit?
Much has been made of the analysis that Montgomery County faces a long-term structural deficit. Addressing this will require difficult choices to bring projected revenues and projected expenses into line. The reality is that furloughs are not a solution to the long-term structural deficit. Furloughs are simply a one-time savings. Whatever is saved due to a furlough in FY11 has to be built back in to the FY12 budget – unless the intent is that it be a permanent pay cut for employees. Montgomery County needs solutions to the long-term structural deficit, not one-time quick fixes.
We understand that these are difficult times. We know that the shortfall in county revenue is real, and is deep. We know that vital county services all across the government and agencies are being reduced. By sacrificing their pay raises this year, and their pay raises and step increases next year, county employees across all agencies have collectively lost more than $281 million.
There Are Alternatives
Based on the most recent budget presented by the County Executive, the Council would only have to identify $15.1 million to avoid furloughs altogether. We believe that the Council could get there by doing the following:
1.Approval of the proposal to allow Sunday liquor sales is estimated to yield $1.5 to $2 million.
2.The County Executive originally proposed maintaining the County’s reserve funds at 5% of the budget for next year. In his most recent budget amendments, he realigned $36.6 million in order to increase the reserves to 6% next year. Instead, the Council could phase in restoration of the reserve by going to 5.6% next year and fully to 6% in FY12. Doing so would save an additional $14.6 million.
3. Combined, those steps would restore the $15.1 million needed to avoid furloughing anyone in the county.
We fully appreciate the concerns about maintaining Montgomery County’s AAA bond rating. However we are also mindful that the Fitch Ratings agency only stated a need to return to the county’s 6% reserve policy in FY12 – not in FY11. We also understand that these same rating agencies give Prince Georges County a AAA bond rating, despite their TRIM tax cap that so inhibits sound fiscal policy. And finally, we cannot help but point out that these are the same credit rating agencies that consistently gave AAA ratings to the credit default swaps and complex Wall Street derivatives that we now know were toxic junk and brought the country to the brink of economic collapse. Surely Montgomery County passes a much higher bar.
The Fitch Rating agency also said the following about Montgomery County in its most recent analysis:
“While reserves have declined, Montgomery County retains considerable flexibility…. A considerable and formidable economic base, anchored by the extensive presence of the U.S. government and expanding broadly into biotechnology, shows excellent prospects for continued expansion. Strong wealth and unemployment indicators underscore the county’s economic strengths.”
Given that strong assessment, there is little reason to believe that a phased restoration of the reserve (from 5% this year to 5.6% in FY11, to 6% in FY12) would put the County’s bond ratings at risk. Ultimately the County Council must make this decision. However given the emphasis that is being placed on ensuring that furloughs are “equitable”, we look forward to your responses to the questions outlined above, so we can better understand what the Committee means by equitable and what steps you would take to ensure that.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Doug Prouty
President
MCEA
Merle Cuttitta
President
SEIU Local 500
Rebecca Newman
President
MCAAP
cc: County Council Members
Board of Education Members
Montgomery County Legislative Delegation
All Association Members
MCPS/Council Relationship Hits Bottom
Budget pressures and rumors of litigation have caused a considerable rift between the County Council and the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) system. It is possible that the relationship between the two institutions has never been this bad.
All MPW readers know about the county’s nearly $1 billion deficit. That deficit has caused the Executive to recommend double-digit cuts to many county agencies, cuts which have grown due to new revenue writedowns. Among the county’s problems is its inability to meet the state’s Maintenance of Effort (MOE) law, which requires counties to match per-pupil local school spending in succeeding years to be eligible for state aid increases. The state ruled last year that Montgomery’s accounting technique of charging $79.5 million to the school system in debt service violated MOE, but the county’s statehouse delegation was able to get the resulting fine waived. The county cannot meet MOE once again and is applying for another waiver valued at $58-139 million. (The amount varies depending on whether the $79.5 million debt service charge counts towards last year’s local contribution to the schools.)
The county’s budget problems are bad enough. But what has the schools really on edge is that many on the County Council would like to cut the schools’ budget even more. Some argue that the Executive’s budget proposal gives the school system almost everything it wants while other agencies are taking massive cuts. The fact that the Executive exempted the school system and public safety workers from furloughs is another bone of contention as some agree with MCGEO that the pain is unfairly concentrated on a minority of the county workforce. The council’s Management and Fiscal Policy Committee, consisting of Chair Duchy Trachtenberg and Council Members Valerie Ervin and Nancy Navarro, just unanimously voted to spread furloughs across all agencies, including the schools. The problem is that the County Council cannot order the school system to implement furloughs; they can only cut the schools by an equivalent amount of money. A five-day furlough plan the council is considering would cost MCPS $33.7 million.
MCPS is resolutely opposed to furloughs for school employees. The Gazette and the Post reported that the school system is threatening to sue the County Council to prevent cuts over and above the Executive’s proposal. But neither story is completely accurate. The truth reveals even MORE bad blood between MCPS and the council than is implied by the Gazette and Post articles.
The school system consulted its legal counsel for advice on how to fight additional cuts. The schools’ attorney reviewed state law and found Education Title 5, § 5-102(c), which says the following about local school budgets that are forwarded to County Executives and then sent to County Councils:(c) Reduction by county executive.-
The school system’s lawyer believes this language prohibits the council from cutting the school budget below the level recommended by the Executive. The council’s attorney disagrees. The matter awaits the courts if a suit is filed.
(1) This subsection applies only to a county that has a county governing body that consists of a county executive and county council.
(2) The county executive shall indicate in writing which major categories of the annual budget of the county board have been denied in whole or reduced in part and the reason for the denial or reduction.
(3) The county council may restore any denial or reduction made by the county executive in the annual budget submitted by the county board.
MCPS wrote an in-house draft based on this legal theory, which it shared with the County Attorney. The County Attorney then shared it with the council, which leaked it to the Gazette and the Post despite discussion of the issue in a closed session. In contrast to the published articles, the school system never formally threatened litigation. Therefore, a lawsuit is not quite on the table – YET.
Both sides are now pointing sharp-clawed fingers at the other. The council believes MCPS is playing politics by evaluating legal justifications for a lawsuit. MCPS believes the council is playing politics by leaking a secret in-house legal draft. The council will not accept any limits on its authority to cut the budget. MCPS will not support any MOE waiver which exceeds the County Executive’s proposed cut. Neither side is prepared to budge.
Anyone ever get behind the wheel and play a game of chicken blindfolded?
Friday, March 26, 2010
Nothing to BOAST About
Maryland politicians love to take credit for the state’s ranking by Education Week as having the best public schools in the nation. So what do they plan on doing about that? Why, they intend to cut support for public schools while starting a new entitlement to benefit private schools. Only in Annapolis, folks!
The state Capitol is a tough place for public education advocates these days. First, the Senate just voted to transfer teacher pension obligations to counties that every Senator knows cannot afford them. Second, the Senate voted to cap annual state education aid increases at one percent. Since inflation almost always exceeds one percent, that will amount to a real-dollar cut. Third, both Chambers approved bills that make it slightly easier for counties to get out of state requirements that they maintain per-pupil local spending on schools to get state aid. And finally, while K-12 aid has been mostly protected over this four-year term, there are no guarantees for next year.
But times have never been better for private school advocates. They are on the verge of passing the BOAST bill, which allows corporations to receive tax credits for contributions to organizations that send money to private schools. The money can also go to public schools to “support innovative educational programs that are not part of the regular academic program,” but since the bill’s supporters do not include a single public school district, you can guess where the money is really going.
The amount of tax credits that businesses can claim depends on the size of a reserve fund set up by the state government to accommodate them. So the way this would work is the state would say, “We don’t want to spend X million dollars on public schools, public safety or health care this year. So we will allow that X million dollars to go to private schools instead.” The bill’s fiscal note says, “If the program is funded at a similar level to existing programs in other states, general fund expenditures will increase by $50.0 million annually.”
Arizona has had a similar program since 1997 that allows parents to claim tax credits for amounts they contribute to “school tuition organizations” (STOs), which then give children private school scholarships. The East Valley Tribune did an investigative series on the program last year exposing massive abuse and corruption in the program. The newspaper found: * An untold number of STOs, schools and parents are using the tax credits in ways that violate federal tax laws governing charitable donations.
Arizona lawmakers reacted to the Tribune’s findings by calling for state and federal investigations. Maryland’s BOAST bill uses a similar system of middlemen to process contributions intended for private schools.
* Nearly two-thirds of all STOs failed to spend 90 percent of their donations on scholarships - as required by state law - since 2003, the year the STOs began filing annual reports with the state Department of Revenue.
* Executives at two of the largest STOs have used tax credit donations to enrich themselves, buying luxury cars, real estate and funding their own outside for-profit businesses.
* A majority of tax credit donations are earmarked to give scholarships to students already enrolled in private schools, no matter how much money their parents earn. Just seven of the state's 55 STOs use financial need as the primary factor in deciding who gets tuition money.
* Even as they took in millions of dollars in scholarships, the state's private schools hiked tuition dramatically, pushing the cost of private education further from the grasp of middle- and low-income families.
* Tax credits have failed to increase minority students' access to Arizona's private schools. Students at the schools receiving the most scholarship money remained overwhelmingly white at a time when the state's Hispanic population boomed.
Additionally, these systems have created fiscal blowups in other states where they have been used. Arizona has seen $350 million in tax dollars diverted to private schools since its law passed thirteen years ago. Pennsylvania passed similar legislation in 2001 and the cost quickly ballooned from $30 million to $75 million per year. When state legislators dared to consider cutting back the cost, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference cried foul. Florida’s program costs went from $50 million in FY 2004 to $118 million in FY 2009. That increase came despite a major scandal in which seven private school officials were arrested for stealing tax credit money in 2004.
Finally, prospective BOAST recipients actually defend their right to take public money while discriminating against students. When Prince George’s County Delegate Justin Ross (D-22) asked Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien whether an openly gay high-school student was prohibited from attending his schools, O’Brien replied, “I think we would expect to have the values that, traditionally, we do embrace, to be retained, whether or not we get a tax credit… I would hope that this would not become a political football ... our kids are at stake.”
The BOAST bill passed the Senate on a 30-17 vote just six days before the Senate voted to hand off teacher pensions. Following are the twenty-one Senators who voted to help private schools right before voting to damage public schools.
Mike “Big Daddy” Miller (D-Calvert/PG)
John Astle (D-Anne Arundel)
David Brinkley (R-Frederick/Carroll)
James Brochin (D-Baltimore County)
Richard Colburn (R-Eastern Shore)
Ulysses Currie (D-PG)
James DeGrange (D-Anne Arundel)
George Della (D-Baltimore City)
George Edwards (R-Western Maryland)
Barry Glassman (R-Harford)
Larry Haines (R-Baltimore/Carroll Counties)
Nancy Jacobs (R-Cecil/Harford)
Allan Kittleman (R-Carroll/Howard)
Kathy Klausmeier (D-Baltimore County)
Nathaniel McFadden (D-Baltimore City)
Mac Middleton (D-Charles)
Donald Munson (R-Western Maryland)
Catherine Pugh (D-Baltimore City)
James Robey (D-Howard)
J. Lowell Stoltzfus (R-Eastern Shore)
Norman Stone (D-Baltimore County)
And so Maryland is poised to cut its nationally-recognized public schools while starting a new entitlement for private schools that has been associated with out-of-control costs and corruption in other states where it has been implemented. That’s nothing to BOAST about.
How the Counties Spend Your Money, Part Five
Today, we examine public school spending and look at Montgomery County’s per capita budget in detail.
In FY 2009, Maryland’s twenty-four public school districts received a combined $11.2 billion. Of that sum, $5.3 billion came from state aid, $529 million came from federal aid and $5.4 billion came from county taxes. Aid to public schools is the single biggest line item in the state’s budget and accounts for over a third of its general fund expenditures. But school aid is not distributed evenly. Instead, like almost all other forms of state aid, school aid is apportioned based on a wealth formula that favors jurisdictions with lower property values and lower incomes over counties that perform better on those measures. That has real consequences.
Here is total and per capita school spending by source for each county.
In per capita terms, the leaders on local school spending are Howard ($1,654), Montgomery ($1,592), Worcester ($1,474) and Calvert ($1,135). The lowest spender of local money on schools is Baltimore City ($326). But the city makes that up by being the biggest beneficiary of state aid ($1,417 per capita) and federal aid ($178). In terms of per capita funding from all sources, Baltimore City ($1,922) is very close to the state average ($1,994).
The wealth formula creates enormous disparities on the local burden of funding public schools. In FY 2009, here are the percentages of public school district budgets paid by state and federal aid.
On one hand some jurisdictions have overwhelming percentages of their school budgets covered by the state and federal governments, including Baltimore City (83%), Caroline County (80%), Allegany County (78%), Somerset County (76%) and Wicomico County (72%). All of these jurisdictions contribute much less than the state per capita average in local funding to their schools. On the other hand, other jurisdictions largely go it alone, such as Worcester County (28%), Montgomery County (28%), Talbot County (31%) and Howard County (36%). Taxpayers in Worcester, Montgomery and Howard pay very large amounts to maintain their own schools as well as the schools everywhere else in the state.
And what of Montgomery County? The county’s colossal FY 2011 budget deficit is prompting questions by many elected officials and staffers as to where the county’s spending is going and whether it is justified. Here is how Montgomery’s per capita spending compared to twenty other counties around the state for which we have data in FY 2009.
On a per capita basis, Montgomery spends more than the vast majority of other counties on pretty much everything. The only major items in which it is middle-of-the-pack or lower are the Board of Elections (on which it ranked 11th), economic development (11th) and the State’s Attorney office (19th). But in terms of total spending, the county ranks high for one big reason and one less important reason.
The big reason is schools. As we have seen above, Montgomery is a big-time loser in school aid due to the wealth formula. The county has chosen to overcome that handicap through massive local spending on its schools. The less important reason is the county’s health and human services spending. As we saw in Part Three, Montgomery spends almost seven times as much per person on health and human services as does Prince George’s County. Montgomery is effectively subsidizing Prince George’s on that measure by paying for the needs of the latter county’s poor.
If Montgomery wants to get more state aid, there is a quick way to do it: get poor – the faster, the better. Given the calamitous state of the county’s economy, that option is not completely out of the question.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Dealing with Waivers
By Marc Korman.
On February 23rd the State Board of Education announced a process to allow school systems to receive a waiver from the requirement that they be open for 180 days. Here’s how I think the State Board of Education should determine what counties to grant waivers to.
State law sets the minimum length of the school year at 180 days or 1,080 hours (MD ANN CODE EDUC § 7-103 if you are interested in looking it up). Based on data collected last decade, only six states require a longer school year than Maryland: DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio. Of course, we have a shorter school than many other countries.
When there are unforeseen circumstances, such as three massive snow storms, it gets a lot more difficult for the schools to meet the requirement. During my Montgomery County Public Schools days, there were multiple years that days were tacked on to the end of the school year or the school day was lengthened to meet the legal requirement despite the snow. Montgomery County is actually better positioned than many others because it builds four excess days into the calendar in case of snow or other emergencies.
Given the weather pounding the state has endured, the state school board is allowing school systems to apply for a waiver from the requirement. State law says a local school board can submit an application describing “a demonstrated effort…to comply” with the requirement. The State Board is authorized to adjust the length of the school year, allow the school year to go beyond 10 months, adjust the length of the school day, or keep schools open on holidays. The impression the State Board has left is that they will allow a shortened school year.
Although waivers have not been approved yet, it appears that the State Board is showing an uncharacteristic amount of flexibility. It would have been nice if the State Board had acted this way when Montgomery County, no slouch in supporting public schools, sought a maintenance of effort waiver. But perhaps the Board learned that strictly applying rules with no consideration of extenuating circumstances or context does not make a lot of sense.
At the risk of angering school children everywhere, I believe when accepting waivers from the school day requirement, the School Board should ask for something in return. Both the Gazette and Washington Post reported on entrepreneurial teachers and students who used online discussion boards and email to continue teaching and learning during the blizzards. Although the assignments were optional, most students participated in the programs covered by the press.
When accepting waiver applications, the State Board should ask local school systems to report on the use of online education programs during the past few months, how good the participation was, and what steps are being taken to encourage those programs going forward.
There will be lots of kinks to work out. For example, although many students have online access at home, not everyone does. In addition, during the snow storm thousands of County residents lost power and could not participate in online activities even if they had an Internet connection. That may mean it will be impossible to require online work during school cancellations. However, schools should still be encouraging this type of innovative activity particularly when schools are closed for more than a day. Both teachers and students need that time.
The Board of Education can show some welcome flexibility and allow schools to shave days or hours off their requirement. But in exchange, they should be learning how school’s minimized the storm’s impact on education and how they will work to do so in future circumstances. New Internet based tools make those efforts much easier.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Senator Nancy King Discusses Education Funding
Senator Nancy King (D-39) is a member of the Budget and Taxation Committee and served two terms on the Montgomery County Board of Education, including two years as its President.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Digging into Advanced Placement
By Marc Korman.
The Washington Post’s top notch education columnist, Jay Mathews, recently wrote about Advanced Placement Grade Reports. The reports give data behind the headline numbers of how many students are taking AP exams. Mathews’ column inspired me to take a look at how Montgomery County is doing with AP Exams.
Encouraging students to take AP exams is a major initiative of the Montgomery County Public Schools, and other school districts around the country. In the school system’s strategic plan, Our Call to Action: Pursuit of Excellence, one of the milestones for all schools is to “increase enrollment and performance of all students in…Advanced Placement…courses, with a focus on improving enrollment and performance of African American and Hispanic students.”
AP classes are considered college level, meaning coursework is rigorous as teachers are supposed to cover more material at a deeper level. At the end of the school year students can take a standardized exam that many colleges and universities will accept for credit. Scoring for the exams is 1 to 5. Those who receive a 3, 4, or 5 are generally considered qualified for college credit, though higher education institutions are not uniform in what scores they will accept. There are lots of benefits to AP including challenging classes and the potential for college credit. But there are also concerns that people are being pushed into AP classes they may not be prepared to take to improve participation rates. AP participation statistics are part of US News and World Report’s methodology in ranking high schools, though they also adjust the participation rate based on test scores to help determine overall ranking. The Washington Post Challenge Index also includes the amount of AP tests taken in its formula.
My own experience with AP classes at Richard Montgomery High School in the 1990s was positive. My recollection is that I took seven AP courses. However, I only took six AP exams because I did not feel adequately prepared by one of the courses to take the exam. Happily, there was no pressure for me to take the exam because I would not have done well.
A Montgomery County Public Schools Office of Shared Accountability memo shows some of the challenges facing the AP program in the County. The headline numbers are impressive. There has been significant growth in how many AP exams are being taken:
Unfortunately, the success rate has not kept up with the amount of exams being taken:
The increase in exams being taken is also not entirely due to more students enrolling in AP classes. In 2005 10,411 students took at least one AP exam. In 2009, 14,673 took at least one exam. Meaning approximately half the total increase of 8,411 more AP Exams taken in 2009 was due to more students taking multiple AP exams and not more students taking one AP exam. For example, in 2005, 707 students took four different AP exams. In 2009, that number was 1060. The data does not show if taking multiple exams in a year has any effect on scores.
And not surprisingly, there is a lot of variance in how many tests are being taken per high school. The low in 2009 was Wheaton with 38. The high was Wootton with 203.
AP Classes have a lot of value. Even if students are not scoring high on their exams, I believe there is value to taking more intensive classes with higher expectations. At a minimum, MCPS should be applauded for promoting AP classes and making sure they are available to all students.
But as one teacher said to me, we should be encouraging more students to take AP exams, but we also need to offer more support for those students so they do well in them.
MCPS should work with stakeholders and consider how to better reconcile the goal of encouraging more students to enroll in AP classes and take the exams and helping more students score highly on the exams. MCPS’ own numbers indicate that achieving one of those goals does not necessarily take care of the other.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
MCPS Releases MoCo-Fairfax Comparison on AP Tests
MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast has written a memo to the Board of Education comparing MCPS to Fairfax County Public Schools on Advanced Placement (AP) exam performance in 2009. The results are very close. Weast wrote, "Despite having 30,000 more students than Montgomery County, Fairfax students took just 1,379 more exams. Since 2006, the number of AP exams taken by MCPS students has increased 27.5 percent - nearly double the rate of growth in Fairfax." Weast went on, "While our enrollment is more diverse both racially and economically, MCPS's students had the same mean score on AP exams as Fairfax County - 3.3 out of 5." White and Asian-American students performed better in MoCo than in Fairfax, while Hispanic students performed better in Fairfax than in MoCo and African American students performed equally well in both jurisdictions. We reprint Weast's memo below.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
B-CC Chamber to Schools: Drop Dead
The incoming chair of the B-CC Chamber thinks it is unfair to prioritize schools over development. The temporary development moratorium in Bethesda due to overcrowded schools was wrong and "sent a bad message:"It's not clear how much new development was held up by the ban, because the economic slowdown had stymied the construction industry and slowed development applications across the region. Patrick O'Neil, incoming chairman of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce, said the moratorium, nonetheless, "sent a bad message."
So even though (1) the policy didn't do any harm--surely, the Chamber would have let us know if it had, and (2) it provided badly needed school infrastructure--presumably, good for growth in a County built on the foundation of education excellence, the policy is a mistake because because it is "elevating by law one public policy over another" (translation: schools over our development interests).
"It really was elevating by law one public policy over another, school capacity over smart growth and transit-oriented development," he said. He lauded the decision by political leaders to tweak the calculations for school construction to end the moratorium.
Seems to me it would be a shame to eliminate a law that provides such valuable political pressure to keep the schools up to par. After all, funding was magically discovered once the moratorium kicked in but not earlier. It would be great to know if candidates for the County Council support the current law linking school infrastructure to development.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Miller Links Teacher Pensions and Maintenance of Effort
Buried in a Washington Post article about the budget is this momentous passage:One way to lighten the state's burden is to shift the rising cost of teacher pensions to local governments, said [Senate President Mike] Miller, a leading proponent of changing the system.
Miller has been a proponent of passing down at least part of the teacher pension costs to the counties for some time. A bill he filed last year would have cost the counties nearly a billion dollars over four years. But now Miller is offering to ease Maintenance of Effort requirements that compel counties to maintain per-pupil spending in exchange for a pension handoff.
"Anyone who knows anything about basic accounting knows that the people who set the salaries should also be responsible for the pensions that are a result of the salaries," he said.
To mollify critics of such a move, lawmakers might agree to loosen a requirement that local governments fund their school systems at the same level per student as the previous fiscal year, Miller said.
The combined effect of a county pension mandate and a loosening of public school spending requirements is easy to see: the counties will have a strong incentive to shift spending out of the classroom and towards pension obligations formerly covered by the state. That would have very serious consequences for public education.
Maintenance of Effort is a Smart Law
By Eric Luedtke.
As a teacher, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some extraordinary children. But some of their parents have been just as extraordinary. Year after year, I’ve met parents who will do anything to give their child every opportunity for success, despite their circumstances. Some of them work two and three jobs to keep food on the table. Many come home after long days at work and sit down to help their children with their homework. One in particular sticks in my mind, a parent who told me that they had given up taking medication for a chronic medical condition for over a year in order to keep their kids fed, housed, and clothed. It is an amazing commitment and a deep and abiding love that parents like these show to their children.
In too many places, though, it’s a commitment that is not mirrored by our government. We let far too many children fall through the cracks. Too many go hungry. Too many who are in need of services for basic health care, mental health, and developmental disabilities do not get them. And in too many parts of our country, children attend school in overcrowded, dilapidated buildings where teachers don’t have access to basic supplies and are paid so little that they are as much martyrs as professionals.
Maryland, however, is different.
When we passed the Thornton legislation, our state made what can only be described as a profound promise to the children of our state. The philosophical underpinning of Thornton is simple: that no matter the economic circumstances, no matter the shifting winds of politics, we would provide the money necessary to give a high quality education to every child in Maryland. There are few places in America that have made such a promise. And it is a promise that has had enormous impact. It is one reason why our schools are ranked first in the country.
So it’s been somewhat sad to observe the debate about maintenance of effort over the past few months. It’s sad because the deep philosophical commitment to education that is the underpinning of the Thornton law seems to have become lost in rhetoric about budgets, recessions, and decision-making authority as applied to the maintenance of effort provision. So much so that our County Executive was quoted in reporting about the Committee for Montgomery breakfast in December as calling it a “stupid law.” Now, I understand that politicians are sometimes misquoted by the press, and that the heat of political discourse sometimes leads people to say things they regret. But the law is not stupid. It may need some tweaks, but labeling the idea of making the same basic commitment to kids from year to year “stupid” is at the very least poor word choice. It’s not stupid to provide a good education to kids.
Some of our political leaders are genuinely seeking changes that might make the maintenance of effort law more fair. They’ve suggested giving penalties to county governments rather than school systems; it makes no sense to penalize a school system because their county council has not voted to give them adequate resources. They’ve suggested waiving this year’s penalties on Montgomery County until that provision is fixed. These ideas make sense.
But make no mistake, among the politicians advocating changes in the maintenance of effort law are those who simply lack political courage and commitment, who are unwilling to make the difficult case for maintaining the quality of our schools even in difficult times. And while it’s a difficult case to make, while it will require tough decisions to meet maintenance of effort, maintenance of effort is a relatively low bar – it does not even require that counties account for inflation. In fact, because our maintenance of effort law is pegged to what our effort currently is, rather than what our effort should be, the case can be made that it is not a strong enough legal requirement to meet the true needs of our kids.
In the end, the situation we face as supporters of quality education in Montgomery County is dire. Too many of our politicians are seeking changes in the law because of short-term economic pressures, forgetting the long-term reasoning behind the law. And if the cuts that they seem to think are necessary go through, they absolutely will have an effect on our kids. The school system’s budget is far beyond the point where there is fat to cut.
The fact is that without maintenance of effort, we will be doing less for our community’s children next year than we did this year. Is that really a precedent that we want to set?
Eric Luedtke is a teacher at A. Mario Loiederman Middle School and a member of the Board of Directors of the Montgomery County Education Association, which represents 12,000 educators in Montgomery County Public Schools.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Montgomery Teachers Under Stress
By Eric Luedtke.
This spring, educators in Montgomery County and across the state participated in the TELL Survey, which sought to gauge the opinions of Maryland's teaching workforce on a broad variety of issues. The results are, frankly, fascinating. They paint a picture of the teaching workforce in Montgomery County in which many teachers are stressed by an increasing workload and unhappy with not being included in district and school level decision-making. Most surprisingly for a school system which prides itself on being among the best in the state, our system does not compare favorably with other parts of the state. And I need to be clear - this is not just an issue for teachers and their union leadership. It's an issue for everyone who cares about our schools. As I've pointed out on MPW before, the issues of workload and inclusive decision-making are profound factors in our ability to recruit and retain the best teachers. Just as importantly, any one with a child in school will tell you that they want them in a classroom with a relaxed, well-planned teacher, not one who is stressed and distracted by bureaucratic minutiae and who doen't have time to do their job right.
In the results that follow, results are shown for both Montgomery County and the state as a whole. The results of our county skew the statewide results, of course, so the reality is that the difference between our responses and responses in other jurisdictions may be larger than they first appear. Numbers aside, compared to the state as a whole, Montgomery teachers are less likely to report that:
- they have reasonable class sizes
- they have enough instructional time to meet the needs of all students
- school leadership consistently enforces rules
- teachers are involved in decision-making in the district
- teachers are trusted to make sound decisions about instruction
- there is an effective process for making group decisions in their school
- their school leadership facilitates an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect
- teachers feel comfortable raising concerns in their school
- school leadership makes an effort to address concerns about conduct and learning
Perhaps more damning for a school system which prides itself on collaboration with employees, only 38% of teachers think they have an appropriate say in decision-making in their schools and only 19% think that about the school system as a whole.
These results are alarming. We know that the most successful school reform models across the country have placed a high premium on professionalism and the inclusion of teachers in decision-making. We know that reasonable workloads and empowerment are key to keeping good teachers in our classrooms. We know from a University of Pennsylvania researcher that when staff have more say in their schools, it not only decreases staff turnover but drastically reduces problems between teachers and students.
And yet, Montgomery County is underperforming the state. If nothing else, this proves again that addressing workload and school leadership issues will be key to continuing the improvements we've seen in student performance in MCPS. The system and teachers have a golden opportunity to chart a new course during the coming contract negotiations, if only we have the will to take advantage of it.
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